[HN Gopher] Social media may prevent users from reaping creative...
___________________________________________________________________
Social media may prevent users from reaping creative rewards of
profound boredom
Author : nabla9
Score : 291 points
Date : 2022-12-26 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bath.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bath.ac.uk)
| meindnoch wrote:
| Do people still use social media that much?
| mdorazio wrote:
| You're asking this question on a social media site...
| baeaz wrote:
| I disagree that this is a social media, I don't even look at
| the names of those who leave comments or those I reply to.
| It's like I'm reading and talking to the hivemind.
| WhiteBlueSkies wrote:
| You don't get it. It's social media. You interact get
| upvotes(dopamine hits). argue and feel entertained through
| the screen of your device.
| somesortofthing wrote:
| These things are all possible in iMessage. Is iMessage
| social media?
| PebblesRox wrote:
| For me what puts Hacker News in the same bucket as
| Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook is that it's a constantly
| refreshing feed of content that requires very little
| choice or initiative on my end to access. It's always
| here, always novel, and I don't have to think from a
| blank slate to figure out what I want to read, I just
| come and pick from the menu that's been put in front of
| me.
|
| I can contribute and participate actively by doing
| critical thinking and leaving comments but I can also
| read passively and barely even think my own thoughts. For
| me that passive version is the default.
|
| I agree that social media is not the most accurate term.
| I wonder what a good alternative would be. "Mindless feed
| reading" could refer to the act of consuming it.
| WhiteBlueSkies wrote:
| You are being pedantic. Yes, if you're in a group and
| exchange discussions which are low-effort(memes) and
| high-dopamine(outrageous views) you are in the cycle.
| drstewart wrote:
| I don't look at the names of commenters on Twitter or
| Instagram, so those aren't social media either?
| mr_mitm wrote:
| HN still serves as a source of distraction for time periods
| of arbitrary length. TikTok may also not be a social
| network, but it's distracting and addicting. The content on
| HN is just a bit more geared towards the intellectual (and
| The Algorithm is less powerful).
| chownie wrote:
| I kind of object to that use of the term, when social media
| was coined it clearly did not apply to pseudonymous forum
| sites.
| delecti wrote:
| From what I can tell from a brief googling, the term
| "social media" was coined (or at least an early documented
| use was) by an AOL executive in 1997. I think that refutes
| your assertion. AOL usernames tended to be pretty
| pseudonymous.
| k__ wrote:
| While Facebook's numbers may be down, TikTol is doing good, I
| heard.
| einszwei wrote:
| I find people around using short video apps more. But either
| way it is mindless consumption.
| powersnail wrote:
| Perhaps this is due to my insufficient understanding of English,
| but "an abundance of uninterrupted time spent in relative
| solitude" doesn't sound like boredom to me, especially if the
| time is spent on active thinking.
|
| If you are deeply engaged in musing, despite the solitary
| situation, you are not really bored, are you? At least I wouldn't
| call it being bored. You've got something to do, and you're well
| occupied by it. It's just thinking time to me. Such a situation
| I'd never characterize as boring (unless it lasts a ridiculous
| time, which reminds me of _Chess Story_).
|
| What I think of as "boredom" is more like being in a sporadic
| lecture, doing assignments that are lengthy and thoughtless,
| being locked in a traffic jam, etc. Something that takes time,
| repulses attention, but has sufficient consequence that compels
| your concentration. And I don't think those are helpful in the
| profoundness of anything.
|
| So, if the premise is "social media may prevent users from
| reaping creative rewards of time to profoundly think", I'd agree.
| But "profound boredom"? I just couldn't get behind this
| terminology.
| pcurve wrote:
| I agree about the terminology not being the best so the article
| tries to differentiate it from normal boredom by calling it
| "profound boredom"
| powersnail wrote:
| I find the differentiation to be rather circular in its
| logic. The authors chose to call it "profound boredom",
| grouped it with "normal boredom" (which is, in fact, just
| "boredom"), called the union of them "boredom", and thus
| boredom can be great for your creativity.
|
| All this mental gymnastic to produce the attention grabbing
| headline that something bad can be good for you, when that
| something bad is actually something good, but rehashed into
| the category of something bad. Of course, that thing which is
| good for you has not changed; we always knew that if you
| spend time thinking deeply, you might gain some insights or
| ideas. It's just a shuffling of terminologies, which
| conveniently helps market their findings.
