Boredom - I'm Bored of the Internet Now

I wrote a most recent post of alphabetical websites I like for a reason that I'm struggling with. And it's tough to admit, but I'm very bored of the entire Internet. At least I'm bored of the stuff I visit almost daily. This is all entirely my fault of course. The modern web, the social web has evolved through design so that it maximizes the attention-grabbing dopamine triggers. And I gobble it up in my free time with ridiculous speed. The alphabetical list came about because I often found myself opening a new browser tab --usually on mobile-- and thumbing my through each letter one at a time and catching up on the latest updates, if there are any. But I found myself going in circles, bouncing around so much and getting nothing from it. You know that meme where it says something like "Browse Facebook for an hour until I get bored. Then I close Facebook. Wonder what else is going on,... so I open Facebook!" Ba-dum-tish!

But that struggle is real. And as I've mentioned before I'm not on Facebook (since Jan. 20, 2017) anymore. But I go to reddit.com, then imgur.com, then m.twitter.com, then tumblr.com and back around again. I go in circles a lot and it's sad and I'm not enjoying myself. I mean, I'm doomscrolling the latest news and it sometimes feels like it's important. But when I'm busy with these sites, do you know what I'm not doing?

• I'm not learning anything new.
• I'm not reading anything new or important.
• I'm not building anything for myself.

This is all outside of work time and is my leisure time so it's okay to escape sometimes during this. But I'm starting to recognize that I don't have anything to show for it and it's not nearly as much fun as it used to be. This isn't a criticism of any of my actual friends on Twitter, or the quality of the content anywhere. I used to find the Internet, as a whole, inspiring and fun and full of possibility. Now I feel like it's all been collectively squandered and monetized and compartmentalized to such an ugly degree.

And yes I do recognize how fucking WHINY I sound right now.

I hesitated to write about this, because I know how it sounds. Part of it is the devisive politics of the last few years, of which I've wanted to write so much but instead just tweeted. Part of it is how much else I've got going on, most of it very good by comparison. A great number of the fun services that I've relied on in past years are folding up or no longer useful; Google Music, Flickr, and so on. And it bums me out.

What I want to do is turn all that negativity around and build stuff. Learn some new skills (career-relevant and/or not), reading more books (fiction and non-) and build back up some of the fun. Now to take that goal and divide it up into manageable pieces.