Do you remember the last time you went to the bathroom without a phone? When I do it’s a borderline psychedelic experience. My mind kamikazes all over the place like I’ve been suppressing day dreams for them to rip out of my head during defecation.
Boredom is not how I remember it. Boredom is just the moments that you endure as a normal functioning human between short moments of stimulation. Those moments that would previously have resembled boredom are so infrequent for me now that they have become a unique experience.
The word boredom has taken on a new meaning. It used to represent monotony or lack of stimulation. Whole days could be boring or whole dentist waiting room experiences. Boredom was that biting feeling that time was being squandered down an unrewarding avenue. It was an errand to run, a necessary process that you were required to endure in order to achieve something.
But I think the definition of boredom needs to be repurposed. In 2022 it’s almost impossible to be bored. In the classical sense anyway. When’s the last time you were bored? Or at least, when was the last time you were bored and didn’t have a device with you?
I hope I speak parallel to my generation when I say that being bored is a novelty and so rare that it becomes un-boring in light of how infrequent I experience it. Toilet trips, long commutes, going to the gym, cooking, cleaning, working, shopping…. Almost any of those busy making other plans moments can be zapped by a media of my choosing on any device and salvage me from my own thoughts. God forbid. Whether it’s music, scrolling, podcasts or my own Achilles’ heel, YouTube videos about all manner of rubbish. Somehow my brain still accepts than this is better than the reality of my own psyche and demands one more video by instinct.
There is a new version of boredom though. Quite unique to the current generations, this one is an odd feeling of restless fatigue that seeps in from time to time. Perhaps it’s the result of chronic overstimulation. The bombardment of content, notifications and dopamine buzzes and pseudo (or real) pornography is so much that it leaves a hollow feeling. This is the new boredom.
The fact that we have quietly entered an era of needing double media is nuts. It’s not enough to watch a film, but a film will be background to gaming, or accompanying scrolling, or being alongside someone yapping over it on a stream. Not only are we craving this media more than ever, one source isn’t enough. We need to overlay it with even more to suppress the thoughts that have been locked down into our skulls and are even more desperate to run amok but are corked up and don’t come out until they’ve built up our champagne bottle heads into a climax of frustration, anxiety and emptiness.
Why is it that our brains drive us for these transient dopamine zaps? Why are we addicted to distraction? Are our brains such wretched places that we are bound to battle back and forth to ensure that we aren’t left alone with ourselves?
I’d like to think that what I’m saying is representative of the current under 40s generation (maybe even beyond). Unless this is just me and in fact, everyone else wouldn’t dream of pulling out their phone during a shit. It’s teaching me lessons. I think I want to feel bored. I think we’re supposed to be bored. I need to search and will boredom, welcome it like all the other emotions that suck but savour the realness of it. I think it’s healthy.