|
| By the same thought process, a human being can have 8 limbs,
| because here are the "normal humans", and there we have Billy
| the Octopus, who we re-categorize as a "Octopusian human".
| So, it's safe to say that some human can have 8 limbs.
|
| It's like the gerrymandering of definitions.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| It's a bit to do with any academic endeavour, give something
| common and simple a _profound_ name and you can write a paper
| describing it.
| bakugo wrote:
| > may
|
| I thought this was a well known observable fact. There are
| certain creative thought processes that only occur to me when I
| really have absolutely nothing else to think about, but that
| basically never happens anymore thanks to the internet. The only
| reason I'm even aware that I'm missing out on this is because it
| still happens when I take long showers, so basically the only
| time I don't have a phone or computer with me.
| hkon wrote:
| I mean, through some hilarious coincidents a couple of years ago
| I found myself without internet at home for close to a month.
|
| I remember just sitting in my living room thinking, "man watching
| TV is boring, I would rather do <whatever productive thing>".
|
| The picture in the article could have been me. It had a magical
| just-do-it effect because I really had no better alternatives
| around.
| rrgok wrote:
| I could not even being to read the article. The title was enough.
| Now we are trying to be productive even in boredom. Let us suck
| the life out of everything. While we are at, just invent
| something that let us work when we are asleep.
|
| I know I'm being hard, but I can't help feeling nauseated by this
| mindset of "reaping" something out of everything and everywhere.
| djaychela wrote:
| I think you may have missed the point of the article if that's
| your take on it. Its not about deliberately mining boredom,
| it's that being constantly "entertained" by social media means
| you will not enter the mind state where creativity can reach
| significant peaks.
| Isamu wrote:
| Actually being creative requires work, a lot of it, and the
| people who are very creative think the work is fun or have
| accepted it. Best to get into a regular groove of doing your
| creative work on a predictable schedule.
|
| The opposite of being bored is cultivating your interests,
| treating them like a garden that takes work but grows over time
| into a variety of wonderful things.
| phkahler wrote:
| Sounds like something to overcome boredom. Think how much free
| time they'd have without all that creative work.
| frereubu wrote:
| I agree that many people think "being creative" is just
| swanning around being inspired, but all the high-level creative
| people I know are very hard-working. There's a great book
| called _The Creative Habit_ by the choreographer Twyla Tharp
| which is an absolutely fantastic insight into what it takes to
| operate at a high level in the arts.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's certainly a way to waste time, but social media is also
| where I've found a lot of creative partners to work on side
| projects with, and it's where I've found a lot of inspiration too
| when looking at people's art, microfiction, etc. So I feel like
| for me it's probably at least net neutral when I use it properly
| instead of just doomscrolling.
| kranke155 wrote:
| I'm a writer and I always do my best work when I leave the phone
| at home. In fact when I can, I leave it at home for several days
| in a row.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Your computer cant access social media?
|
| I don't mean to be glib, but I often see people discuss this as
| though it's a smartphone only thing. It's just as possible to
| doom scroll on the big screen.
|
| Maybe I'm jealous that some people can restrict time wasting to
| just the phone.
| highspeedbus wrote:
| There's a brazillian song called Tedio (Boredom) that was popular
| in the 80's. It talks about not withstanding boredom inside home,
| while life goes on out there. It's curious how the depicted
| feeling is so unrelatable today.
|
| I think boredom is a real force that pushes ourselves to the
| edge, to hopefully make a change in life, like going out to see
| real people.
|
| Social media creates this cozy, safe place to keep your mind
| occupied, letting life pass without realizing it.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| But why do people blame social media for that? Every
| entertainment is equally at fault, wherever it's fictions,
| movies, tv series, comics/webtoons, games etc
| peepee1982 wrote:
| In that sense everything is at fault, not just all forms of
| media.
|
| But social media has no downtime and is engineered to be
| addictive. A casino will lose it's appeal once you've run out
| of liquidity. Social media has next to no prohibiting
| qualities.
| yucky wrote:
| > Every entertainment is equally at fault
|
| Clearly not. That would be like dismissing Siberian tigers as
| just cats, and pretending they're no more dangerous than the
| average housecat. The taxonomy is the same, but the
| similarities end there.
