Following the previous section, this essay will verify the boredom framework and derive practical guidelines for creating non-boring content.
Before start,
[See: The Phenomenology of Boredom: Why Modern Life Feels Dead (Part 1 — Lost Agency)]
1. A Baby’s Play and the Absence of Boredom
Conversely, what does a world without boredom look like? I see the answer in a baby’s play.
If boredom is the sense of “not living the world,” play is the sense of “living the world directly.”
Babies do not understand the world through language. They understand through touching, moving, and feeling reactions.
Let’s analyze this process through the three elements of boredom.
(1) Play is Connecting to a World of Sensory Stimulation
Watching my nephew, She always checks if her mom is nearby before playing. If mom’s gone, she stops the fun and cries for her. Physical safety is the prerequisite for logging into the play world.
Unlike adults who connect to worlds constructed of abstract meanings: Babies, unable to speak, have no experience with life-worlds divided by nationality, age, or gender.
Therefore, simply connecting to a world of “Sensory Stimulation” feels pleasurable.
Examples:
- The flapping of a toy duck.
- The crushing sound of a Coke can.
- Tearing tissue paper.
But not all stimuli are equal.
- Visual/Tactile Toys: Even for babies, these quickly merge into the mundane world. They become boring.
- Gustatory/Auditory Stimuli (Pacifiers, Nursery Rhymes): They never get tired of these. They love them. (Note: I explained in the why visual/tactile-heavy, SNS-driven dopamine shops die quickly. The mechanism is identical.)
The Point: Babies instantly grasp the “Me vs. Object” structure. Once physical safety is secured, connecting to a world of new sensations (Sound, Touch, Movement) is understood as “Play.”
(2) Play Narrative is Composed of Action Verb Rhythms
My nephew relentlessly: Pounds, Shakes, Presses, Pushes.
She gets bored playing dead (lying still). Instead:
- She delights when the toy duck moves because of her action.
- She loses interest if a heavy box doesn’t move when pushed.
- She constantly changes actions rather than repeating just one.
In short, the baby understands the world through the rhythm of touching, moving, and feeling reactions. If this rhythm breaks, She loses interest immediately. Conversely, if She experiences her action changing the world, he laughs and claps.
Difference from Adults:
- Adults: Can construct narratives from abstract books or movies by projecting their past experiences of full physical control.
- Babies: Before language forms, their body is their entire world. Their action is the entire narrative.
(3) Play is the Primal Form of Physical Control
My nephew is only 9 months old. She doesn’t understand symbolic meanings in cartoons.
Example: Even watching Tom and Jerry (Cat runs with cheese, Mouse pranks Cat):
- She doesn’t get the anthropomorphized narrative (The weak punishing the strong). It’s not fun.
- She just sees changing colors and hears sounds.
- She’s interested for a second, then pushes the phone away.
However:
- An app that makes noise when the screen is pressed? She presses it forever.
- Watching a cartoon is passive, so it’s boring. Making noise is Physical Control, so it’s fun.
Of course, She doesn’t feel the “musical emotion” or symbolic meaning of the sound.
Physical control and reaction alone are enough to constitute Play.
[Summary] Boredom and Play are Opposites
In conclusion, boredom and play sit on opposite ends of the spectrum.
For a baby, play is the process of feeling alive.
- Everything is a new world because they were just born.
- Mom must be there to safely explore.
- This play is composed of Verb Rhythms.
However: Because babies lack language, they cannot infer meaning from abstract info like books or others’ actions. Simply moving their own bodies opens a new horizon of perception. It is the least boring time of life.
2. Why Content Becomes Boring
Boring content shares three common traits.
- The reader cannot connect to the world.
- There is information, but no rhythm.
- There is no room for physical manipulation.
Let’s break them down.
(1) Solipsistic Worldview – The Reader Cannot Log In
👉 Literary Example: “Stream of Consciousness”
This refers to content that relentlessly dumps the author’s internal, subjective sensations.
James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are the prime examples. Originally, it emerged as an innovative attempt to escape logic and reason, exposing the protagonist’s consciousness in depth.
👉 The Problem: This content is filled with,
- The author’s unique symbols.
- Sensory expressions detached from historical or physical context.
- Acausal narratives.
As a result, most readers are locked out of the author’s world. They feel bored.
👉 Case 1: James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Success)
He used the stream of consciousness with flavor. The novel doesn’t follow chronological order or a consistent viewpoint. Stephen’s internal sensations, emotional shifts, anguished questions, and poetic language are exposed raw.
However:
- The worldview of conflict between religious strictness and artistic self-realization is clear.
