>If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
>>25236740He sprinted from boredom and when it finally caught up to him he couldn't handle the existential ramifications and pulled the plug.
>>25236753Is killing yourself the ultimate self-own? Any life advice you've ever given is automatically invalidated because it clearly didn't work for you.
I've been listening to his interviews today and I didn't realize how thoughtful he is. I thought Infinite Jest was just a meme but now I'm genuinely interested in what he's written. Hearing him being labeled post-modern makes me wary however as I don't enjoy Thomas Pynchon at all. I just picked up "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men," we'll see.
>>25236798Disagree
>>25236740i'm extremely prone to boredom and it's torture to me. not being alone with myself without constant stimulation, that's fine. but doing a dull repetitive task that can't be compressed, and that i don't want to do, it feels like i got buried alive.
>>25236798It's not the people who most want to die but the ones who've been through so much pain that their normal survival instinct gets weakened over time.
>>25236812I read it recently; it was good.
>>25236812Forever Overhead is amazing, 10/10 short story. Most of the interviews are indeed with hideous men and can be difficult, I really don't know what to think of them. Not a great representation of his novels, it shows his range but fails to show how he uses that range.
>>25236740imagine what he would have said about the bot+AI-fueled infohazards that are modern twitter and 4chan, financed by state actors and developed to almost a science.in fact, imagine any philosopher being shown this shit.
>>25236990>people use <thing> to validate not trying>it is not their fault, because <thing>>so will just use <thing> because literally have to>pretty much forced to use <thing> at gunpoint>no choice>honest>I really wouldn't use <thing> if I didn't have toMost of his career was writing about this, even wrote about how people think their problems are special and completely different from everyone else's.
>>25236740> if you are immune to boredoma statement which immediately excludes every human kek
>>25236989Someone should write Ever Over Forehead the biography of his bandana.
>>25236812I've read Infinite Jest some 10 years ago and only recently watched some of his interviews. He's shockingly accurate about the state of current society, gotta re-read some of his stuff again.
>>25236990>>25237030Reading Wallace really showed me that there's nothing new, really, just more pronounced versions of the problems we've had for decades.As an example: the decline of attention and dominance of digital simulacra. In one of my college gen-eds a few years ago I read an article from the '50s that expressed worries that kids wouldn't go outside or read as much if they got hooked on television. I think they were trying to frame it as fearmongering or something, but it sounded eerily similar to the problems we face today due to social media, videogames, AI, and the modern internet in general. Of course, TV and its consequences also feature heavily in Wallace's body of work.He once described "channel surfing" in an interview in a way that sounds almost exactly like how it feels to scroll endlessly on some algorithmic slop treadmill.
>>25237075everything he said has only gotten worse. social media, more mindlessly addictive tv/film/video games, porn, it's all hellish and he would have fucking hated it
>>25237076>He once described "channel surfing"Did he or are you thinking of the post by an anon from a few years ago? Would be interested in what interview if you know, don't think I have seen that one.
>>25237076And the post:>Author here. Back in those days there was no TV guide channel, you had to buy the local paper or an issue of TV Guide if you wanted to know what was on at any given time, many just did not know what was on, we would turn on the TV, flip through the channels and if nothing caught our eye we would do something else. This worked well for the times you were not really committed to watching TV or had one of those 15 minute intervals which modern life is built around, you were waiting on a phone call, a load of laundry, or the plumber, the problem was those times you wanted to watch TV or had no impending engagements to regulate your time. You sit down on the couch and make a quick survey of the channels, nothing grabbed your attention but quite a few of the channels were on commercial breaks during your original scan so you start again, this time more slowly, stopping on each station and waiting for any commercials to finish so you can give proper consideration to the program before moving on to the next station. Eventually you find something that seems interesting and settle in to watch but but halfway through the next commercial break you start to question your choice since you never completed your more thorough scan of the channels, there still could be something better. You continue on with your previous methodology, flip to the next station and wait for the commercial break to end so you can view the program only to realize 15 minutes later that you landed on one of those long format infomercials and had been seriously considering buying a rotisserie or an aerosol can of hair, not because you had any need for them but because you just spent 15 minutes hearing about how indispensable they are to modern life. You resume scanning the channels and after completing the current cycle you decide what you were originally watching was actually fairly interesting despite no longer remembering what it was or what channel it was on, you do remember that it was on the station before the one with the infomercial for the rotisserie, or was it for kitchen knives? Once again through the channels paying close attention to the ones with infomercials which turns out to be more difficult than expected as they all share the same format and host. Eventually you find your infomercial (it was for a telescoping pocket sized fishing pole), go back one channel just to see the closing credits roll for that program which you intended to watch. Once more through the channels. The problem was not watching TV but the process of deciding what to watch, getting a subscription to TV Guide or the local paper would solve the problem but felt like a to much of a commitment, I would be obligated to go through the listing each day to select what to watch because I was now paying my hard earned money for these listings, it would be wasteful not to utilize them. The only reasonable solution was to get rid of the TV.