| yazboo wrote:
| It's a difference of degree not kind. The constant
| audiovisual stimulus running through the internet is much
| more powerful than any of those things, and more widely
| available. Cable TV was close. It was always on in the room,
| but you had to be in the room, and you had to negotiate with
| your cohabitants over what to have on, or else you could go
| somewhere and be bored. There are no constraints anymore,
| with exceptions for the most impoverished among us - there's
| always something close at hand to tickle your particular
| reptile brain until you fall asleep.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Computers with social media are so extremely reactive.
| Literally within half a second I can react to my boredom
| and find new content. I've noticed myself beginning to read
| a sentence, get bored half-way through, switch tabs, look
| over the new recommendations, do it again 30 seconds later.
|
| Never bored, and yet never really entertained or satisfied.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| One trick I've found to help with this is to live-stream.
| I once streamed a game on Twitch, nobody really watched,
| but it forced me to sit down and actually play the game
| for a good 2 or 3 hours. It was draining, gloriously
| draining and satisfying. You can stream programming and
| other personal projects as well. It doesn't matter if you
| get many viewers or not, just forcing yourself to
| maintain a consistent course of action helps. If you do
| get some real viewers though, all the better, you can
| monetize your work and enjoy free advice and socializing
| with viewers.
| netsharc wrote:
| The best is when you're on reddit, think "this is
| boring", open a new tab and type in "reddit.com"...
|
| On that topic, I've luckily managed to make reddit boring
| that I open it, scroll for a minute or so, and close it
| again: I unsubscribed from the "interesting" subreddits
| like politics or tifu or askreddit.
| agumonkey wrote:
| yeah, internet has near no constraint and this is the key
| problem
|
| TV had time.. you may be able to store it but you'd need
| tapes .. still space and efforts constraints
|
| today your hard drive and infinite connection create an
| infinite pit
|
| I also believe our brains love, just like muscles love
| exercise, prioritizing, you feel better when you made a
| smart decision. the feeling of never having to choose, skip
| through many videos, pausing them, in any order tickle the
| gluttony in us but then you get stuck and rot
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's not what happens when people doom scroll. They are
| not perfectly entertained. They are profoundly bored on
| social media. But they still scroll for scraps of
| entertainment because more promising alternatives are not
| really accessible to them at that moment, because of
| physical limitations or their state of mind or their energy
| levels.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| If you're suggesting they're equally at fault, you better
| have some numbers to back it up. Otherwise it just looks like
| you say they're equal because that's what you want to
| believe.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Social media has feedback loops that can adjust themselves
| orders of magnitude faster than legacy media, to keep you
| addicted (er, "engaged") with near zero friction.
| spikeagally wrote:
| [dead]
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| Because it's too easy now. You need a creative endeavor to
| seem like an easy way to replace boredom with novelty. For a
| lot of folks especially younger ones, there is already
| infinite novelty just waiting to be scrolled all the time in
| their pocket. No need to do anything except wave your thumb
| around.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I think social media does negatively affect your inspiration.
| Boredom on the other hand is absolutely vital to seek out any
| inspiration.
| luckydata wrote:
| lower friction makes it even easier to consume. We didn't use
| to turn on a tv every time you took a dump but we are on our
| phones scrolling through brain garbage every idle second we
| have in our day. that's not good, our brain is not equipped
| to either deal with all this stimulus or resist it.
| analog31 wrote:
| I don't think novelists have yet figured out how to
| completely occupy your cognitive apparatus or put you under
| pressure to stay engaged. When I'm sitting in my comfy chair
| reading a novel, I can close my eyes without worrying that I
| might miss something while I'm asleep.
| 12345hn6789 wrote:
| How is this different than closing your phone, screen
| shotting a FB post, pausing your video? Really. Even live
| streams, for the most part, are able to be paused and
| watched at a later date albiet without chat interaction. I
| fail to see the difference.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| If you fall asleep during a video, now you'll have no
| idea where you were. Similarly if I lose concentration
| watching a video, I now have to either go back or hope I
| didn't miss anything important. If I lose concentration
| while reading, the page is still there, I just have to
| skim it until I find where i went on a tangent.
| [deleted]
| otikik wrote:
| Traditional media is a static website. Social media is
| infinite scroll.
| rr808 wrote:
| Yup that too, but TV was strictly scheduled until the 80s(?)
| people who read books were unsocial nerds who didn't go out.
| megamix wrote:
| Social media is an active mechanism to keep you hooked.