- The rhythm of moving locations (Ireland → Europe) and describing actions carries significant weight. Since this narrative echoes in Herman Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund or Demian, readers could connect to Joyce’s world and be moved without boredom.
👉 Case 2: James Joyce – Ulysses (Failure)
Leaving aside literary merit, this was an inaccessible world for the reader.
I fell asleep ten times trying to read it and gave up. I still don’t remember what it’s about.
Why:
- Internal monologues and sensory descriptions run wild.
- Viewpoints and narrative styles are dizzyingly mixed.
- The reader, who paid money, is thoroughly alienated and blocked from connection.
It is the ultimate boss of boredom. (Some argue this alienation was intentional 😭).
👉 Blog Example:
Posts that list exclamations like “The lake is pretty,” “The sky is clear,” or paste definitions from Wikipedia.
The Problem:
- There is no context of meaning for the reader to connect to.
- Sensation exists, but there is no processing of meaning—“What exactly was beautiful?”
- It might be a self-portrait for the author, but for the reader, it’s an inaccessible “World of Your Own.” The reader scrolls up and down a few times, feels bored, and leaves.
(2) Absence of Action Verb Rhythm
I often watch book review channels on YouTube. There are two styles.
Style 1: Accurate but Boring Channel
Reads concepts like : “Liquidity Trap,” “Multiplier Effect,” “Exchange Rate Overshooting,” and “Base Effect” like a textbook. Nothing is wrong, but all verbs are Stative Verbs (is, exists, does).
The narrative stops. The viewer loses rhythm.
Style 2: Channel Creating Rhythm with Action Verbs
Here is a memorable dialogue explaining an economic book:
- Host: “Why can’t we catch inflation? I’m scared to buy anything at the mart.”
- Author: “You’d think aging in advanced countries means old people don’t spend, right? So demand drops, prices fall, and we should go to Low Blood Pressure. But instead, the economy gets urgent, and we go to High Blood Pressure where prices keep soaring.”
- Host: “Why?”
- Author: “According to this book, the old and young are inflationary, and workers are deflationary.”
- Host: “What does that mean?”
- Author: “When you work in a factory, you have to make more stuff than your salary worth to keep the factory running, right? So if workers increase, they contribute to price drops. But old people don’t produce…”
Analysis: In this dialogue:
- Low interest/prices → Low Blood Pressure.
- High interest/prices → High Blood Pressure.
- Concepts difficult for the public are dragged down to the level of physical life.
- Rich action verbs are inserted: Soar, Go, Catch, Run, Drop.
This speaker translates economic concepts into verbs, helping the viewer not just “understand” information but “Feel” it.
Conclusion: Content that unravels abstract information into physically palpable action verbs, constructs a narrative, and uses descriptions (stative verbs) only as seasoning never gets boring.
👉 Blog Example: Trying to show the conclusion first for impatient readers:
- Bad Example: Placing a tl;dr table at the very beginning.
- Good Example: Presenting the text first, summarizing with a table at the end.
👉 The Problem: The author knows both the table and the text, so the order doesn’t matter.
But for the reader:
- The table has no action verbs.
- Seeing only the table, readers cannot construct the narrative.
- They have to understand the narrative, then scroll back up to the table to get it.
The Solution: A good writer:
- Presents the text first.
- Packs it with action verbs to make readers faithfully follow the narrative.
- Shows a compressed table once in a later phase when taking a breath. Then, readers feel a sense of clear understanding.
(3) Physical Manipulation Impossible – No Room for Reader Intervention
If there is no possibility for the reader/viewer to physically manipulate, it is boring.
Case 1: Library vs. Bookstore
Have you ever felt that reading a borrowed library book somehow lacks flavor?
I have even:
- Borrowed a book, read it, found it impressive.
- Bought it again at a bookstore to underline it. It felt like I was embodying the book.
Application: Editing that widens line spacing to leave margins for:
- Underlining.
- Taking notes. This proves that allowing the reader to physically intervene helps them embody the book’s meaning more richly.
Case 2: Cinema vs. YouTube Live
Simply showing, like a movie theater or broadcast TV where the viewer only laughs or cries, is now boring. Even for the same 30-minute YouTube broadcast:
- Watching a recording is dull.
- Watching a live stream while donating and chatting makes 30 minutes fly.
Typing a message and inputting a donation amount are Physical Manipulations, which heighten immersion.
Case 3: Comment Participation Strategy
Some YouTube channels use a smarter strategy to induce comments.
- Upload a new Short.
- Like and reply only to comments posted within 24 hours.