>>25237080If I remember right it somewhere in this interview (it's an hour long and it's been a while so please forgive me for not including the relevant timestamp; I'll skim through it and see if I can find it)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGLzWdT7vGc&pp=ygUeZGF2aWQgZm9zdGVyIHdhbGxhY2UgaW50ZWV2aWV3>>25237081.Good post, however.
>>25237086Here's someone who just clipped the section I was talking about. The interview itself is very interesting in full, though, I'll have to go back and watch it again now I've actually read Infinite Jest.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ujr9gi3wk
>>25237102I remember that bit now, probably going to rewatch the interview as well, been years since I watched it. Quack this Way is probably my favorite of his interviews if you have not read it, him and Garner (of Garner's Modern English Usage) sitting about talking language and literature. Just realized the channel surfing post was almost certainly written by the same anon as the post about reading the pages of "Help!" in Solenoid.
>>25236740I go in peaks and valley. Today is a valley.
>>25236740I'm immune to boredom from good, I'm not immune to addiction for evil.
>>25236977If your life is so painful as all that then your theories on how life should be lived are probably wrong.
>>25236982>>25236989That's reassuring, thanks for the extra motivation.>>25237075IKR. He gives great insightful answers without divulging into a 5 minute stuttering tirade like other interviewees (Jonathan Blow). I want to read Infinite Jest but I can't make such a strong commitment to such an unwieldy book at the moment.
>>25237076the problem isnt social media and video games the problem is alienation which is in part engendered by things like the internet but also stuff like the totally unfit for purpose education system and a job market controlled by AI filters. connecting to the real world is difficult and its not just an attention span problem.
>>25237124No, it just means your biology is compromised
>>25236740Except not killin yo self like a bitch hahaha bitch ass >>25236753
>>25236798I'd argue that those who killed themselves have the utmost authority on the fundamental questions regarding life. They looked at life objectively and followed their seasoning to its ultimate conclusion. On the flip side you have the people who piss and whine about life while also rejecting suicide; those philosophers are merely playing at existentialism.
>>25238010>seasoningReasoning
>>25238010you're romanticizing suicide a lot. Not everyone who kills themself is performing some hyper-rationalist act. Very rarely is that the case, even if they pretend to be.
>>25238023I'm more arguing against the philosophers who glorify suicide but at the same time do not take the leap. Schopenhauer is a prime example of one such.
>>25237076The limited capacities of ye olde caveman brain are mismatched against the steadily expanding informational channels that hit it in our media environment constructed for maximum throughput. I wonder if there's ever been a sweet spot, maybe the 18th-19th century Western textual culture that still wasn't overwhelming enough to distract one from life.
>>25237953Definitely agree, I just didn't want to get too extensive. I do find it interesting how IJ in particular raises the question of what deficiencies or dissatisfactions with our lives we're trying to fill with the drugs, or entertainment, or whatever else. People tend to talk about technology like it is just inevitable that it has to be this way, but one has to wonder whether we could, in a "healthy" society, raise a generation that could resist porn or tik tok without having to go through the process of quitting and the hard road of recovery. But of course, that's not going to happen because they would much rather you be sedated in front of the TV, or incapacitated by alcohol, jerking off repeatedly, obsessively playing a video game: "Just Unwinding After a Hard Day" as it were; if you aren't actively slaving away for them. Similar to records of how they used to give drugs to slaves to drain them of any rebellious or individual tendencies (modern-day human traffickers do the same thing).
>>25237115>almost certainlyMost certainly.
Is boredom so agonizing as to be worth avoided and even eliminated entirely? Without boredom, there would be nothing to contrast inspiration; and at that point what would be the meaning of that? Not to mention that boredom often is the impetus for inspiration in the first place.
>>25238152>philosophers who glorify suicideSchopenhauer never did that
>>25239314DFW's point was that boredom is actually very interesting and productive if you don't trivialize it. OP either never read or completely failed to understand TPK.
>>25236798there are aspects to society that have been taken away and you cannot recreate them, so suicide would be a rational way of not deluding yourself about ascertaining a freedom that does not exist
