What we successfully eradicated (Bear Blog Carnival)
I subscribed to a niche small-timeYouTuber. Sometimes in the live stream, he will just watch and react to TikTok videos. For a period of time, I saw videos with a dual screen setup. Half of it is a nonsensical AI video promoting gambling, the other half will be Subway Surfers Gameplay. What is remarkable about it is not the fact that AI video is that realistic. What repels me is the fact that there need to be two screens to attract viewers. That speaks volume about the state of mind of TikTok users and the quality of their attention.
Well, one day (today) I realized that I was playing two video games while watching two different esports matches at the same time. "Hypocrite" is not the right word but the first that came to mind. It's something that I have realized for a long time but haven't done anything about it. I have succumbed to the same condition as other people. It's nearly physically impossible for me to do nothing, to just be bored.
I don't know the origin of boredom and our general aversion to it. A sensible conjecture would be the person who is antsy, who always feels the need to do something, ultimately survived in the conditions that humans evolved. If you are not out hunting and gathering, there are knives to sharpened, meat to be cured, hides to be sewn, and many more. Hence, we are inclined to do something at any time. However, the trait became a maladaptation in the modern world. It was like our favored taste for food rich in sugar and fat. In the past, starvation was a real concern. So we were wired to make the most out of opportunities to consume food rich in energy. However, our modern world is a world of abundance. Hence, the favorable trait backfired, resulting in the epidemic of overweight and obesity. Similarly, always doing something is favorable when you have a lot to do and the nature of your work is mostly physical labor. That worked well until the Third Industrial Revolution and the rise of knowledge workers.
Now, we finally feel like being in possession of our time. We have so much time that we even talk about killing it. That need is so substantial. Just look at the size of our entertainment industry, which includes television, streaming, gaming, news, infotainment, social media, p*rnography, and many hybrids between them. The exponential spread of the internet is also the exponential spread of means to field our time and attention all the time. And we are still insatiable. Just notice how the length shortens, from a movie to YouTube 30 minutes-1 hour essay, then 15-10 minutes videos updated daily, and now 5-10s TikTok videos. We have successfully eradicated boredom from the modern world. That's a good piece of news for some people (mostly CEOs of companies in the entertainment industry) and the worst realization to me.
I don't think I need to recite the research on the necessity of boredom. Nor do I need research to tell me how my life has come to resemble a living hell, and I need to change. Or more accurately, I need to return. I lived without reliable Internet connection for the first 16 years of my life. I was an avid reader. I was a smart child. I was perfectly content to just sit there for hours, enchanted by just the world inside my head. I finally got my freedom entering high school, and also Covid era. Then I got even more freedom going overseas. However... I started changing involuntarily. Now? My Internet habits have come to resemble a "normal" person, and I hate it whole-heartedly. Sometimes, "normal" makes no f*cking sense, and is actually absolutely undesirable. I don't really want this "normal". I don't want to be glued to my phone. I don't want to watch esports. I don't want to be constantly on Discord chatting with people.
Yet, my actions said otherwise. That's the cognitive dissonance I am experiencing. I had an inkling of the shape of the right answer. I am just too scared of saying it out loud.