What’s a completely useless fact you love sharing?
Count aloud from one to one million in English, and your lips will never once meet—until you reach “one million,” where the “m” finally seals them. I didn’t discover this; the internet did. Which is precisely why I never share plain facts—so easily summoned by a tap on a smartphone, anywhere, anytime, and owing nothing to my own discovery.
The sharing of “useless facts” is a centuries-old human habit, formally branded in 1995 by a group of British journalists and writers who founded The Useless Information Society. Yet the habit’s long history raises a question: what has changed, and what has stayed the same?
Before the internet, those who deployed such facts as conversational openers were called charming and knowledgeable. Now, with a smartphone in hand, anyone can be a charmer. I once met a British man who wielded trivia as a courtship tactic. When he tried it on me, it failed—for performed knowledge, offered as a tactic rather than a gift, rings hollow.
And yet the failure was instructive, for it exposed how slippery the category itself is. Though the term “useless fact” is universally defined, everyone conceptualises and uses it differently—for what is useless to one may be useful to another. Consider this: in casual conversation, someone accustomed to displaying his knowledge suddenly utters something of no common interest or relevance to the group—say, that America has fifty states. Perhaps of no interest to that group, yet of great interest to Americans: general knowledge to the nation’s citizens, but not necessarily beyond.
If the line between useless and useful is so easily blurred, then perhaps it is worth asking what these facts are pointing towards. Look closer, and “useless facts” are not useless at all—they point to a truth we often ignore: nature, the handiwork of Almighty God. Take a few facts from the living creatures. Wombat poop is cube-shaped, allowing the animal to mark its territory. Sea otters hold hands while sleeping, so the ocean currents will not drift them apart. Pigeons can do complex math, solving abstract mathematical rules at a cognitive level similar to monkeys. And all the more—the organs of the human body, so intricate, function so cohesively to keep us alive.
Yet how few care to know how amazingly our bodies are structured and run? And how little do we wish to know our Creator? If the handiwork of our Creator is dismissed as “useless facts” of no practical value to daily life, then what does daily life mean in the absence of eternal value?
This is the question that turns my sharing from performance into pursuit. I do not know all facts, useful or useless. But I seek to know more, to experience more the joy of knowing more, and to share more from personal experience. Life is a journey of discovery—not to fill a conversational gap, but to appreciate how amazing God’s grace is. For I know the earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters (Psalm 24:1–2). And I know that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).
May this sharing, and the poem below, shed light on your reflection: what to seek, and whom to seek from.
—
“Trivia — The Mystery of Life”
The sea is not alive, yet it sustains billions of lives.
The earth is not alive, yet the living dwell upon it.
Who directs the wind? Who decrees the rain and dew?
Who surveys the ends of the earth, beholding all beneath the heavens?
What men call “trivia,” they call so because they cannot see.
To see what cannot be seen,
to fathom the unfathomable—
only Your living Word leads the way of life.
