Are you having a good day? Are you feeling rested, and happy, and ready to conquer the week ahead with your signature mixture of aggression and aplomb? Are you on top of your game, and thus on top of the world?
Then you might want to get off the Internet. Because the Internet does not agree with your sparkly sense of optimism. The Internet—with all due no offences and sorry, buts—does not think you are on top of your game. Your capacity to work? To love? To live your life? You may not have asked for the Internet's opinion on these matters, but it will tell you anyway: It thinks you are Doing It Wrong.
Well, not the Internet (if, when it comes to precision, we are Doing It Right). The people who are employed to write things for the Internet. "You're doing it wrong" has become a common headline cliche, a sassier, snarkier version of "8 Questions You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask" and "You'll Never Believe What Happened Next." Here, according to the Internet/journalism/your fellow humans, is an incomplete list of all the things you—yes, you—have recently been doing wrong:
Tweeting
Parenting
Exercising
Investing in biotech
Investing in general
Making French toast
Making French fries
Making potato salad
Making tomato soup
Making muffins
Eating cupcakes
Eating popsicles
Eating grapefruit
Eating cauliflower
Eating corn
Eating tacos
Eating Tic-Tacs
Following the Paleo diet
Taking the Ice Bucket Challenge
Marketing to millennials
Blogging
Surfing
Horseback riding
Demonstrating respect
Designing websites
Cutting cucumbers
Curing colds
Having relationships
Sleeping with dogs
Looking for jobs
Hiring employees
Encouraging a Feedback Culture
Recycling plastic
Using the bathroom
Making cornbread
Making pasta
Cooking eggs
Checking out at grocery stores
Science
Anthropology
Anatomy
Digital marketing
Social media marketing
Server performance
APIs
Bagels
Paella
Refried beans
Nuts
Rice
Religion
Summer
Puberty
Philanthropy
Life
Love
Working
Parking
Changing habits
Paying bills
Making music
Folding sheets
Folding clothes
Making bruschetta
Pronouncing "bruschetta"
Applying nail polish
Wearing pants
Writing novels
Peeling ginger
Peeling bananas
Wrapping burritos
Making crepes
Praying
Using jetpacks
Being a dad
Making people happy
Making people sad
Waging psychological warfare
Facing the future
Yeah. Sorry.
Like so many such things, "You're Doing It Wrong" started as a meme. In the early 2000s, you could often find it as the all-caps wording on "FAIL" images (like, say, a guy taking an electric shaver to his forearms, or George W. Bush talking into a the earpiece, rather than mouthpiece, of a telephone). But, unlike many such things, the meme didn't die. Instead, it evolved. Journalism reclaimed it for preachy headlines like "Doing It All: You're Probably Doing It Wrong." I've used it. Slate uses it all the time.
We should probably stop. In the name of helping people out, we have become a group of wanton, finger-wagging judgers. Which, no matter the particular moral or ethical code you subscribe to, is probably doing it wrong.
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/09/everything-youre-doing-it-wrong/380160/
