The Economist made this sobering graphic of the hidden cost of the most popular YouTube video of all time—with more than two billion views since June 2012: "At 4:12 minutes, that equates to more than 140m hours, or more than 16,000 years." Then they compared it to some of humanity's most monumental tasks.


20 Empire States Buildings, six Burj Khalifas, four Great Pyramids of Giza, three Gerald R. Ford-Class nuclear aircraft supercarriers, a Wikipedia and a half! That's what humanity could have accomplished had they invested all the time they spent in watching Psy's Gangnam Style in more productive tasks.

The worst thing is not this, however. The worst thing is that, if you add all the seconds spent in watching the crap in YouTube, we could have probably ended war, hunger, global climate change, and colonize Mars and Europa by now.


Good job, everyone. I'm going to high five every single human I meet on the street today.