The internet is filled with ideas that seem to make sense at first glance, causing them to be shared through social media, filling up your Facebook wall and Twitter feed with well-meaning, but illogical nonsense. Here's another one and why it doesn't really make sense.
Here's the original post in its full form. I've broken it down section by section below.
The person starts by telling us how big Wal*Mart is. Because it's big. Really big. I can quote big numbers too...
To the editor:
1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart every hour.
1. People spend $1,484,018 on porn every hour.
2. That works out to $20,928 per minute.
2. That works out to $24,733 per minute. My number is higher because I can do math and the original author cannot. The inability to divide a number by 60 makes me slightly less than confident in his or her logical skills.
3. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot+Kroger+Target+Sears+Costco+K Mart combined.
3. Porn revenue is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined. Those would be Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink.
4. Wal-Mart employees 1.6 million people, it is the world's largest employer.
4. 102,434,567 people view internet porn.
5. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.
5. 35% of all internet downloads are pornographic.
6. Wal-Mart has approx. 3,900 stores in the USA, this is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago.
6. 24, 644, 172 websites are pornographic.
7. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart. The earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.
7. 68 Million search engine requests a day are pornography related. That adds up to 24,820,000,000 porn search experiences a year. The earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion, because that matters somehow.
You may think I am complaining, but I am really laying the groundwork for suggesting that maybe we should hire these guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
Well in that case, I think I have just laid the groundwork for suggesting that maybe we hire the guys who run porn to fix the economy. Unless, you know, the numbers you just said have no bearing on anything.