| myth2018 wrote:
| I'm so grateful for having abandoned social networks. My main
| motivator were the fights over political weaponization of
| COVID-19, but then I went on and abandoned youtube and news as
| well. Now, I'm halfway with my first book, found a new hobby
| and developed my previous ones, rediscovered programming for
| fun, am learning a new foreign language, found a new job with
| very good compensation, lost 10 kg and became a better husband.
| My life is so fundamentally better.
| donky_oaty wrote:
| Is browsing and commenting on Hacker News not considered
| social media use though?
| filoleg wrote:
| It might be social media, but it isn't a social network.
|
| HN has no friending or a way to link yourself to any other
| user, no actual customizable profiles (a tiny "about me"
| textbox aside), no images anywhere, no way to DM users, and
| most people don't use their real names either.
|
| There are only two "social" parts of HN. First is that the
| links to the articles are posted (and voted on) by users.
| And the second part is just the fancy comment section
| around those posts. Most big news websites have a comment
| section on their articles too, and those might even be more
| full-featured than HN (e.g., I am pretty sure quite a few
| of those allow setting a profile picture).
|
| To put it simply, I believe social network and social media
| are two different things. You can have them both together
| (e.g., twitter), or separately. I would consider the
| initial Snapchat app to be a social network, but they added
| a dash of social media later on (with the "around me"
| feature, stories, etc). And HN would fall under the
| opposite of the original Snapchat app - social media, but
| without much social netowork.
|
| Sidenote: I am not an expert on this and didn't spend time
| researching it. What I wrote above is a purely subjective
| take on how I personally understand those terms, and how
| they apply to the topic at hand.
| fblp wrote:
| I'd like to hear this song. But i searched for Tedio and
| couldn't find it. Can you find it?
| quaintdev wrote:
| The whole problem with social media is the feed. Remove that feed
| and replace it with something that is not the mechanism to keep
| users captive and most of the issues with social media are
| solved.
|
| One of the ways to achieve that is to make people at the center
| of app. The user chooses avatar from multiple avatars on main
| screen and view their updates. Once they have viewed someone's
| update they can go back do it for other, it becomes boring very
| fast and discourages app usage. No social media company is going
| to do this but something of this sort needs to happen.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Correct. Infinite scroll and adaptive algorithms are the curse
| of social media.
| suketk wrote:
| Exactly! It's the digital equivalent of placing the milk at the
| back of the grocery store. It's meant to distract you from why
| you're there in the first place.
|
| If anyone is interested, I wrote about why feeds are bad and
| how you can reduce your dependence on them.
| https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| I think it would have similar effect of reddit or youtube. 99%
| of the time I use reddit or youtube, it's started with search
| to jump straight to a topic.
|
| And that is better because the demand side is an active, the
| knowledge side is the sort of passive. So mediocre knowledge
| wouldn't have the money backed ads power to outperform the
| better knowledge or solution.
| simonmesmith wrote:
| This looked interesting and then I read the following in the
| press release: "Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants
| of varying age, occupational and education backgrounds in England
| and the Republic of Ireland, who had been put on furlough or
| asked to work from home."
|
| So the hypothesis is based on 15 people, in one region of the
| world, in a very specific circumstance. The authors admit the
| research is limited, but if you don't read deeply into the press
| release you might come away thinking this finding--if you can
| call it that--is much more solid than the actual survey
| methodology would support.
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| Indeed, those findings are good prompt for the researchers to
| continue their research, but not something you publish as the
| results!
| Sakos wrote:
| Why not? Just because it's published doesn't mean it implies
| that it's found an absolute truth that can't ever be changed
| or further analyzed.
| johnfn wrote:
| You don't publish because basically anything can be proven
| at n=15. I could probably go perform another study right
| now at n=15 and if I chose my variables right I could
| determine that social media has no effect whatsoever. And
| as much as you or I know not to read too much into this one
| study, there are plenty more people who won't read too
| closely or carefully.
| Sakos wrote:
| I'll put it bluntly. I don't care about people who read a
| single study and take it as gospel. Science would be
| nothing without all the studies that are published about
| every single topic. Even the most important findings are
| built on studies done before them.
|
| > basically anything can be proven at n=15
|
| Nothing was proven. The paper is literally a
| philosophical discussion about Heidegger leaning on a
| survey. If you think that proves anything, I have a
| bridge to sell you. It's a data point, nothing more and
| nothing less. It's an interesting perspective worth
| thinking about and investigating further.
