The Five-Second Rule

      I remember back in the days of my childhood, which admittedly was not too long ago, and my peers would tell me about the five-second rule. I am positive that most of you reading this have certainly heard about it. Simply, if your food happens to drop on floor you have five seconds or less to pick it up before it is completely infested with germs and no longer edible. Nowadays I would probably tell you that rule is disgusting and you shouldn't eat any food off of the floor regardless of how long it has been there. However, it seems that the children of today are no longer learning about this five-second rule because in my reading of "The Art of Social Media" by Guy Kawasaki he discusses the principles of the new generation's five-second rule. He calls it, "Optimize for Five Seconds". To quickly summarize it the author states that people should be creating their social media profiles to pass a first glance test. It dates back to the idea where a girl knows if she is interested in a guy within the first five seconds of meeting him. Well, apparently the same applies for social media profiles.

      Personally, I found this interesting in a couple of different ways. First of all, it proves yet again how much the world has changed. The fact that humans are now so heavily focused on their social media that they will legitimately take time to optimize their profile page to pass a five second test shows just how much the internet can control our lives. Secondly, if you were an outsider looking in on the complex narrative that is humanity you would probably think that we were one of two things: simple-minded or very insecure. I mean, to think that people care so much about what others think of them that they are willing to read a book to up their game on social media seems almost child-like. However, while some of us may be simple-minded, insecure, or even child-like I believe as a whole we are the same as we were 20 years ago. Think about it, the five-second rule has been around for decades. Whether it refers to social media, food, or dating it doesn't matter. It all boils down to the fact that we, as a human race, make snap decisions in five seconds or less. Some people may think of it as is silly, and that outsider looking in may see it as simple-minded. Well, there are many ways to look at that, but I think it shows that we know what we want.