Facebook: More important than a flushing toilet

What’s the difference between Facebook and a toilet? Nothing, certainly at times when you compare the content of the two.

However, a survey set out to compare both of those perhaps not-so-disparate facets of life – or rather, it set out to determine what 3,000 UK adults couldn’t live without, and both Facebook and the flushing toilet came in the top ten.

The Daily Mail reported on the poll conducted by the Science Museum, which showed that Brits thought Facebook was the fifth most important thing in their lives.

The flushing toilet came in at ninth, also beaten by email, which was in eighth position.

But hey, who needs a flush when you can take a dump in a bucket anyway. Particularly when you can tap out a status update about doing so.

So what was – gasp – more important than Facebook? Google, of course. Not really (although we wouldn’t have been surprised – the search site actually made 22nd place).

The single most important thing was sunshine, although clean drinking water came third – beaten out by an internet connection, which was the second most important element of the majority’s existence.

Who needs water, you can just download it, anyway. Right? Or just drink from your toilet. Oh, but wait a minute, we swapped that for Facebook, didn’t we? What a pickle…

In fourth place was the humble fridge – the cooling appliance for storing food in, that is, not the veteran over-sized US football player.

The Science Museum’s Exhibition Manager, Sarah Richardson, labelled the results as pretty loopy.

She told the Mail: “Brits are obsessed by the weather, so it’s not surprising sunshine was rated as the top thing we couldn’t live without. But to say you can’t live without material things over drinking water is crazy.”