Tuesday 10 July 2012

Tired of browsing


I reckon a lot of blokes reading this will identify with the phenomenon known in the Good Plates family as "shopping fatigue".

In my mind a good shopping trip is a decisive one: a surgical strike, if you will.  The commodity is not just identified.  It is quantified, costed and its whereabouts are determined as closely as possible without actually entering a shop.  Then all that's left to do is go there and get it.  Job done.

When you have to shop cooperatively (e.g. in a marriage), however, it doesn't always work that way.  I love Mrs G dearly and I mean this only as a general observation on the differing approaches that men and women take to shopping, but I don't deal well with the shopping trip in which the objectives and time frame are not well defined.

This is especially true of those occasions on which additional objectives are added without notice and there is no clear plan for reaching them. 

Sure, I'll pay attention for as long as I think we're going to get somewhere, but I do eventually succumb to shopping fatigue.  My eyes glaze a bit, my step is ever so slightly less spritely, my attention wanders such that I'm actually taking an interest in the 17 big screen TVs (plus one on the blink) in K-mart all showing "My Little Pony: The Next Generation", and then Mrs G knows it's time to wrap it up and find us both some hot caffeine.

Well, recently I've been experiencing what can only be described as "internet fatigue".  I'll look at Facebook, be amused at some stuff, move on to some of the blogs I like to look at, be slightly amused or educated, go and look at Drawception, become irritated that half the drawing prompts refer to some frickin' rage comic meme (again), and the other half are beyond my ability to illustrate, go look at Pinterest, type random words into the search field just to be surprised by what gets returned, go read some news, come back to Facebook ... .  I end up logging off without having contributed anything, despite my recent observation that you get more out of the internet by participating.

Now, before any of you take umbrage at what may be perceived as an implication that your wit and wisdom is lacking lustre these days, that's not it. 

The things fatiguing me are repetition and immaturity. 

I'm finding that I'm seeing the same jokes, images, quotes, etc way too often.  And in other places where you can't filter who you interract with, I'm constantly irritated by the ignorance, rudeness and abuse of some clearly infantile intellects.

I think I know what this means: either I'm spending too much time surfing the web or I'm becoming an old fogey.

So, help me out here.  Clearly I either need to cut down on my online time or I need to find some internet entertainment that's constantly new and isn't accompanied by idiotic commentary ... and is suitable for an old fogey.

Suggestions?

4 comments:

  1. yep...I too am getting bored with being one of the only people I know doing anything interesting on the web. It really has become a place for not very clever people. There is so much noise.

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  2. You could create a blog in which you creatively cross reference this one, and the I do the same, and then you do the same, and then I do the same ... at least we'd have the satisfaction of being able to blame ourselves for our disaffection.

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  3. *ahem* 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' thank you very much.

    And Glenn... I attempt to contribute to your entertainment on Facebook regularly. Today, I shared Cookie Monster's masterpiece 'Share it Maybe'. I don't think you can ask for more than that...

    And, I frequent: Failbook, PassiveAggressivenotes, postsecret and thehollywoodgossip (cos I need to keep up my pop culture knowledge now I don't buy trashy magazines). But I rarely read the comments. That way lies madness.

    But, if you start going to those sites as well, I will no longer be useful to you on Facebook... so maybe don't go there.

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  4. Ah, Sarah my Sarah, thank you for the correction. Also for the tips.

    With you on the comments - never read the comments, they're full of rubbish and extremism.

    ;-)

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