| johnfn wrote:
| You may not care, but science as a whole has a
| responsibility to do more help than harm. Anyways I feel
| like we're kind of arguing past each other. I agree
| studies should be done; I just don't think people should
| be getting news articles written up at n=15; that seems
| deceptive.
| Sakos wrote:
| I'm ambivalent about the news article. It can be
| misleading, but I also wouldn't have found the paper and
| read through the whole thing without it, which I felt was
| a really interesting and valuable read.
| Sakos wrote:
| Why leave out the context?
|
| > Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants of varying
| age, occupational and education backgrounds in England and the
| Republic of Ireland, who had been put on furlough or asked to
| work from home. He said the survey was relatively limited and
| that it also would be valuable to examine, for example, the
| role that material conditions and social class played in
| people's experience of boredom.
|
| > "We think these initial findings will resonate with so many
| people's experiences of the pandemic and their use of social
| media to alleviate boredom, and we would like to see this
| research taken further," he said.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Or maybe posting all our creative output on large searchable
| databases actually amplifies creativity due to tools like AI
| whereas aimless boredom tends to result in local efforts such as
| scribbling?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Funny to read this today. Last night I got sick of TV, sick of
| all the interwebs' distractions, and just sat there with eyes
| closed, letting my mind wander.
|
| Finally I remembered I wanted to read _Fathers and Sons_
| (Turgenev). Here 's a great question: why am I here and not
| reading that? BRB.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I am reading Antifragile by Nassim Taleb, and one of his points
| is that much of invention happens either out of necessity or
| outside of structure vs traditional R&D / Academia.
|
| I was wondering how much social media filling in all spare time
| keeps people from tinkering and inventing and making progress.
|
| Though, I suspect the tinkers are still spending a lot of time
| tinkering - and only the people who have nothing better to do are
| spending most of their time on social media.
| adg001 wrote:
| There is a line of research according to which social media
| create addiction [0]. When we are addicted to social media, we
| have less and less time for tinkering and pushing the envelope,
| because a sizeable part of our time is claimed by such media.
|
| [0] Griffiths, M. D. (2012). Facebook addiction: Concerns,
| criticism, and recommendations: A response to Andreassen and
| colleagues. Psychological Reports, 110, 518-520.
| https://doi.org/10.2466/01.07.18.PR0.110.2.518-520
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Dr Hill said the research sampled 15 participants of varying
| age, occupational and education backgrounds in England and the
| Republic of Ireland,
|
| These seems like very few people to be drawing such broad-ranging
| conclusions from.
| Tagbert wrote:
| if the effect is strong you can see evidence in even small
| sample sizes.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| What exactly is the difference between idling, daydreaming,
| meditating, musing or sitting on sofa with eyes shut and profound
| boredom?
|
| Aren't all these activities doing the same thing, giving the
| brain pause to calm down, to refocus. Perhaps our brains require
| idle times as our bodies need pause after exercise.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I stopped using Reddit when I realized I was substituting my
| boredom with junk content. Even blocked it on my /etc/host for
| awhile.
| swayvil wrote:
| A powerful, constant, extremely low-effort distraction.
|
| It's blinding to all of your senses and thoughts because as long
| as your attention is consumed by this fascinating object
| everything else is invisible.
|
| Walls of blindness surround you. A kind of invisible prison.
| tcmb wrote:
| I did not read the study, but the finding seems trivial and
| limited at the same time:
|
| Anything you do to alleviate or prevent boredom that is not
| creative can be said to 'prevent reaping creative rewards' of
| boredom. Not just social media (or any media consumption, really)
| but also sports or calling a friend or helping in a soup kitchen.
| If you didn't do it, you'd feel boredom, and might pick up
| something creative instead.
| nullish_signal wrote:
| Sports use more muscles and cardio than social media scrolling.
| Phonecalls at least rely on speech instead of an algorithm
| deciding what to show you. Helping in a Soup Kitchen is
| obviously more productive than doom-scrolling.
|
| All of those examples are better uses of time than passively
| consuming "Social Media"
| themitigating wrote:
| "Phonecalls at least rely on speech instead of an algorithm
| deciding what to show you"
|
| People participate in social media. Think of all the creative
| content that exists. In your example you compared a two way
| phone call with only one part of social media.
