The Death of Boredom
The war for your attention has given us an era of unparalleled content choices
When was the last time you heard somebody say they were bored?
The last recollection I have of someone telling me they were bored was via an MSN message. (MSN was like iMessage of the 2000s, for those born in the 2000s.) That might sound peculiar in the context of 2019, particularly because it’s difficult to imagine a time when you could have access to the internet while simultaneously being bored. Remember the days of dial-up internet? Oh, how things have changed.
Television still essentially works the same as it did 20 years ago, except there has been an explosion in the quantity and quality of content. The TV season is no longer September to May, with the doldrums of summer reruns in between. There is just one 12-month season, with higher peaks and fewer valleys. Hollywood celebrities famous for being in films, such as Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman, are flocking to the small screen in “prestige” shows. There’s a reason this era we’re in is often referred to as the era of “peak TV.”
The Information Age stretches forward with no visible end in sight.
There’s also the content behemoth that is Netflix. There is quite literally…