- From Day 2, no likes or replies.
- Subscribers set notifications to watch Shorts faster to get a like or reply.
- Promote membership for deeper communication.
- Membership payment. (This is a true story 😭).
Conclusion: Content that opens a space for the reader to move their hands and feet and physically manipulate is not boring.
3. Philosophical Debate: Is Boredom Meaningless?
In this article, I emphasized three elements that create boredom: World, Narrative, Body.
Now, I will address some expected philosophical counterarguments to strengthen the thesis.
(1) Scholars Communicate with Formal Concepts. Why Do They Find It Fun?
I’ve shaken my head watching professors excitedly debate over dinner.
The Question: How do scholars find fun in such formal, conceptual debates and equations?
To us, it looks like:
- An inaccessible world.
- No rhythm of action verbs.
- Zero physical manipulation. It looks boring as hell.
👉 Answer 1: 20 Years of Academic Training
If an elementary schooler suddenly logs into the world of calculus, it’s boring.
But if you lower the hurdles and open an accessible path, they find interest.
Similarly:
- The step-by-step coursework from Bachelor to Master to PhD.
- Throwing oneself deeper into the academic world.
At first:
- Only noun structures (Definitions, Theories, Theorems) are visible. But:
- The moment they embody the Verb Rhythm inside (The flow of debate, genealogy of citations, history of concept birth and subversion), knowledge transforms from static information to dynamic narrative.
In short, scholars enjoy papers not because of the “Essence of Theory,” but because they are connected to the Genealogy and Context (World) of that theory.
Example: Herbert Simon, James March, Johan Olsen, Sarasvathy—seeing the school of Bounded Rationality passed down through generations of mentors and mentees is a great example.
Even a new paper becomes interesting when understood as a narrative:
- Who is the advisor?
- Which school?
- Who is the corresponding author?
Adding individual episodes of scholars—“I knew he would say that”—allows access to a life-world within hard concepts.
👉 Answer 2: Formal Logic Concepts Have Verb Rhythms
At first glance, formal logic concepts seem devoid of verb rhythms.
Bounded Rationality, Effectuation, Garbage Can Model—where is the rhythm?
But: Understanding a concept isn’t memorizing preconditions and causal logic. It’s recalling the actual cases the concept represents. Even academic concepts come alive as meaning when perceived as narrative events.
Examples:
- Bounded Rationality: Reminds me of Simon joking, “Is it rational to marry someone ‘good enough’ nearby because you can’t perfectly choose a partner?”
- Garbage Can Model: Reminds me of a brainstorming session where everyone suddenly latched onto a rookie’s stupid comment with an “Oh?”
- Effectuation: Understanding the psychology of improvising recipes based on customer reactions and weekly sales when running a business.
Even inside compressed concepts, verb energy based on real cases flows. And “Refuting, Modifying, Expanding” concepts is, for scholars, a world of war where they rush in with knives.
👉Answer 3: Even Math is Composed of Action Verb Rhythms
Even mathematics, the ultimate boss of formal logic, is composed of action verb rhythms.
In Walter Rudin’s Principles of Mathematical Analysis:
- Theorems 1 to 100 connect as a single narrative.
- To understand the concept of a Compact Set, you must draw [0,1] on a blackboard and plot two points to grasp the subsequent theorems.
- Even the mathematical state of “Compact” is expressed with action verbs: Closed, Covered, Extending, Converging.
- Concepts like Open/Close, Continuous/Discontinuous, Boundary, Neighborhood are all defined with verb rhythms.
This shows that math is not a “Static Language,” but a language woven with Metaphors of Movement.
Conclusion:
Academics is not boring to scholars because: When deeply immersed, it is experienced not as noun knowledge, but as a narrative of Verb Rhythm.
Therefore, if you study for a PhD, go to where the core discourse is formed (US, UK, Germany).
Don’t think, “Why go abroad when I can read papers in Korea and translate with GPT?”
Graduate study is not just interpreting papers on paper. You must immerse yourself in the Life-World that birthed those papers—the mentor’s tone, the lab’s air, the all-night debates.
You must experience the genealogy and episodes to find fun and advocate advanced concepts.
(2) Why Do Boring Artworks Keep Coming Out?
Today, boring literature and movies still win the Man Booker Prize and Cannes awards.
Fun content gets labeled “Commercial.”
Why? If this has frustrated you, this chapter is the answer.
👉 The Answer:
These artworks exist because boredom is viewed as a catalyst for Self-Consciousness Awakening. People like Heidegger and Joyce, obsessed with ennui, believed existential awareness could be found within boredom.
