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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 something new being released on Netflix every Friday, whether it be an original series, an original movie, an original documentary, or an old show the company has licensed. When it comes to content distribution, Netflix has very little chill.
If you like spending your time soaking in news about the world, you might have noticed an explosion of options in that category as well. Traditional glossy magazines may not be doing as well, and the publishing industry as a whole is still not a money-printing business, but there has never been more to read. Part of this most recent boom can be attributed to an increased necessity for journalism (see: Donald Trump, #MeToo), but much of it is due to technological development. The information age stretches forward with no visible end in sight.
This brief list doesn’t even include films, burgeoning markets like the $43 billion video game industry, or the nascent podcasting industry. In practically every…
