Boredom



Boredom is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli: suffering from a lack of interesting things to see, hear, or do (physically or intellectually), while not in the mood of "doing nothing." Those afflicted by temporary boredom may regard the affliction as a waste of time, but usually characterize boredom worse than just that. Alternatively one may have the feeling that having too much spare time causes boredom. Indeed, time often appears to move more slowly to someone suffering from boredom. This results from the way in which the human mind measures the passage of time, by the frequency of notable events, the absence of which may cause the feeling of boredom. Boredom can also occur as a symptom of clinical depression and may also lead to impulsive (and sometimes excessive) actions that serve little purpose and may damage one's self-interest. For example, studies in behavioral finance have shown that stock traders can enter into "overtrading" (buying or selling even without any objective reason to do so) simply because they feel bored when they have nothing worth doing.

The arts
The punk singer Iggy Pop had a minor hit with his song "I'm Bored" during which he would strip his clothes off while delivering a monotonous rendition of the lyric: "I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the bored".

Douglas Adams depicted a robot named Marvin whose boredom led to a deep comical depression which appeared to be the defining trait of his personality, and indeed, existence, in his series of novels that began with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

One of the first recorded songs of punk band Buzzcocks was entitled "Boredom", and was released on the Spiral Scratch EP. It features a minimalist guitar solo of two repeated notes.

The song longview, written by Green day, is about boredom-induced masturbation

Boredom has been a subject of many classical pieces of Russian literature. For example, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin suffered from boredom.