|
| "Helping in a Soup Kitchen is obviously more productive than
| doom-scrolling."
|
| Though subjective, I agree with you. However without social
| media how many 14 year olds were helping at soup kitchens
| instead of watching TV, playing video games, or outside
| playing. You implied that social media was impacting selfless
| benevolent acts.
|
| This could even get complicated where I show that young
| people use social media in a positive way to call out social
| issues or make people aware of volunteer events.
|
| "All of those examples are better uses of time than passively
| consuming "Social Media"
|
| Again, social media doesn't have to be passive, your comment
| that I'm replying to and this reply show that.
|
| I believe you are letting your cynicism impact your view of
| social media
| Barrin92 wrote:
| however there's some pretty stark differences. Sport is
| inherently physically healthy, and working in a soup kitchen or
| doing some other charitable work has positive social effects.
| Much social media usage, despite the name, isn't very social at
| all.
|
| After a game of soccer with your friends you probably feel
| better both physically and mentally than after scrolling
| through twitter. The latter is more like reality tv combined
| with the worst news channel available.
| armatav wrote:
| "I did not read the study"
| themitigating wrote:
| I think he meant he read the conclusion or just the data.
|
| Still, when I see this line it's like a protection from from
| being wrong.
|
| "I'm not an expert but...." basically prevents judgement
| since they qualified their statement
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Leaning into the metaness of having this conversation on
| social media in social media and on the subject of it's
| shallowness, then detaching the headline takeaways from the
| study's detail as done here by GP is a useful case in point.
| Can a reasonable argument be made even against straw men ? Do
| the details matter when the sound byte talking head line is
| the lone subject of interest ?
| rektide wrote:
| Social media is distinct in that it's not one thing, one
| experience.
|
| It's many different experiences, that users are cut between,
| exposed to. Where-as calling a friend every hour doesnt make
| sense & would get repetitive, one can just drop into the feed
| of experiences whenever they want.
|
| Your point remains, certainly. But I do think there's a kind of
| unbridled access to novelty & other-peoples-creativeness that
| is indeed remarkably blunting when compared to most personal
| lives & options we'd have.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| This is no doubt true but smart phones basically give you the
| option to never be bored, and get instant gratification
| whenever you feel like it. I don't think it is limited to
| social media but I imagine there are pretty profound
| consequences to that.
| themitigating wrote:
| TV and video games are also an option but as you implied you
| may not always have access to them.
|
| However in what situation prior to the internet would a
| person be forced to be bored. Waiting at the DMV? I guess
| what I'm saying is it's pretty rare that someone wouldn't
| have an escape from bordem, even before phones.
| falcolas wrote:
| Today, if you have access to a smartphone, you have access
| to both games and tv too.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| road trips, standing in line anywhere (toll booth,
| amusement park, gas station, grocery store etc), riding the
| subway, waiting room at a doctor's office, riding in a cab,
| waiting between customers at your retail job, power
| outages, camping trips, I am sure I could think of many
| more.
| johnny22 wrote:
| i always brought a book for that :)
| eastbound wrote:
| > However in what situation prior to the internet would a
| person be forced to be bored.
|
| What? People used to wait all the time. Meeting friends?
| "See you at 8 at the mall, east corner" and your friend
| would arrive at 8:13 while you were there since 7:46pm,
| unable to walk away for fear of missing the evening
| completely. So people smoked! A LOT!
|
| And sometimes you would miss the appointment, have no way
| to reach the person, and spend the whole evening by
| yourself in the city, having also missed the movie time.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Even sitting at home you could get bored. Yes, you would
| have TV but "nothing is on" and you might have books but
| nothing "seems right". None of those activities were as
| carefully tailored to bring you in and actively work to
| keep you engaged as social media does today.
| Jensson wrote:
| It is a self regulating problem, bored people create
| entertainment until there are no other bored people left.
| Modern tech makes that process more efficient so you have
| less bored people, I don't see why that is a problem.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It's a problem if the things that people used to do while
| bored were useful and now that social media is handling the
| boredom problem those things are not happening anymore.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why is that a problem? What about video games or TV?
|
| What useful things are you talking about and is their
| evidence of their decline?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Well here I am on HN, so I'm in a bit of a relapse, but
| personally I've noticed that not being on social media
| correlates with:
|
| - talking with strangers at the grocery store
|
| - working on my novel
|
| - building things in my garage
|
| - antagonizing institutions that I think have crossed a
| line
|
| And those things are meaningful to me in ways that being
| on social media is not.
