by thecollective Aug 16, 2026
boredom

Boredom used to be a simple negative. From Baudelaire's "worst evil" to "if you're bored, you're boring" to the anti-sleep rhetoric (as if sleep is some kind of null state), being "truly alive" also meant being inspired, on, active, go go going...

Now, in these days of constant, low-level, thoughtless stimulation (and overwhelm), when the go go going feels hectic and scarcity-driven, and inspiration is less joyful and more an expectation, more people are talking about how boredom is/can be an important part of a creative life or process.  

What is a theory of boredom? 

What is a better label or more sustainable metaphor for what is happening when we're resigned to being part of something we don't like, or when we're overly checked out? 

Is there a good boredom and a bad boredom, or is all boredom a re-set, a time out, a necessary retreat? If there is a good boredom and a bad boredom, how do we talk about one vs the other? When have you felt one vs the other? If all boredom is good, how do we find ways to include it in our lives more? If some boredom is bad, how do you arrange to have good boredom?

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anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/17/2026 - 09:41

the rush away from ever being bored is part of the impetus for always being on... online, on camera, on top of everything.... boredom is an invitation to awareness of the world around us.... be bored, then notice the ants in the dirt or the undercover looping your block in a dirty white van.... be bored and then make art.... nothing is all of one thing and none of the other.... learn to see the maybe logic in the taboo words someone told you about when you were impressionable..., boredom, law, society, there are shades and then there are the shades that hide the light.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2026 - 02:19

yes, this is how may 68 ended. a student said "boredom is always counterrevolutionary" and then noticed an ant on the ground and said "hey, pretty cool!"

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/17/2026 - 11:37

I think I once heard someone say that if you're bored it means you're just not paying attention and it made a lot of sense to me.

I honestly rarely if ever get bored cos I find there's always so much going on and so much I could be doing.

I've felt this very strongly when meditating. So many find the idea of just sitting and "doing nothing" in a quiet room extremely boring but even whenever I've done that I've been overwhelmed by how much I'm observing. I find there's always so many sensations, both "internal" and "external", so many thoughts and so many feelings. It's in a way even busier than some fast-paced action film which is just visuals and sound. Life on the other hand is so much more.

I think it's just that we've all become so caught up in this consumerist world of TikToks often no longer than a few seconds, social media posts often longer than a couple of sentences and constant exposure to ads on platforms designed to be as stimulating as possible that we've very much lost our ability to focus on anything that doesn't bring us immediate pleasure and doesn't overflow our brains with information even though without all this tech and all these products there's already so much in front of us.

There's not much that's romantic, valuable or useful about the feelings of boredom that this culture has created imo other than them being a calling to take a breath and step away from this machine that's always overloading our minds.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2026 - 02:32

to the degree that you can choose what you pay attention to, if you're having fun, it means you're just not paying attention to how deeply boring everything is. these mental filters are helpful to be be functional, just like when we can block out grief without being overwhelmed, or focus on the suffering around you and be too bummed out to function. if fun is tied in any way to novelty, then it requires seeing things with new eyes, which means ignoring the patterns you've previously learned and see everywhere, which make everything repetitive.

CalvinSmith Tue, 08/18/2026 - 03:05

there's nothing from the person who wrote it about their personal experience in being bored, it's just reflective about "good and bad boredom", and some mentions of opinions that different people had. It stinks of people wanting to force themselves to be creative. There's almost nothing to work with here.

good and bad dichotomies don't really seem to work to describe a particular thing. For example, I can imagine a modern person saying "good love is empathetic and compassionate, bad love is obsessive and controlling", but the interesting part is the phenomenology of the things, not in putting them in generic pre-defined boxes. If there is good and bad boredom, they're more interconnected than this TOTW would imply.

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