it should be called the BS rule

For years I was confused about ‘the 80/20 rule,’ because it always seemed to be mentioned with such seriousness, such absolute certainty. And then I found out it’s just an awesome fake statistic that’s general enough to be applied in basically any situation.

To demonstrate, I’ve applied the 80/20 rule to various internet sites I visit.

TUMBLR
20% of my dash accounts for 80% of my feels

FACEBOOK
80% of the posts are made by the 20% of the people whose posts I care the least about

DREAMWIDTH
80% of the time no one is posting anything; the other 20% of the time I already saw it on tumblr

(It’s a versatile rule, really, as long as there’s an understanding that ‘versatile’ in this situation means ‘completely made up.’)

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.