Levels of Boredom

by Jared Lui, Special Guest Columnist

Level X: Sleep

Most people mistaken boredom for fatigue which christens sleep as the outer level of boredom. If it’s 4 am and you claim that you’re bored, you’re probably just tired and should go to bed as soon as you finish processing this sentence. It’s important to get rest because you’re probably going to need the energy to deal with being bored the next day.

Example:
Comet Striker (4:44:01 AM): i'm bored
steffers2484 (4:45:01 AM): GO TO BED!

Level IX: Reading

For a lot of people excluding me, reading is an excellent way to appease boredom. I had a teacher in high school who claimed that he reads a book every night and that’s his “sitcom” for the day. Personally, I usually get bored as a result of reading. However, I rank this higher because you won’t get yelled at by your parents if you do this. The good stuff is down below.

Example:
wavehmmm: ok then
wavehmmm: i'm gonna go read

Level VIII: Music

In the early stages of boredom, I start to listen to music in hopes that the lyrics or the beat will lull away the monotony of my everyday, unproductive life. Too bad it doesn’t work. Sometimes I try singing along with the music and that does a pretty good job of keeping me un-bored. But the occasional awkward walk-in by the parents or the “oh crap, I’m in the middle of a phone interview” steers me into the next level of boredom.

Level VII: TV

No one is online or at least no one is talking to you; therefore, I must watch TV. The television is a natural output for boredom because that’s what it’s there for. You think the TV is there to inform or to educate? Yeah right, it’s for our entertainment from boredom. However, this can be a double-edged sword because if nothing is good on, you feel more bored than before you clicked the ON button on the remote control. Looks like you’re going to have to head back to the computer.

Level VI: Online games

I always have friends sending me links to new one player online games on the internet. It keeps me from being bored and all, but it can be very demoralizing at times. How? When I first start playing, I’m thinking, “This game is pretty fun. I should go for the high score.” After hours of aggravating playing, I wish I’ve gotten a high score, but in the end all the fruit of my labor is negated by some smuck with a score higher than my credit card number who either cheats in the game or has a boredom that even transcends boredom itself. Then there are the multiplayer games. These can be good too, but something always happens that screws everything up. Someone lags, keeps logging off in the middle of the game, has to use the bathroom for an hour, or has an impenetrable firewall that cannot be broken down by mere mortal hands.

Online example:
Comet Striker: i'm bored
ion2noi: ahah
ion2noi: kungfuchess.com
ion2noi: sumo vball?

Level V: Profile-checking

I’ll admit it. I’m a compulsive profile checker. I like to see whether people have updated their profiles or just to see what their away message is. I believe that an away message can define the creativity and laziness of a person. Unfortunately, the appeasement from boredom is directly proportional to amount of buddies on your buddy list. Therefore, if you have a small buddy list, you might want to move onto the next level.

Level IV: Chatting with people you don’t normally chat with

I only talk to a few people online on a regular basis. When boredom comes stalking me, that’s when I start looking at the other 95% of my buddy list.

These are common thoughts regarding this:
“Oh, I haven’t talked to [this person] in a while.”
“No one is online, might as well talk to [this person].”
“[This person] went away on a trip, I wonder what [this person] is up to.”
“I want to beat someone really badly in an online game. I wonder if [this person] is available.”
“Who is [this person] on my buddy list? I should IM them and find out.”

Level III: Phone call

“Hello?”
“I’m bored.”

I think we’ve been in both ends of this phone conversation at some point in our lives. When instant messaging just doesn’t seem to be enough, we turn to the contraption of auditory delight. There’s something better about hearing the voice of the person you are talking to than just seeing their dialogue. The downside to the phone is that it limits the amount of people you can talk to at once. You could try talking on the phone just like instant messaging and put like 6 people on hold and keep switching between them. But then you’d have to avoid the inevitable “telling Kelly’s younger sister that you have feelings for her when you meant to tell it to Kelly.” Ask Zach Morris about that.

Level II: Xanga/Facebook

It’s an act of desperation. There’s no dry land in sight. I breathe a deep sigh and click a link in someone’s profile: “Xanga” (xAnGa, for the ghetto people). I adamantly oppose xanga. I rather tell you about my day personally than have to write all down (I hate writing). However, that doesn’t mean I don’t read them. Xangas can be very entertaining because it has like everything. Here are some of the features:

- Annoying background music that always drowns out the song I’m listening to
- Flashy background wallpapers that prevent the actual reading of the entries
- False information on the side bar
- Excerpts of conversations that ridicule a friend who just happened to have a brain fart during the conversation
- Summary of the boring day the person just had
- The occasional “It’s been a while since I’ve updated” opening in an entry
- The occasional “This will be the last time I’ll be updating for a while” opening in an entry
- Pictures of possessions that hint at what they want for Christmas/birthday
- Comments from the same people every entry
- Eprops which are about as praiseworthy as a kick in the groin.

Then there’s book of all faces for college students. I always catch myself checking this more than I want to. It’s nice to actually see a numeral count of how many friends I actually have. I don’t really see why facebook is that great. So you see one picture of the person and you get to see some information about them. Great. You could probably find out most of the information by actually TALKING to the person. I always wonder why I update facebook. Am I expecting thousands of people to flood my wall just because I decided to add Snow Patrol to my favorite music section? Sometimes I think that people just check facebook to see whether people are still single or not. But regardless of all this, we check it anyways because it beats the alternative…

Level I: Doing something productive

Sometimes it just gets that desperate. There’s no reason to fight it. This is the reason we are afraid to be bored. Because under all those layers, boredom inevitably leads us to doing something productive. So maybe in the end, boredom is actually good because it eventually leads us back to the road of productiveness. The road that includes several hours of contributing nothing to society.