I AM quite bored with social media. Although I confess, I have never really been excited about it in the first place, and it’s not because I’m a grumpy middle-aged fellow.

I just find its presence, although digital and ephemeral, has very real impacts on how we perceive the world.

While I am an advocate for keeping smartphones and gadgets at arm’s length from infants and young children, I must also confess that the smartphone is the ultimate dream come true for a Generation X-er like myself for whom the camera, video camera, cd/cassette player, telephone, radio, television, newspaper, bank, classroom, notebook, calculator etc were separate physical tools.

Think about how many times you have found yourself glued to the smartphone, drawn in by a funny meme or short video on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, whatever – scrolling incessantly after that for another video that will tickle or perplex you in the same manner.

Of course there’s the science to this,which explains this phenomena in detail but that’s what I’m not interested in waxing lyrical about.

As someone with a background in media and cultural studies, I find the concept of “boredom” and technology as a more interesting dimly lit corner to explore.

My children are wont to complain, “It’s so boring” or “I’m so boring” (sic), but my wife and I stand firm in the need for them to experience and understand what boredom really entails and figuring out what to do productively in dealing with it.

“Boredom”, in the “traditional” pre-Internet sense, is an important component of creativity.

When I said earlier that I am bored with social media, I am referring specifically to the content that people share, not the technology or platform itself.

The particular type of content (I dislike how the word “content” too has been misappropriated but we’ll deal with that beast some other time) I find boring are the “inspirational” type and the “grateful” type.

How it doubly bores me is when musicians and filmmakers post them and when the “inspirational” and “grateful” fuse into one digital rubbish.

However, what I find interesting is how gender is an important determinant of the type of post and content.

Case in point: a male musician posts a mid-shot portrait (chest upwards) of himself (in a pensive ‘thousand yard stare’ pose of course) and in the text space spews the typical drivel of “being grateful”, “thanking” everyone under the sun and whatnot, while a female musician posts a photo of herself in long shot (full body) holding a hot cup of whatever looking away out into the horizon (or window if indoors) and the text naturally spews some drivel about being inspired or wishing to inspire others.

In these two composite examples culled from my own Instagram feed, what I gather empathetically is that they are creating content to keep the evil social media algorithms from sabotaging their future post reach – an understanding seemingly lost among Boomers – and personally I can take that because I see the intention quite clearly if it’s someone I “follow” (isn’t that a creepy word?) whose content I am familiar with. 

Yet with both examples, the gendered representation of both musicians succumbs to already problematic tropes about gender and sexuality, perpetuating sexist ideas about women or men that in essence counters all the wokeness out there on the internet (even those who are supposedly “woke” succumb to these gendered tropes).

What these tropes also suggest is that “boredom” as a concept is disallowed to exist for the suggestion is that every moment of our living daylight is supposed to be filled with gratefulness and inspiration, minus the actual doing of something.

This is the allure of images that repeats itself into simulacra as suggested by the late French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard. 

To simply put it, we produce so much media content in our contemporary culture now that it has infringed upon reality itself – what emerges is the concept of the hyperreal – the realm in which I believe the current generation’s understanding of “boredom” is rooted.

If your life does not resemble a social media post (which in itself resembles advertising), then you feel inadequate – so let the incessant scrolling begin before you go to sleep in a foetal position and wonder to yourself in the quietude of the night “What am I doing with my life?”

So, I stand corrected: I am not “bored” by social media. I am really “disinterested”, but I am unable to discard it in my vocation (as an independent artist, and film and media educator) for it creates meaning not necessarily for me but also those who “follow” me as much as those who want to figure me out (which they won’t really). 

All I am doing this round is throw some seeds to you, dear reader, to ponder about the trinity of social media, boredom, and our sense of self.

If you’ve read this article this far in, then, well done. You still have the attention span of the average person in 1995 – we need to revive this.

Unless you’re a child, let us not be bored ever again because only the boring get bored.

Life is out there, stop giving yourself excuses and posting it as “content” on your social media. – February 18, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.