
Boredom Enthusiasts Discover the Pleasures of Understimulation - jamesbritt
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703395904576025482554838642.html
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steveklabnik
> After a much-needed break, a drawing was held. Some of the winners got a DVD
> called "Helvetica," a 2007 documentary about typography.

This one really cracked me up.

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yan
I actually really loved "Helvetica" and really recommend it. Ditto for
"Objectified." Both are available from Netflix Streaming

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steveklabnik
Yes, both were really awesome, though my girlfriend _hated_ objectfied.

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dkarl
_"We're all overstimulated," said Ms. Lee. "I think it's important to stop all
that for a while and see what several hours of being bored really feels
like."_

There's a difference? To me, overstimulation is incredibly boring.
Overstimulation is the siren that tempts me to the next thing before I grasp
the thing in front of me. Overstimulation is the nagging fear of missing
something that makes me miss everything. I have to narrow things down and slow
things down before I can engage with anything. Like alcohol, overstimulation
is a depressant that feels deceptively like a stimulant, and reliably makes me
stupider though it often makes me feel smarter. Maybe I'm just too slow for
the 21st century.

~~~
dan00
Overstimulation isn't boring, otherwise people wouldn't seek for it.

Overstimulation is emotionally very engaging, but unfulfilling. It's a short
emotional high, which people want to feel all the time, so they're searching
for the next stimulus, in the hope to find the endless high.

But by doing this, they will never get into a fulfilling state, which isn't a
emotional hight. It's a more settled but longing state.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its the junk food of experiences

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binarymax
Sadly I can think of many instances where I encountered boardroom powerpoint
just as uninteresting and pointless as that of Mr. Ward's tie collection.

~~~
leif
IBM should host next year's. Two years ago I was forced to sit through a
three-hour talk of theirs about ajax (which they thought was new) and OCRing
licence plates.

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ZoFreX
"Then he began reciting the names of every single one of 415 colors listed in
a paint catalog: damson dream, dauphin, dayroom yellow, dead salmon…and on and
on and on."

I had that paint catalogue! We made a game out of trying to remember the names
based on their (frequently ludicrous) descriptions. Good time killer on a long
journey.

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AlecSchueler
Reminded me of the moment in Stockhausen's Hymnen when the names of each shade
of red in the Windor & Newtown water colour range are repeated several times
in various languages.

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alexwestholm
I think it's very true that most people are overstimulated, but I don't really
get how people find a lack of stimulation boring. The things described in the
article definitely do not sound interesting, but I can only imagine letting my
mind wander off into more interesting/productive territory when confronted by
them. The possibility of just wallowing in a lack of interest seems kind of
lacking in creativity...

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javert
This article doesn't explain how boredom is "pleasurable" or why people would
want to go to a boredom conference. Could somebody explain it to me? Is this
some kind of a joke?

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endtime
I think this is an example of extremely dry English humor being absolutely
baffling to Americans (I'm a bit of each, so I think I can get away with
saying things like that).

From the article:

>Boring 2010 sprang to life when Mr. Ward heard that an event called the
Interesting Conference had been canceled, and he sent out a joke tweet about
the need to have a Boring Conference instead. He was taken aback when dozens
of people responded enthusiastically.

~~~
javert
But people would waste money and the entire time it takes to go to a
conference, just for the sake of dry humor?

~~~
anigbrowl
It's no waste. That's social networking gold. I'm kind of sorry I couldn't
attend, really; sounds rather enjoyable.

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JoshCole
I got bored halfway through this and didn't finish it. The section on the
conference itself felt so much like the Onion I think it could be copied
verbatim into one of their articles without seeming out of place.

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petercooper
Yet in trying to be boring, they ended up choosing unusual novelty topics that
are relatively interesting when compared to truly dull pop culture pursuits
like American Idol or Dancing With The Stars.

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bingaman
"Boredom is counter-revolutionary"

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klbarry
The conference actually seemed quite interesting to me (as well as some of his
blog posts). But my tastes would be called boring by many.

