Lately

…I am pondering the amount of time it takes for a cool thing seen on the Internet to go from “Holy shit, that’s the most awesome thing ever!” to “Holy shit, that thing? I’ve had it forwarded to me 327 times and seen it on 17 different blogs. Fuck that thing and every dipshit who promotes it.”

That time seems to shorten continuously. Right now it’s about two days, maybe three. Certainly not as long as a week.

The thing that set off my irritation meter today was that guy who does the teeny-tiny pencil lead carvings. I first saw those a few weeks ago, maybe two, and I was blown away. Jeez they are teeny and tiny and intricate. Impressive.

And then I started to see them in more and more places. It seemed to be some kind of insane crossover that showed up on art and design blogs, living blogs, random cool shit blogs, tech blogs. Everyone seemed to think this fit into their blog genre, and wanted to share. But instead of being initially impressed and then glad that so many people were celebrating this artist, I began to feel… irritated. The work had not changed, but my perception of it shifted as it became less novel to me. I couldn’t even just gloss over the continued mentions, they started to almost enrage me. THAT GUY AGAIN? WTF MORONS!? Was in my head more than it should have been.

And it seems the time it takes for that to happen is shortening. I see a thing three times, maybe four, and the thing and all people associated with the thing earn my immediate scorn.

My brain craves novel amusements, thinks of them as its due. My brain does not want your same old tired shit that it already saw yesterday, that shit should no longer exist! My brain wants fresh fun, god damn it.

Other things that have lately enraged me with their ubiquity: the video of the cat fighting its own reflection in the floor. Posts about how Glenn Beck is hurting America (yeah I know, not news.) Everyone who retweets The Oatmeal. Recaps about the show Mad Men, on many many blogs that had nothing to do with TV shows. (Ditto posts about Lost.) I don’t watch that show, and thus who cares? I already read that blog, why ask me to read it again? Why are you clogging my interwebs with this nonsense?

It’s like the more things become customized to cater to my tastes, the less patience I have for things that are not specifically suited to my desires at that moment. And I do not know how to turn this irritation and lack of patience off.

I do not enjoy spending half the day in enraged contempt at things that enter my overloaded data-stream and are judged irrelevant. But what is the answer? Turn the data stream off? Have less access to less information? How does one learn to gracefully tolerate the same information flying at them nonstop all day? Because that’s the issue. I am already sorting mental wheat from chaff all damn day. It’s hard to process all the information coming in. When the information repeats, it’s like it’s doing it specifically on purpose to clog up my already overburdened neurons. Hence the irritation. And yet, this is not a phenomenon that will go away. If I see a cool thing I want to share it, and my friends will want to share it, and other blogs will want so share it, that’s the way memes work. And with various info streams all feeding in, I am likely to see intricate pencil carvings guy on Twitter (MUST READ!) and Google Reader (analyzed by twenty art and style blogs + Boing Boing) and on Facebook (have you guys seen this guy OMG) and who knows where else. So it’s up to me to manage my irritation at the audacity of a thing existing past the time when I deem it relevant or desired. But how to do that?

So that’s what I have been pondering lately. Tips welcome.