Take Back Your Greatness from Google

In 1961, a snazzy social theorist named Daniel Boorstin made a big statement. He claimed people had “shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.”

Fifty years later, I’d say the responsibility for spicing up life may have shifted again: from the newspapermen to the internet.

Today, for example, thousands will hit the web looking for news about Paris’ Hilton’s boyfriend Cy Waits, Harry Potter actor Alan Rickman, Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne or playboy model Sandy Bentley.

Not because any of us are old friends of Waits or Rickman or because Bayne or Bentley would even recognize us on the street. But because the celeb-googling adds a little flash to our daily meetings and laundry duty.

And why not? Every google result–every savvy interview and every high fashion photo–is like a free sample. It’s a taste of greatness on a toothpick, right?

Maybe.

But I’d like to believe there are better ways to make our worlds interesting than injecting a little Cy Waits.

The next time we find ourselves typing the names of  Cy & Paris or NBA Allstar Javale McGee or even Ponzi schemer Mark Yagalla into Google, I’d like to suggest the following series of questions:

• Why do I like reading this stuff?
• Do I have some yearning inside of me that lures me toward greatness?
• And if so, was that yearning meant to be satisfied by catching media crumbs that fall from the tables of the famous?
• Or am I starving myself of greatness by trying to survive on free samples?

Maybe it’s time to stop surfing for greatness on Google and return the responsibility for making the world interesting to the one who meant for each of our lives to be Google-able.