The Futility of Utility

Author’s note: In 2016, Kanye West released his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo. The record was a mess. Tracks were disjointed. The production value on some tracks had soaring grandeur, while others were clearly unfinished. In response, West called the album a “living breathing changing creative expression.” He tweeted: 

I’ve often reflected back on this moment. To me, it was the biggest and loudest shift in what content is. The internet changes the materiality and meaning of creation. In previous eras of music, the record was literally that: a record. With the internet, the album is an updatable hyperlink. Four months after the album’s release, West added an additional track. In an interview with GQ in 2020, West was dismissive of the critics saying he should leave the album alone, telling the magazine, “Nothing is ever done.” 

This essay is my attempt to treat my work in the same way as West. What would happen if I constantly rewrote or re-examined my previous ideas? I published v1 of this essay a year ago and have been dissatisfied with it ever since. Today’s post is v2. Ima fix wolves.

In a bedroom with no TV, no AC, one window, and zero forms of entertainment, I lay back and contemplated the best use of my free time. It was the summer of 2016, and I was living in the hills of Oakland. My biggest constraint was that I had almost no money. Going to In-n-Out was a special treat. Most days the only meal I could afford was the free cereal at work.

As I sat alone in this hotbox of sweat and misery, I sketched out a formula for how I could most effectively use what little money I had to entertain myself. It came out like this:

Hours of entertainment / total cost = unique distraction units (UDU)

My goal was to figure out how to squeeze the most value from every dollar. A videogame that costs $60 and takes 60 hours to complete yields a distraction value score of 1. A movie in theaters is a much worse deal: it costs $20 and provides 2 hours of entertainment, yielding a UDU score of 0.1. 

However, not all hours of entertainment are created equal. So I took the formula a step further—connecting the UDU to the utility gained. 

UDU x utility gained = total entertainment value (TEV)