ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 elaborates on the nuances of boredom, such as its distinction from distraction, relationship to information overload, anomic mental chaos, work, acronyms and idioms capturing boredom such as ‘TGIF’ and ‘boreout’, analyzes rare cases of boredom within the Soviet Union: the case of revolutionaries after 1917, the case of housewives during Stalinism who were sent to join their husband on developments projects in remote regions, the case of children orphaned during Stalinism and left to fend for themselves, and artists participating in the Non-Conformist Movement, and analyzes boredom’s interaction with gender. In modernity, we are subsumed by a deluge of senseless data, which is personally meaningless, hence boring. This informationally-anomic atmosphere is the breeding ground for boredom. In such an atmosphere, distraction is enacted to protect against the discomfort of boredom and masks boredom. In terms of work, in modern society most jobs have become routine, repetitive, predictable, and redundant, and people in both blue and white collar jobs find themselves busy yet bored. Importantly, boredom negatively correlates with productivity, due to withdrawal from one’s environment and subsequently reduced cognitive engagement.
