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> Yeah, this is one tired trope. this sentiment is illustrative of the world that the internet has created. on the internet, you never have to deal with something that bores you -- you can always open a new tab and do something else. in the real world, unfortunately, the same old annoying stuff keeps coming up, and you have to keep dealing with it. like... i'm going to have to brush my teeth twice a day for the rest of my life, there will never come a time when i can just stop watching what i eat, and i'm going to have to keep dealing with the consequences of social media, including talking about it's effects, making choices about it, and convincing my friends and anyone who will listen to make choices about it, no matter how old and annoying it may have become. one thing that gives me energy on stuff like this (by stimulating my brain) is to use my imagination. what i mean is, it seems like we've talked this subject to death, but nothing's really changed so far. maybe a slight shift in public opinion, maybe people don't assume technology must be good quite so readily as before. but try to imagine what the world could look like. reality has this oppressive weight that restricts your thinking. "this is how the world is, so this is how it must be; in fact, this is good simply for existing. anyone who questions it doesn't get it.". it's much harder to imagine a counterfactual better world. for instance, what if instead of clumping into like-minded herds that re-enforce each other's ideas even when wrong, people on the internet connected with others who are really unlike them most of the time (maybe through something like airbnb)? or, what if there was a group/agency charged with maintaining factual accuracy on the internet (this idea comes from a novel called infomacracy). or, what if you could get people to connected better in real life (like the bash' in "too like the lightning"). imagining different worlds gives you a lens through which to critique the current one, and also gives you something to work towards. |
Don't get me wrong, it's not that this is flat-out untrue, it's just that the repeated cashing-in on an old and reductionistic theories of current events is becoming increasingly transparent. It's akin to thinkers like J.B. Peterson criticizing postmodernism 10-15 years after the movement ended, and solely by repeating the arguments that ended it. It might be true or consistent or whatever, but the point is that it focuses the dialogue on a too-narrow set of theories about the world.
Even your own statement, "Internet bad, makes people incapable of dealing with boredom" is a trope that, regardless of its truth value, doesn't address deeper issues with human communication and entertainment. People essentially said the same things about TV's 40-50 years ago: "you don't have to be bored, just change the channel!"