I have always been a huge fan of statistics. Very few things are more satisfying to me than peering at the number of hours I have spent playing my favorite games and listening to my favorite music. When I picked up some less quantifiable hobbies years ago now, I had a conundrum. My online life was infinitely quantifiable in every possible metric. I could see every single song I have ever listened to on internet-connected devices, track every step I've taken with my phone in my pocket, even browse my screen time statistics to revel in the awesome (original meaning: inspiring awe or dread) power that the internet held over me.
Then I started climbing, walking, and playing my bass more. How was I supposed to quantify these things? I tried a series of apps that claimed to boost 'hobby productivity' by tracking hours and producing delicious statistics. None of them scratched the same itch as looking at my last.fm. Eventually, I started leaving my phone in the locker at the climbing gym, and my earbuds at home. I still really struggle with the urge to put my phone in my pocket at all times, and it's hard to shed the maternal instinct to carry the fun stimulation box all the time.
When I had last.fm, I found myself constantly picturing someone browsing my music listening (each play is called a 'scrobble') and judging my scrobbles intensely. I was constantly sucking up to this completely non-existent person who would never view any of my listening activity. Plus, I would listen to a band just to keep them at the top of my most scrobbled artists. I was quantifying what should (in my opinion) be a leisure activity. I should not think about the panopticon when I put on my headphones and press play on my favorite album.
I heard a story once of a very typical gym-bro-type man spending about 4 hours at the gym per day. However, he went from the hours of 10:00pm to 2:00am because he could burn enough calories for both days. He was exercising not for the joy of endorphins and lactic acid, but to complete this arbitrary numerical goal based on abstract notions of time and health! It's the same feeling as when I get a little pang of hunger and instinctively look at the clock to check if that biological indicator can be accurate or not. If it's not noon yet, then surely I can't be hungry, right?
It would like to live without clock time for some length in my lifetime. Seems nice. I'm sure there is some element of the grass is always greener, though.
Spotify Wrapped is probably the most perverse quantification of pleasure that I've seen on such a mass scale. I like it too, it just makes me feel gross and dirty. They are giving you all of this information about yourself that is perfectly instagrammable, just short enough to go over with your friends and not long enough to have any interesting statistics. The obviously artificially polarized "listening age" this year was really perfect outrage marketing. They have good marketers. That's all, end of post!
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