It’s Official, I’m bored with the internet

Back in the days of 3 TV channels we thought to ourselves, “If we only had more channels we’d never be bored”

Then we got 500+ Channels and found that often, there was still nothing to watch. We’d flip aimlessly through channel after channel hoping that something would catch our interest and then after 15 minutes or so we’d come back to channel one and keep flipping.

Then we thought, “If we only had movie channels we won’t be bored.” We got movie channels and got bored when the same movie was playing on each of those channels with a 2 hour offset.

Then the internet was opened to the public and virtually all the information on the planet was available.

How could we ever get bored?

Well, it’s happened.

I go all day at work without consulting the internet for much of anything. I might glance at the nastiness that Twitter has become, I might even read a linked article or two in the morning. While I’m at lunch I’ll check in to see if there’s any news from the world that’s of interest while I’m eating. But then I’m done with my meal and I’m outside walking.

The “News” is always the same these days.

Clinton did this, Trump did that. Black Lives Matter staged another protest, or shut down a business or freeway. ISIS claimed responsibility for yet another horrific abuse, CAIR claimed they’re part of a religion of peace while denouncing anyone who dares speak out against terrorists. Congress does nothing except sell our rights, our country, or the highest offices in the land to someone for some cause or another.

Celebrities often show the basest of human behavior, or demonstrate that McCarthyism may well have been 60 years too soon by espousing their political beliefs.

Real information is easily obfuscated by misinformation, conspiracy theories, and innuendo.

Our email is full of crap as well. ZIP files supposedly containing offers, invoices, or reports that we never asked for and that are nothing other than conveyances for malware or viruses.

I’ll grant you that when my virus protection goes off there is a momentary reprieve from mind numbing boredom for me.

That is only because the viruses have usually been backed up to my network drives while the virus scanner was asking me what to do. Funny, I’ve told the thing time and again to just delete the email the moment it detects a threat but it insists on asking me about it anyway.

In the intervening time between when my email program dutifully downloaded the attachment at 12 am and my getting out of bed, the backup routines have already copied the damn attachment to the backup drive.

So the hunt begins for me to delete all copies of the infection. That used to be exciting, now it takes all of 2 seconds of annoyance.

News organizations demonstrate poor reporting, poor fact checking, and bias to the point that they’ve, (in my o so humble opinion) become worse than the “Yellow Journalism” of the 1890’s.

It’s all become the same. The “cause de jour” has become the “cause de second”.

A billion voices all demanding that they be heard and that we support whatever “Cause” has captured their will-o-wisp, short attention span brain in the last five minutes.

All of the headlines and notions come at us so fast that we haven’t the time to evaluate their legitimacy before having to move on to the next subject or latest atrocity.

Oh, before you think the irony of me writing this blog, adding my voice to the billions of other voices is lost on me… It isn’t. I’ve not been blogging because there’s little left to say. I’ve nothing much of any substance to add to the cacophony, save this;

Maybe it’s time for us to turn off the machines for a while.

Try actually pulling your head out of your computer, phone, pad, or whatever else and look at the world around you.

Find an old book, and read it. I’ll grant you the pages aren’t likely to have dancing penises or jiggling tits, but the writer may have had something to say that has relevance to you, or our world today.

Just a thought…