Favour Ogechi Ani, a young Nigerian woman, has shattered the 18-year-old staggering stupid Guinness Book of Records mark for….wait for iiiiiiiiiiiit…the highest number ever counted out loud.
Starting in October 2025, Favour spent 70 days confined to her home, counting out loud to 1,070,000. The old record was “only” one million, but she was determined to break the record as when in October 18, 1968, American long-jumper Bob Beamon broke the long-jump record at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City by two feet in a sport where records are usually set by centimeters.
“Honestly, it was tough, but my passion for counting kept me going,” Favour said. “I had a lovely team supporting and cheering me up, and it was fun despite the challenges. My determination to achieve this project was a burn-the-boats mission. I never thought of giving up for any reason.”
Wow.
What an idiot.
Ani started live-streaming her daily counting on YouTube, which helped validate her record-setting attempt. Guinness started eliminating dangerous records decades ago, but the pointless, seldom-read (by people with a life) record book continues to tempt desperate people who view celebrity, even the most degrading kind, as worth pursuing at any cost, to do dumb things in the hopes of establishing their places in history. To establish their places in the history of wasting life.
Did you know about this epic achievement? If not, I am cheered: an American news media that is debating Gwyneth Paltrow’s obscene dress at the Oscars is still not so worthless as to publicize the breaking of the “counting out loud” world record.
EA has derided self-centered, objectively useless and wasteful activities in other posts, including running marathons, climbing Mt. Everest, swimming from Cuba to Florida without the protection of a shark cage, or breaking the record for “most tattoos of the same musician (Maddona) on the body.” Still, this is special. I’m singing “September Song” these days, imagining what I could have accomplished with a better use of my time and talents. I see someone wasting 70 days of precious life counting just to get her name in tiny print in a record book, and it ticks me off.
This isn’t like complaining that a wealthy mogul has chosen to spend his or her millions on a luxury yacht when they could have been saving the snail darter. Favour Ogechi Ani is young and healthy: there are literally 1,070,000 things she could have done with her time that could have helped others, inspired others, made the world a teeny bit better, hell, something. Make herself more knowledgeable. Learn a skill. In 70 days, you can learn to do slight of hand card tricks to amuse sick kids in a hospital.
Or am I completely wrong to find unethical a woman spending every waking hour doing something objectively useless for 70 days…not just wrong, but hypocritical? Heck, how much time have I spent watching or listening to baseball games, like I will watch the World Baseball Classic finals tonight between the USA and Venezuela while I have billable work to do for paying (theoretically, anyway) clients?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this, which I dread asking…
Is it ethical for someone to spend 70 days doing something that is neither enjoyable, productive, or useful just to set a record nobody in their right mind cares about?
Ethics Alarms 
Who knows. Her counting may have inspired more people than your blogging.
Consequentialism! But very possible indeed…
“when they could have been saving the snail darter.”
Funny story about the Snail Darter; in 1979, a Tennessee Valley Authority project, the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River was 95 % completed when that little bugger was found to be in the way.
The Tellico Dam wasn’t needed for power generation or for flood control. Turns out it was nothing more than a sop to cement contractors who needed pandering, which was cheerfully supplied by an up-n-coming politician.
The newly minted Endangered Species Act (ESA) was presented with its first challenge.
The gist of it was the “God Squad,” which was created to issue waivers based on a cost/benefit analysis of completing projects where ESA designees had the poor judgement of holing up; in the way of “progress,” as it were.
Whether “settled science” was invoked is unknown, but not really the point.
David Brower (who some call America’s greatest environmentalist) breathlessly intoned: ”This was the beginning of the end of the Endangered Species Act.”
Now; who was this Mother Gaia ravagin’/God’s Creatures murderin’/ESA ignorin’, Snail Darter destroyin’ up-n-comer?
The name Al Gore, Jr. ring a bell?
PWS
My initial and final thought on this one is: Is it ethical to waste time trying to analyze the ethics of this?
Oh, sure! If I can save one person 70 days and national ridicule by convincing them this is a criminal waste of life, I will not have lived in vain. But is is it ethical to wast time commenting on the time I waste analyzing the ethics of such stunts?
I see your point, but I consider what she’s done to be objectively harmless. As opposed to, for example, collegiate football, which injures the players, inspires children to waste their lives in pursuit of a chance to injure themselves in public, attracts an audience to which it markets useless, dangerous, and wasteful products, distracts universities from their educational mission, and diverts resources that could be put to more practical uses.
Even with that: it entertains millions (which counting does not), puts money into economy, raises fund fr colleges, taeches team work and character, provides poor minorities with a degree (if not an education), creates jobs. Lots of pluses even if it may be a net negative. Counting out loud for 70 days? no positives at all.
I view it as neither ethical… or unethical. It’s just rather strange.
