I got an email yesterday from Pocket, the service that lets you save stories on the web to read later (various browsers and other apps do the same thing but I glommed onto Pocket, in part because it was bought by Mozilla and integrated directly into Firefox).
Email from Pocket is not unusual–I get several per week with recommended and sponsored stories. This one was different, though (and yes, it included the little rocket because that’s become a strange and slightly annoying trend in email subject lines over the past few years):
Stan, you made the Top 5% of readers in Pocket this year!
It goes on to elaborate a little:
You’re a top reader in Pocket for 2017, and you should be proud! Not only did you make it into the top 5%, you’ve also exercised your brain and undoubtedly learned a ton in the process.
I just find this weird. There are about five hundred billion people on the internet, so how did I manage to get in the top 5% of Pocket users? My first thought is that Pocket is drastically unpopular and any moderate use by anyone would put them in the top 5%. This is also my second and third thought because all other possibilities seem so much less likely. But perhaps most people only use Pocket occasionally because they read a story right when they find it, rather than holding off until later. Maybe we live in a culture of instant rather than delayed gratification and I’m an outlier.
Maybe this would all change if Pocket featured Facebook integration (I would then hate it forever and plunge into the bottom 5%).
Anyway, I suppose it’s nice but mostly still weird that I’m in the top 5% of anything on the internet. Go me!