I have another hobby that doesn’t count as an actual hobby.

We all have those things we do with our time that don’t really count as recreation or self-development, but we justify our addictions by lying to ourselves that they vaguely fall into those categories. We can’t really explain why we do these things, but we seem to give them preference above all other necessary tasks in our lives. For some people it’s scrolling through the ‘gram. For me, it’s feeling how smooth my hair is and sniffing phonebooks (thankfully phonebooks are rapidly disappearing from society, so the risk that someone will see me doing this is lower than it used to be).

My latest non-hobby hobby is scrolling through Airtasker. It’s a bit of a problem, I was up until 11pm doing it the other night. And it shouldn’t be so alluring, but it is.

Airtasker is that app that puts you in touch with people who will pay you do things that aren’t sexual (hopefully). It wheals and deals in menial tasks, which is really helpful for someone whose only marketable traits are her glittering personality and her ability to hold things – although most people tend to have opposable thumbs these days so it doesn’t really give me as much of a competitive edge as I’d like. And sometimes my glittering personality is more like the kind of dull shine you get from used aluminium foil.

Anyway, scrolling through the app to see what kind of shit people will pay other people to do is fantastic. It’s kind of like a hobby, but to validate my time wasting, I’m going to say that it’s more like anthropology than mindlessly thumbing through job postings. And as much as that label sounds like my usual bullshit, it actually is a real insight into humanity.

For example, you could use the jobs posted by app users to build an academic case study on the way holidays influence the behaviour of otherwise rational human beings.

And taking into account the jobs listed for Monday night and all of yesterday and the significance of yesterday’s date you could form a hypothesis that human people get weird around when it comes to showing affection.

I mean, you’d only need to study at the way I use “nugget” as a term of endearment to see that, but I digress.

Yesterday, as some of you would be aware, was Valentine’s Day.

A day where you avoid Tinder at all costs and try not to allude to anything about your personal life to anyone so they don’t hit you with noisy sympathy or say things like “hubby” to you.

But out it’s also a day for panicky people to send stupid amounts of money on pointless gestures. As such, there were some ripper jobs up for grabs yesterday.

Of course you had the random flower deliveries, but you also had people looking for someone who could deliver a three-piece feed from KFC to their partner as a Valentine’s Day treat (this person “must be reliable”). Another person wanted to pay someone to have a lend of their sausage dog.

I was just astounded by how much money there was to be made off people’s desperation.

On the flipside, you could also see how people circle like sharks, smelling this anxiety like blood in the water. For every person wanting a job done, there were at least seven people lined up to exploit them. And it was almost aggressive. These people were ready to pounce, poised to take advantage of a weakness. They lay in waiting, knowing that the holiday that is so entwined with high expectations and crushing disappointments it comes in second only to New Year’s Eve in the ranking of shitty holidays.

These shrewd Airtaskers knew that people would crack, that they would be unorganised, and that they would feel the pressure. It seems desperation can be commoditised, and you’d be silly not to cash in on it.

I know I did.

Instead of dong nothing with my afternoon, I turned my lack of plans into cold, hard (virtual) cash. And it wasn’t even that difficult. I helped someone set up for a dinner party with tasks like moving plants and stringing fairy lights and buying asparagus. It was actually kind of fun and was apparently a bit of a work out as my arms are kind of sore now.

So look at that, I guess I managed to squeeze some kind of benefit out of my mindless non-hobby. This now validates my obsession, and I am free to scroll through Airtasker endlessly.

OOOOHHH!

I came across a task asking someone to “source me lime Bacardi Breezers”. A person called Sasha is offering $80 to someone who can scratch that itch. “I miss them like crazy,” they say. “I need someone to get me even just a four pack.”

We live in a beautiful world.