What if the web was simply not very fun anymore?
Numerama & France Culture
This article is taken from Numerama’s September 28 column in Brave New World, the France Culture show which questions digital technology, of which Numerama is a partner.
Has the web become boring? It’s a message published on Twitter, well, X, which recently made me wince. An anonymous person wrote: “ I’m 38 years old and I think this is the first time in my internet life that I’ve found that there’s just nothing fun to do online anymore. I open a browser and stand there, arms hanging, with nowhere to go. »
If the image speaks to you, it is perhaps that you too are beginning to be affected digital fatigue. Not in the physiological sense of the term. But, simply a pure symptom of boredom on the internet and its social networks.
It must be said that web 2.0 has reached its peak in recent years.
On the one hand, Twitter is dead. We must face the facts: since the takeover by Elon Musk, the network has seriously deteriorated. Technically first, but also from a social point of view. On X, the messages highlighted are those of Internet users who pay 8 dollars per month. And the Internet users who pay are mostly conservatives, fans of Elon Musk or both. French streamer Modiie put it in words, recently in a message : “ I can’t tweet at all anymore, since we’re on X, with blue certifications that are pushed by the algorithm and ruin our comment areas. A stupid billionaire has plundered our meeting and activist organizing space. »
On the other side of the spectrum, there is TikTok, which in three years has managed to impose a completely locked-in engagement model. You open the app, and the algorithm takes you, here and there, wherever it wants. It has been copied by Instagram, YouTube, Facebook… Before even clicking on one of these applications, we already know what is going to happen: we are going to discover never before seen videos, yet having the impression that they all look the same. And we go back, again and again.
Apathy is a tragedy and boredom is a crime
In 2021, comedian Bo Burnham talked about it in his song Welcome to the Internet. Here, as he says, “ apathy is a tragedy and boredom is a crime “. This overabundance of digital content gives the feeling that there can no longer be pleasure without bingeing. But what happens if the machine jams, and we start to get bored? online ?
When we no longer want to read the fascists on Twitter, ingest the 15th dog video on Instagram or read fake news on Facebook? I would offer you a little light and optimism: what if this weariness freed us from automatisms? Allowed us to look for smaller, quieter platforms, or to simply disconnect? What if the greatest act of resistance in 2023 was, quite simply, doing nothing? After Be outraged, I offer you the 2.0 alternative. : Get bored!
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