https://archive.ph/OLGDp paywall

At first I was like wtf is with this author. I’m millenial/gen z and even I remember what we did. TV, books, and calling your friends on your wired phone attached to the wall.

But as I read the article, I kinda get it. There was a ton of down time and boredom. However, I disagree that the nothingness was this horrible thing. I think the “nothing ever happens” is what our brains handle much better than “there’s too much happening.”

Our brains literally can’t process the firehose of information streaming into our eyeballs 24/7 365. It starts to go in your eyes and right out your ears. My memory is shit now. I’m forgetting important stuff because it keeps getting deleted to make room for more garbage data like endless dank memes and posts. I think the nothingness, along with REM sleep (which is also disrupted by screens), is what’s needed to help process and therefore retain new information.

I’m trying to spend less time on screens because it feels like dementia and it’s freaking me out.

Wow now I want one of those

It’s really hard to visualize since our entire modern life is built upon unsustainable things. Like all the stuff extracted to build cars, even if it doesn’t burn oil it’s still a lot to make batteries. All the stuff that goes into building and maintaining houses. You need things like plastic covering to keep food from going bad. All the stuff needed to make computers. We can make less of them but we can’t just stop or tons of people die. I feel this world has trapped us in our ways. How do we actually do this before it all just collapses?