|
| As for whether such activities trickle up into some kind
| of high level aggregate good, I don't know, but it's not
| hard to guess at how they might.
| tayo42 wrote:
| TV being a problem was talked to death for years. Now the
| attention is on streaming binges on Netflix. Not everyone
| likes or plays video games it doesn't have the same mass
| appeal
| frereubu wrote:
| If efficiency is your _only_ goal then no, there is no
| problem. But I would argue that 's an extremely shallow way
| of looking at entertainment.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| It is ironic that I came to HN in my boredom and read this
| thread.
|
| Discovered that there are two kinds of boredom!
|
| Thank you boredom and HN for making my boredom strangely
| productive.
| dahart wrote:
| > "Profound boredom may sound like an overwhelmingly negative
| concept but, in fact, it can be intensely positive if people are
| given the chance for undistracted thinking and development."
|
| Is there historical evidence, from before social media or
| computers existed, that boredom made people productive or
| creative? I am worried about my kids never ever being bored, and
| the points in the article are tempting to believe, but when I
| think about history, I'm sure people were more lots more bored
| but not sure they were creatively doing any better than what we
| see today.
| ckardat123 wrote:
| I think it's hard to judge, because we have so many more tools
| and resources today which amplify creative output.
|
| It might true that we are have more creative output today than
| we did 100 years ago, while also being true that social media
| stifles us from reaching our full creative potential.
| djaychela wrote:
| My four step kids have no idea what boredom is. I, however, do,
| and found most of my creative endeavours and hobbies arose when
| I was bored. I'm pretty sure if boredom wasn't the alternative,
| I wouldn't have learned the guitar, or spent many hours
| daydreaming science fiction fantasies.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Boredom is what led to pretty much every project I've ever
| done. I usually have a list in my head of things that could be
| made better, but they never come to anything until I have a
| lengthy period of nothing to do.
|
| Latest example: I had to take all my vacation time this year or
| else I'd lose it. I got so bored that I built this over the
| past weeks: https://github.com/kstenerud/kbnf
| signaru wrote:
| I'm not sure whether it counts as boredom, but Python was said
| to have been created by GVR to keep himself occupied during a
| Christmas holiday.
| peepee1982 wrote:
| In my personal history my creativity has dropped by a
| frightening amount since the rise of YouTube and smartphones.
|
| I now have to actively lock myself out of certain services and
| do daily meditation sessions to somewhat counteract those
| distractions.
|
| They're just too easy to indulge in.
|
| I've mostly stopped doing music and writing prose because of
| it, and I'm slowly getting back into the groove.
| dreen wrote:
| Quit Twitter about 6 years ago because of related issues. Checked
| out Mastodon, but apart from the distributed aspect it just seems
| like more of the same, as in an evolution upon the experience of
| watching TV, in the internet era. I've been quite happy without
| it since.
| hecanjog wrote:
| We followed a similar path and my experience was mostly the
| same. I wanted the fediverse to be a positive social thing in
| my life, I gave it a few years but in practice it felt sadly
| similar. Reading Amusing Ourselves to Death over the holiday
| helped me understand my relationship to infotainment a little
| better. (And I'm conflicted about this site too honestly...)
| verzeichnis wrote:
| This book should be required reading in school. I read it
| when I was around 18 and it vaccinated me profoundly for all
| things entertainment industry, be it video games, TV or
| social media. I partake, but there always comes a point where
| I get that Clockwork Orange gag reaction at some point and am
| driven away.
|
| And yes, this site is of quality content, but it is still the
| same opiate.
| amelius wrote:
| Yet here you are on HN ;)
| themitigating wrote:
| Sarcastic remark but I agree with you.
|
| Everytime there's some article about Netflix, Facebook, or
| the like there's a bunch of people telling everyone they quit
| and how their life is better, etc.
|
| Many times the article isn't even about quitting social
| media, just some controversy. I wonder if some percentage of
| those people are right-wing and wait for a chance to jump in
| so they can harm companies they disagree with.
| dreen wrote:
| Very true, but HN has a hard limit on how much time I will
| spend here. A few stories on the main page plus sometimes
| comments, and that's it for the day. Social media is designed
| to eliminate that limit, I used to be able to spend an entire
| day scrolling Twitter.
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