Why do we crave useless knowledge?

the search for inefficient learning in an age of instant answers

(cover photo from Bed and Board (1970) dir. François Truffaut)

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There are things we learn because we have to: how to read, write, drive, cook, file taxes. Things that help us navigate the world and clearly improve our way of life. But there’s also another kind of knowledge we seek out—facts, stories, and obscure details that serve no real purpose at all. But we collect them anyway, like little artifacts in a museum of useless information.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about the forgotten female perfumers of history. I spent weeks piecing it together—digging through obscure perfume archives, hunting down ancient recipes, and trying to verify strange “facts” that only led me in circles. But looking back, what was the point? Knowing which fragrance oils Cleopatra preferred or how long it took for Tapputti’s perfumes to steep (two months!) won’t advance my career or help me in any practical way. And, let’s be honest, it’s probably not relevant to anyone who read the article either.

Yet, I’m not alone in this interest. Niche corners of the internet thrive with passionate analyses of medieval manuscripts, extinct languages, or vanished cultures. There are video essays on forgotten Welsh kings, TikTok’s translating ancient Roman tablets, Substack’s exploring recent archeological finds.

But why? When Google can give us instant answers and AI can summarize an entire book in one paragraph, why do people still spend hours researching things with no clear purpose?

It’s as if, in a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, a quiet rebellion has emerged: the fascination with obscure, highly specific knowledge.

The internet makes information effortless, but that’s exactly why so many people are drawn to the process of discovery—the slow, messy, sometimes frustrating search for answers.

There was a time when researching online meant actually digging—scrolling through endless pages of search results, clicking link after link, and slowly piecing the information together. It could be frustrating, sure, but it also forced you to think. It demanded a deeper engagement. You had to use critical-thinking to decide which information was relevant. You had to cross-check between various sources to ensure accuracy. Sometimes, you’d even stumble across something that sent you down a completely different rabbit hole.

Now? Google serves you a neatly packaged, AI-generated summary at the top of your search page. Wikipedia provides such thorough summaries that hardly anyone bothers checking the original sources. Social media shrinks history, literature, and philosophy into bite-sized infographics and 30-second clips.

The struggle of finding knowledge—the part that made it feel earned—is disappearing.

And that’s exactly why people seek out the most obscure, hard-to-find pieces of knowledge. It’s a reaction against the convenience of the internet, against the ease of AI-generated summaries that flatten everything into digestible tidbits. The act of struggling to find information has become more valuable than the information itself.

Nicholas Carr, in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, warns that the way we consume information is fundamentally changing. The digital age is transforming not just what we know, but how we think. He argues that the internet has trained us to expect instant answers, that we don’t sit with ideas or think deeply anymore. Carr feels like his mind is expected to “take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles”.

With AI summaries and algorithm-driven content spoon-feeding us answers, we risk becoming passive consumers of information rather than active seekers of knowledge. The convenience of instant answers might seem like a gift, but as Carr warns, it might be chipping away at our ability to think deeply at all.

So maybe, more than anything, we crave a learning experience that feels real.

“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” - Nicholas Carr

We especially seem to be seeking out obscure historical knowledge. Weird events that happened thousands of years ago and had seemingly little impact on our world today. But humans have always been drawn to connecting with history in their own unique ways. Through researching strange medieval traditions or the Neanderthal way of life, these deep dives help us see these people as more than simply names and dates. Their routines and inside jokes and daily meals humanize them far beyond the surface-level facts we usually learn.

And that’s part of the appeal. Obscure historical knowledge makes the past feel less like a distant, academic subject and more like something tangible. We don’t just want to know what happened; we want to understand what it felt like to be there.

The more niche and specific the detail, the more intimate that connection becomes. There’s a certain closeness in knowing that someone centuries ago made the same ridiculous jokes, had the same fleeting thoughts, or left traces of themselves behind that they never expected anyone to find.

History often presents itself as grand, sweeping narratives—wars, revolutions, prominent figures that reshaped the world. But the tiny, easily missed fragments of peoples everyday life holds a different truth than what we’re used to seeing. In some ways, the search for these details feels like reaching back in time and keeping those voices from fading into the forgotten depths of history forever.

In a time when everything is so fast and fleeting, connecting with niche historical knowledge feels like anchoring yourself to something bigger. It’s a way of reaching across time and saying, ‘I see you. I get it. We’re not so different after all’.

But it’s beyond simply connecting to historical figures, we also connect to each other through researching these strange, hyper-specific fascinations. In our digital age, mainstream culture often feels entirely homogenous—people discussing the same trends, same shocking celebrity events, same movies and songs. But niche knowledge becomes a way to build communities about things that don’t always have a place in everyday conversation.

Its one of the more positive aspects of the Internet—the forums and servers and newsletters centered around obscure knowledge and meant only for those few people truly interested in learning about it. No matter what strange thing you’re interested in, there is always a small corner of the internet where people are discussing it with the same enthusiasm. The act of learning becomes communal in these spaces. When I learn something new and make a newsletter post about it, knowledge that once felt inaccessible is being rediscovered together.

Its a quiet act of defiance to gather in a small, dedicated community and discuss something not because its trending and not because it has any clear benefit, but simply because it’s fascinating.

These deep-dives are also contributing to a larger cultural shift—people are rejecting the idea that everything we do has to be useful, optimized, or productive. We’re constantly told to monetize our hobbies, learn skills that will “pay off,” and consume information as fast as possible. But useless knowledge? It has no agenda.

Books like How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell claim that resisting the pressure to be constantly efficient is good for us. Diving into random, impractical knowledge feels like a way to reclaim curiosity simply for curiosity’s sake.

Philosopher Mary Midgley argues that knowledge shouldn’t be judged by its immediate usefulness, some things are worth learning simply because they expand our understanding of the world. In Science and Poetry, she pushes back against the idea that only practical, result-driven knowledge matters. “We are not just logic machines,” she writes, “We need a conceptual world that allows us to see things in depth.”

And that’s exactly what research—especially the kind that leads down “pointless” rabbit holes—gives us. It reminds us that learning isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about depth, exploration, and wonder. In a time when AI delivers pre-packaged answers, we’re realizing that true understanding doesn’t come from speed—it comes from discovery.

Learning something purely because it’s interesting—not to make money from it, not to turn it into a marketable skill—almost feels radical. It’s a reminder that curiosity doesn’t have to serve a purpose.

So, no, my deep-dive into ancient perfumers didn’t serve any “real” purpose. It won’t help me get ahead in life, it didn’t make me any money.

But it made me think. It made me appreciate history in a new way. It made me curious about things I didn’t even know I wanted to be curious about.

And in a world that’s constantly pushing us to optimize, monetize, and be productive, isn’t there something valuable in learning just for the sake of curiosity?

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