Page 9 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019

taught to navigate the feed, not to awaken themselves from their assumptions. They are still like
animals because they have not yet questioned their world (176). This denial of opportunity is
what makes Titus’ world empty.

Titus and his friends are bombarded with advertisements and entertainment from the
feed, which keeps them ignorant of their emptiness. In Tina Kendall’s article
“#BOREDWITHMEG: Gendered Boredom and Network Media,” Kendall explains how
companies use media to distract consumers from reality. To set up her argument, she mentions
the findings of researcher Mark Fisher:

He notes that feelings of boredom that we once recognised as challenges, injunctions or
opportunities have been effectively eliminated by the advent of the smartphone and its
capacities for constant distraction. As Fisher remarks, the ‘intensive, 24-7 environment of
capitalist cyberspace’ has replaced the boredom of empty or idle time ‘with a seamless
flow of low-level stimulus’, such that today there is ‘neither an excuse nor an opportunity
to be bored’ (83).
Essentially, constant entertainment distracts teenagers enough to smother boredom and its
benefits.
Misunderstood emptiness is the vehicle by which companies can sell products. In
Kendall’s article, she says the “capitalistic cyberspace” (83) leads kids to avoid feeling null and
consume meaningless media which is able to rope them into buying things to be like the social
icons they admire. She writes about a video blogger named Meg with a YouTube channel
devoted to busting boredom. Meg uses her videos on boredom to promote brand-name products,
implying that people will be less bored if they purchase those same things (93). Titus and his
friends are surrounded by media that promotes spending to fill their emptiness.

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