To wonder if the novelty of our online world has plateaued a bit?

[Toemayto]

I feel like functionalities that we all got excited about a few years ago are now boring and overrated.

It’s so quick and easy to use my phone or iPad for everything it actually doesn’t stimulate me anymore. It’s just become a habit rather than anything interesting.

I used to think that checking the weather, doing my banking, reading a kindle book, updating a shared family calendar, listening to podcasts/music etc was all really quite clever and great.

Now it’s become mundane. Fb and insta are dull, same old people harping in about same old shit. Yes I could follow more or different people, or mix up the websites I look at, but do I even want my phone to engage me more than it already is? In all honesty it would just be for the sake of it.

We’ve been lucky to have a wealth of information, news, people, places, data etc all at our fingertips, and I’m grateful for that in one sense, but now it’s the norm, just an integral part of life, rather than being fancy or whizzy... the novelty is wearing off (for me at least!).

I can see where you're coming from and I put YANBU.

I got online in 1995 which was early(ish) in the UK. The first 10 years were interesting and mostly politics-free until 9/11. Love discussion forums. eBay and Argos were still around. Amazon was a book shop. Early days of grocery shopping. The biggest problem though were pop-up adverts. Then browsers like Firefox started blocking them thanks god.

Then in the late 2000s, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram took over and that's when it went downhill. Dogs now have their own accounts, babies too which is a consent issue. Daily food/holiday updates, MLMs, social media 'influencers', far-left politics, far-right politics, and politics in general being at odds with everyone. Involvement with social media is one of the reason why there are more mental health issues now.

There are a few plusses though too, mainly through the use of a phone rather than a computer. Like connecting the family with WhatsApp. Yes they call WhatsApp social media but I don't know why because it just replaces MSN Messenger. Food ordering apps, fitness tracking, live weather, live rail/bus times, Uber and other taxi apps, online note takers, maps, Google/Apple Pay, Spotify, Paypal. All great stuff and used via a phone.

It is all great, I agree, but it’s become the norm to do everything online/via a phone. It’s very clever, but not so impressive somehow anymore.