'OMG it's totes cold outside' and other breaking news.

Yesterday I looked outside and there was weather. This morning I looked outside and there was still weather. In fact every single day of my life when I look outside there will be weather until the time I am arrested and put in a secure unit at a mental institution where when I look outside the only thing I see will be the inevitable despair of another doctor coming to tell me I'm still a menace to society. Prick.

In short, I can tell using my eyes what the weather is like at this exact moment. Everyone can.

So why then do people feel the need to keep telling me? Why are all my social news feeds full of updates about how cold it is or about how it's raining? Why do I insist on remaining friends with these people?

The weather outside is weather.

The reason is both simple and frightening: We have to be talking about something all of the time. ALL THE FREAKING TIME. FOREVER.

Since social media became LIFE for millions of people across the world it has effectively ruined our ability to shut the hell up. We now have the means to talk to people whenever we like. We can engage in hundreds of conversations at once, talk to people no matter which country they are in and share our mundane messages with whoever wants to click on a hashtag. It has opened our minds up to a whole new realm of possibilities. We can check our social media sites throughout the day giving us a constant stream of news and information about a whole tonne of shit we otherwise wouldn't concern ourselves with, but now the tools are out there we feel we have to use them.

The problem comes when we don't actually have anything good to talk about. Before the rise of social this would just have caused us to be quiet. We'd have sat in front of the television or read a book to fill the hours between us having intelligent thoughts and that would have been just fine. But now silence is not an option. Now when we have nothing intelligent to say we can still see hundreds of other people with plenty to say and we feel left out, we feel like we're lagging behind. So instead of waiting until we have something good to offer our online audiences, we just offer whatever comes into our heads first instead. 

Hence weather updates.

Hence relationship updates.

Hence me knowing what my mate had for breakfast this morning.

It's not been said to keep me engaged, it's not been said because they felt it would interest me, it's not been said in order to gather likes, comments, retweets or favourites, it's just been said because they could say it.

And in case you're interested, it's currently cold outside, obviously, it's November.