Sorry but you seem to be arrogant about how sociable other people naturally are. Good for you if you had many friends to do interesting things with and never felt bored, but I find it hurtful that you think not having those traits is to be shunned. You don’t owe internet strangers entertainment, but is it such a crime that you need to rant about it decades after the fact?
I never had many friends to do interesting things with. I talked to people online when it was still new and shiny, and I was a teenager, with the energy to socialize in a way I sure can’t today. It was a different world - sometimes people would make a group MSN chat with a number of people and we’d just get to know each other through those mutual friends, who lived all around the world. Rarely did I have a group in person to do things with. I spent a lot of time alone, cultivating my own interests and skills. I didn’t “shun” anyone, I just had to choose how to spend my limited time and energy after school. Would you rather talk with someone that responds to your ideas and thoughtfully considers them, or someone who brushes everything off just to come back to saying, “I’m bored” no matter how much you try to engage them?
It’s also strange to categorize what I said as a “rant.” I was reminded of something from the past and I mentioned it in a comment that was along the same lines, remembering how I felt about it at the time. That’s hardly a rant.
The trait to be shunned in that is the trait of pushing your entertainment off on others.
When someone’s entire engagement is “I’m bored”, the unspoken follow-up is “entertain me”. This generation loves to go on and on and on about “emotional labour”. Well guess what: that unspoken “entertain me” is, get this, emotional labour.
Perhaps the people who say “I’m bored” should be told what I was told when I was single-digit aged: “There’s no such thing as being bored, only being boring.”
You’re reading malintent into an innocent phrase. They could be subtly asking to be let in a friend group or just venting. There are many ways you could respond to such a sentence besides giving them entertainment.
If you don’t have the slight bit of emotional availability to engage with them just don’t. It’s cringe to then go ranting about the time a boring person dared engaging with you and you stopped talking to them because you had so many friends.
Edit: To make my point clear, it’s not that one has to engage the person in question. But focusing on how doing so affects them without a hint of understanding that it’s the other person clearly in need of something is an indication of their own emotional immaturity. If you help someone in need you can brag. If you don’t because you don’t have the resources to help nobody can blame you, but you don’t get to be upset they asked.
Sorry but you seem to be arrogant about how sociable other people naturally are. Good for you if you had many friends to do interesting things with and never felt bored, but I find it hurtful that you think not having those traits is to be shunned. You don’t owe internet strangers entertainment, but is it such a crime that you need to rant about it decades after the fact?
Edit: Wording
I never had many friends to do interesting things with. I talked to people online when it was still new and shiny, and I was a teenager, with the energy to socialize in a way I sure can’t today. It was a different world - sometimes people would make a group MSN chat with a number of people and we’d just get to know each other through those mutual friends, who lived all around the world. Rarely did I have a group in person to do things with. I spent a lot of time alone, cultivating my own interests and skills. I didn’t “shun” anyone, I just had to choose how to spend my limited time and energy after school. Would you rather talk with someone that responds to your ideas and thoughtfully considers them, or someone who brushes everything off just to come back to saying, “I’m bored” no matter how much you try to engage them?
It’s also strange to categorize what I said as a “rant.” I was reminded of something from the past and I mentioned it in a comment that was along the same lines, remembering how I felt about it at the time. That’s hardly a rant.
The trait to be shunned in that is the trait of pushing your entertainment off on others.
When someone’s entire engagement is “I’m bored”, the unspoken follow-up is “entertain me”. This generation loves to go on and on and on about “emotional labour”. Well guess what: that unspoken “entertain me” is, get this, emotional labour.
Perhaps the people who say “I’m bored” should be told what I was told when I was single-digit aged: “There’s no such thing as being bored, only being boring.”
You’re reading malintent into an innocent phrase. They could be subtly asking to be let in a friend group or just venting. There are many ways you could respond to such a sentence besides giving them entertainment.
If you don’t have the slight bit of emotional availability to engage with them just don’t. It’s cringe to then go ranting about the time a boring person dared engaging with you and you stopped talking to them because you had so many friends.
Edit: To make my point clear, it’s not that one has to engage the person in question. But focusing on how doing so affects them without a hint of understanding that it’s the other person clearly in need of something is an indication of their own emotional immaturity. If you help someone in need you can brag. If you don’t because you don’t have the resources to help nobody can blame you, but you don’t get to be upset they asked.
They didn’t ask, is the point. They just said “I’m bored”.