Why We Learn Useless Facts

Some people learn useless facts because they want to appear smarter. The more you know about "stuff," the smarter you are considered in modern society.

Some people learn useless facts because they make good conversation starters. Which actually makes them useful. Say there is an awkward silence between you and someone else; you can take out your smartphone and search for a useless fact. In fact, I just did this and found uselessfacts.net, which had these useless doozies:

• If a frog’s mouth is held open for too long the frog will suffocate.
• A duck has three eyelids.
• Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land mass below sea level.

I guess these facts have to be useful to someone. They're just useless to me. But interesting. So maybe we learn useless facts because they feed something in us that craves information without the pressure of having to do something with it.

Did you know that if you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee?

Didn't think so. But go ahead––feel free to share this useless fact.