I can't help but wonder how my life would be different if mindlessly staring at screens wasn't an option
I can't help but wonder how my life would be different if mindlessly staring at screens wasn't an option
YouTube is my vice. I spend hours and hours and hours there watching videos every single day. I've recently however starting to resent the fact that apparently I seem to prefer watching other people do stuff rather than do that myself. Watching interesting videos feels like a leisure but doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.
Just few days ago I watched a Casey Neistat studio tour and I caught myself thinking how nice it would be to have a neatly organized space like that for making stuff. Well I have a space like that! I'm just never there because instead I'm in the house watching YouTube. I hate that. When I was younger I took apart solar lanterns to build a solar battery charger, I made a camera gimball stabilizer out of threaded rod, angle irons and plumbing pipe, I build a functioning submarine out of legos. Now I can't even remember when I last time build something just for fun.
While watching youtube is "fun" aswell however it's not memorable. I still remember my lego submarine from 20 years ago but I don't remember a single video I watched yesterday. I'm worried that if I keep doing this I'm basically just throwing my life away. There's always going to be another video to watch. I will never finish that project.
I guess I'm just venting. I'm sure there are people that can relate however. How do you guys deal with this?
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I grew up in a time and place with only a handful of TV channels and no internet, and I would still sit and spend my weekends watching absolute shit rather than doing anything. I remember this particular time on Sunday when every week the best thing on was horse racing, so I’d sit and watch it for 5 minutes before checking the other channels, just to come back to horse racing.
My parents grew up before TV and I asked my Mum what they did instead. She said they were mostly just bored.
Despite all the problems the internet does make hobbies way more accessible. Nowadays if you want to learn something you can just Google it or watch a YouTube video. Before the internet you’d have to go out and buy a fucking book. Working on computers in the 90s, I used to spend days or weeks trying to fix problems that I would solve in a few minutes now.
I'm worried this might actually be true. Recently talked to my grandmom whose not much into computers and smartphones about this and asked what she does all day. The answer was fill crosswords, complete puzzles and knit socks. While that is not staring at screens it doesn't sound particularly interesting or fulfilling either.
I still think that there is value to boredom aswell. It simply just can't be healthy to be stimulated all the time.
I grew up without TV. The first television I saw was in the window of a shop - not for sale, the shop owner had set it up as a novelty. The Apollo programme was big news at the time, and it was showing a rocket launch. I remember standing watching it for so long someone was sent out to look for me.
My escape from boredom back then was books. I read voraciously, always had a stack of books from the library. My parents often yelled at me to "get outside and play", so I'd be forced to bicycle around aimlessly with my friends. We were so bored!
These days? Lemmy, crossword puzzles and knitting socks (see below), yes indeed. But also sport, beekeeping, socialising. And reading books. On my phone of course!
Love the color of that yarn!
Early gen x.
As a kid with just 3 channels on TV, I did a ton of imaginative play, crafted things, drew, converted my room into a space ship occasionally, rode my bike around the neighborhood, played with my dog, built couch forts, and myriad other stuff, and yes, watched tv. I don't remember being bored often.
I have a dozen hobbies I could devote time to if I could somehow retire today. Of course the depression gets in the way of wanting to do anything. But when I'm not, I am pretty sure I could find something to fill my days with every day for decades. My reading queue just keeps growing. I used to read so much once...
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic and I would just be bored half the day? Then again I took 5 days off over the holidays and played a new video game basically all day every day lol. It was glorious. And I felt so good to not have to deal with work. I started to feel good and motivated instead of bummed. I got the distinct feeling I would continue to have a great time if I could've just kept not working from that last day of vacation forward.
My MIL takes classes online, goes to seminars, travels, goes to theater, ballet, etc. She quilts. Reads a lot. She does watch TV a fair bit but doesn't do web stuff all the time. She doesn't ever seem bored to me.
One of my friends does art, all different media from acrylic painting to glass fusing to sandblasting to sculpture etc. On top of that, gardening, writing, prolific reading... He isn't capable of being bored. Hardly ever watches TV. Takes forever to get back to text messages lol.
I think it is easy to get sucked into blowing time on apps and socials and all that. As a sort of sad substitute for doing more fulfilling things. That's probably a trap I've fallen hard into. It's sort of like eating chips instead of making you self dinner. Yeah it is calories but what joy is there in it, really?
Knitting socks sounds productive at least!
Interestingly I don't personally remember TV being much of an issue for me growing up. Even back then I didn't enjoy most of the stuff that was on. I think if instead of YouTube I only had Netflix I wouldn't have this issue since it doesn't really have the kind of content I'm interested in. I've never really been into movies and tv shows. 25 minute video of a youtuber woodworker building a kitchen table however? I'm in!
It's kind of funny how my friends "praise" me for not having a smartphone addiction and while I agree that watching 10 - 45 min YouTube videos is probably less bad for your brain that browsing TikTok, in the end we're all still staring at screens for equal amounts of time.
My parents grew up before TV and I asked my Mum what they did instead. She said they were mostly just bored.
Reminds me of a tweet I saw. It went kinda like this: "I asked my sister what our parents did before there was internet. She didn't know either, so we asked our 18 other siblings".
Ugh. John McCririck.