No harm was done to anyone – which, to me, is important in deciding whether a given act was ethical or not. It’s true that her time could have been spent doing more productive things, but on the other hand, it was HER TIME and she could choose to do what she wanted with it – much like the bazillionaire could choose to spend the dough on a bigger yacht than that other bazillionaire.
Hey, consider this. At least she made the effort. Which is more than one could say about anyone who watched her do it.
Which was their choice, too.
I hesitate to condemn anyone’s personal enjoyment, with the argument that they could have done something better with that time. If this woman truly gains happiness by spending 70 days counting online, so be it. I see little difference between complaints of spending time and complaining about someone’s spending. There are egregious actions, but generally, I don’t like to call out much.
You mention marathons, as unethical, but marathon runners are usually pretty healthy and the ones I know are productive too. I have a cousin who runs ultra marathons, while holding a very high paying job and doing some pretty important work for national security. He neglects neither work or family. He enjoys all the running as well as doing these runs all over the world. While he never wins, he often scores high enough that he gains money from this. My husband also ran a marathon. Most of the hours he spent training were during his lunch hour at work, so there was no loss in terms of responsibility. He did get up early every Saturday morning to get his 20 mile runs in every weekend, but he got up early enough that the kids really didn’t see much of a difference in paternal presence. He’d be back right after breakfast, take a shower, and join us as a family for the rest of the weekend, aside from trying to get an afternoon nap in. As a long-distance runner, he finds that his mental health, physical health, focus, and work ethic benefit from being in peak physical condition. There are also people who enjoy watching marathons and ultra marathons. Where is that different from any other sport? People like lifting weights, playing ball games, running, skating, skiing, curling, martial arts, etc. They like watching them too. Excessive obsession and/or addiction with any of these is problematic, but in a balanced style?
Other past-times can be found to be worthless as well. Watching movies, TV, or plays spends time and money that could be spent on other items. Board games, video games, tabletop dice games and card games (all favorite pass times of mine) have little real-world application and are spending my time and money in rarely favorable ways for my growth or society’s benefit. Heck, these provide no health benefits like the sports, are more addictive to some than physical exertion, and depending on the game, can be neither useful for intellect or wisdom.
Let us also consider hobbies. I know people who get great happiness with flower gardens. They can’t eat anything and all they get out of it on a good year is a pretty house, but lots of time and money down the drain. My mom spent years embroidering on a beautiful tree skirt. She could have bought one just as nice for the same price and far less time wasted. I have easily spent a cumulative 70 days of my life working to play the instruments I can play. I’m not good enough to play for anything outside of my small town, but I still persist. I feel it hypocritical to complain about how this girl spends her time when there is so little benefit to how I spend mine. My mother-in-law knits all the time. I cannot imagine she is anywhere less than 700 days of her cumulative time. The stockings she has made for all family members, personalized with a tree and Santa, are certainly lovely, but again, she has spent more in time and money on them than a quick Amazon order would have provided. What about archery, woodworking, history reenactment, welding, stained glass, shooting sports, camping, scrap booking, glass blowing, carving, knife making, puzzle solving, hiking, escape rooms, reading (junk fiction, to be distinguished from literature or non-fiction), diamond painting, geotagging, etc? Heck, what about commenting on an internet post where one of our loved persons is in need of realistic correction of facts? There is always something to be done with our time and not all of it can or necessarily should be to our long-term advantage.
So, what about an adult who chooses to spend 70 days making a Guiness record? Well, first, counting is not exactly something that requires much in the way of brain power. I could certainly count in increments of one while playing many of my board games, writing this comment, driving to my volunteer gig, playing most music on my mastered list, cleaning house, doing laundry, grade any homework except math, cooking familiar recipes, and plenty more actions. If other work is done during this time, then the concern of wasting time is lessened. Second, while this seems to go against the idea that one should continue their education or get a job, if you are a person who gets their kicks from counting to over a million over 70 days, you probably aren’t exactly a brain trust who has much in the way of college prospects and while it seems utterly insane, when something like this is on YouTube, there are people who pay money for these things. If she is monetizing this, then she is not wasting her time. Frankly, someone who would do this and be able to stay in her house for 70 days makes me wonder if she is neurodivergent (I refuse to use the politically correct term “spicy”) in some way that means her family has to take care of her and a normal job is out of reach anyway.
Without a lot more details than is found here, I would say that while I would not say it is ethical that she did this, I would also not say it is UNethical either. This is an action that must be held to a different scale.
On the other hand, I think that it is unethical to have this as a category to have a world record. This requires no skill whatsoever. A tenacious seven-year-old could pull this off. There is more skill required to be the world record holder in the number of Peeps eaten in one sitting without vomiting. The number of matches used to create a fire design requires skill, planning, and even a certain amount of engineering, to have it burn in the correct manner. Tenacity alone should not be what is required to get prize (even a dumb prize) in a world record category.