Here's something I never expected to see:
Katy Y.Y. Tam, a postdoctoral psychology researcher and boredom expert....
Huh. And ironically, I imagine that studying boredom is pretty fascinating.
Anyway, this is from a story about mindless switching between TikTok videos. Tam says this is an attempt to relieve boredom that backfires: the more you do it, the more bored you get.
This doesn't really surprise me. The fact is that there's not much original content on TikTok. The vast majority of "creators" are just pushing out the same me-too stuff as everyone else. It's practically designed to be boring, which is why TikTok videos are so short. Their creators know perfectly well that nobody would watch one of these things if it went on for 30 minutes.
What's interesting, I think, is that this kind of mindless switching is exactly the opposite of highly mindful switching, aka "going down a rabbit hole." When you're switching quickly but doing it with a purpose, it's easy to get obsessed. This is where so many weirdo conspiracy theorists come from.
So: switch mindlessly and end up with unrelieved boredom. Switch with a purpose and end up a lunatic. Maybe we all just need to work on developing longer attention spans.
My weirdness is military pilot blogs, commercial pilot blogs, both retired and active. Added to that I go to economics blogs - real estate and stocks and bonds. The others are blogs by ex-cult members and political blogs. When bored I play solitaire.
well, you could buy a small farm in nebraska and grow all of your own food
apparently getting through the winter allowed previous generations less time to dwell on the lack of high-quality 24/7 entertainment
ot... i wonder how many twitter employees (m)elon will lay off at the end of the year when trump no longer needs a deputy minister of propaganda?
What’s TicToc?
"What’s TicToc?"
A TicTac that's gone rancid?????????
> Maybe we all just need to work on developing longer attention spans.
Many years ago, in a college faculty teaching workshop, I said that I thought of my job as "stretching my students' intellectual attention spans." The line drew a lot of laughter, but I wasn't trying to be humorous. That's a genuinely important goal.
Kind of like watching snippets from Trump rallies.
You want to be bored, try sitting through an entire speech, why do you think people keep walking out before they're over?
I still feel impelled to victim-blame the bored (unless of course they're bored at work which requires too much attention to daydream or whatever, but doesn't provide any real stimulation for the mind, which is a lot of jobs). I wish I had more time to be alone with my thoughts.
I think people are generally overly-media-stimulated and so have trouble adjusting to the relative silence of its absence. It doesn't help when you're carrying around an Insta-Distraction device in your pocket all the time.
Here's where I differ from most people. I'm not interested in videos unless they are, say, at least 30 minutes long and interesting at that length.
"Maybe we all just need to work on developing longer attention spans."
Excellent insight, Kevin. The ability to maintain focus on the topic at hand for more than 20 seconds requires mindful self-discipline and motivation....Oh, look. An article that ranks fast-food chicken sandwiches!
I'll come back and finish this up in a few minutes.