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To add to the topic, I still remember a time, when boredom was a thing. I grew up without a TV, and the Internet didn't become a thing in most peoples life until I was maybe 15 years old.
I've read hundreds of books a year, no joking. I read books in one sitting. I read books until I was bored, then I continued reading them because I was bored.
Everything like that has gone away with the advent of the internet. I read much less now - at least in book form, my media consumption has become more varied. I find lectures more valuable to learn new concepts, because they tend to be more concise and to the point. I like reading all kinds of different news source just for the fun of it, and thanks to certain google search terms, and scripts to throw any mp4 video onto any screen in my house - I'm literary five seconds away from watching every movie I ever could watch - which is why I watch much fewer of them than I did in the days, when DVDs where the hot item.
Back then also "niches" actually where a thing. Hong Kong cinema, the arthouse movement, ... It was fun to follow those. And you picked one and stuck to it for a while. Nowadays - for most people everything is just "netflix". They produced 700 'originals' last year. Its trash. Almost all of it. Of course not if you are going by youtube standards, because by that everything else becomes gold automatically.
I've got scripts to auto parse every online article in writing and make an epub out of it, then send it to an IoT device, which will give me Alaxa level qualitiy text to speech of it. Also takes just a second, and I can listen to that - using wireless headphones - moving around the house, if I want to.
Other people bought Alexas to listen to podcasts in the most low effort way possible.
And low effort is the one thing thats still universally valued as good, by the entire consumer industry (whats most easiest way to...).
People listen to certain podcasts, just because they want familiarity. I've done that as well, but I already find it boring - because no podcaster can produce decent quality content consitently over an entire year.
And if people want fake familiarity and fake relationships, they usually watch Twitch anyhow. There is an entire industry capturing young folks getting out of school, playing virtual friends for them.
Those are my thoughts on the matter.
Self constraint sometimes works for me, I I do read the occational book as a whole - but for me its not the norm anymore.
Do I think, that it was somehow "better" before, when we didn't all have those capabilties? Oddly I think so as well yes. But it might just be glorifying the past. As one in their thirties does.