👉 Simply put:
- When there is no interesting narrative,
- When not immersed in the world,
- Humans reach the consciousness of: “Where is this? Who am I? What am I doing?”
The logic is that living in meaninglessness forces one to seek true meaning.
Therefore: Readers who enjoy boring books like Ulysses, Doctor Zhivago, The Vegetarian, or Night Train to Lisbon:
- See time/space collapse and beautiful sentences linger on fragmented descriptions.
- Feel resonance and admiration: “This is exactly like the sensation of my day.”
They are moved by the sophisticated structuring of modern fatigue, ennui, and emptiness.
The Joy of Reading — Summary
| Category | Enjoyable Books (Narrative/Entertaining) | Boring Books (Stream-of-consciousness, Descriptive) |
|---|---|---|
| Affective Structure | Tension → Release → Pleasure | Numbness → Reflection → Awakening |
| Source of Pleasure | Story progression | Sense of existence |
| Mode of Immersion | Along the flow of time | Within time’s suspension |
| Expression | Rhythm of action verbs | Piling of state verbs |
| View of Boredom | Failure to immerse in the world | Catalyst for existential awakening |
👉 Critique:
Since the human mind often doesn’t unfold as a narrative driven by action verbs, attempting to reveal the sense of existence through stream of consciousness is fine. It helps interpret the world richly.
But I cannot agree with packaging this as profound.
Just as I criticized the aestheticization of pain in [See: Han Kang vs. NaS — The Theme Park of Pain vs. The Rhythm of Survival], content trying to discover existence through boredom raises a question:
“Is Joyce-style ‘Existence in Ennui’ a truly living existence, or just an illusion of consciousness living only in language?”
The “Profound” challenge to find meaning through ennui looks noble compared to the sweaty survival of:
- Connecting to the life-world.
- Understanding narrative.
- Moving the body.
But in reality, “Stream of Consciousness” is an attempt by a protagonist alienated from the world to create their own world with their own language.
Case of Night Train to Lisbon:
- The Swiss citizen (Protagonist) hovers around the Lisbon local world like an outsider.
- He contemplates his own consciousness through the memories and thoughts of Amadeu (The Other).
- Examining this structure, it presupposes Another Self describing and contemplating the consciousness unfolding in its own world.
Here, we feel the ghost of Intellectualism reviving—presupposing an a priori, transcendental self that makes experience possible.
Merleau-Ponty’s Critique:
Merleau-Ponty denied the existence of such a transcendental consciousness.
If we view linguistic constructs like “Consciousness” or “Transcendental Self” as real:
- Humans become separated/isolated from the rough, earthy world.
- They become mentally impoverished.
Why: Intellectualism worships a transcendental, universal self, so it combines with:
- Logical, Rational, Reductionist, Causal Objective Thought.
This crushes the individual value and pain of human life hidden in irrationality into meaninglessness. Relying on intellectualism risks blinding us to the truth (phenomenon) of life where humans and the world are entangled.
Therefore, if Night Train to Lisbon were real:
- The protagonist would belong to neither the Swiss nor the Portuguese life-world.
- He would fall into the swamp of ennui, searching for the transcendental self contemplating the “Me” and “The Other” thrown into the world.
- The novel ends with an open ending, without a clear conclusion.
The Core:
When we experience something, the “Experiencing Me” and the “Experienced World” are already inextricably woven into one. Therefore, a “Another Self contemplating while separated from the body and world” has no room to exist in our actual lives.
Living Life:
- A baby learning the world by touching and molding clay.
- A chef slicing to make food.
- Scholars fiercely debating.
For beings thrown into such worlds, there is no time to be bored.
Boredom is a byproduct of consciousness created in a state of disconnection from the world.
Therefore:
The “Existence in Ennui” spoken of by intellectuals is a portrait of a stranger who cannot live in the world. That they lived such lives is an existential tragedy, but it does not elevate them to a profound level. Feeling boredom means:
- An Observer unconnected to the world.
- An Outsider, a Stranger.
- Not living immersed for survival.
Such thinking is destined to return to ennui.
- Can’t live in the world → Think.
- Think → Still can’t live. Repeating the loop. Until they connect to the real world, experience narrative, and act physically.
What is truly profound:
It is not endlessly thinking about
“Who is the other me contemplating the consciousness drifting in ennui.”
It lies in tactile communion within the world, in the ordinary people living hard right now.
The moment we touch, smell, and collide with the world again, we reclaim the meaning of being alive.
Existences Compared
| Category | Linguistic Existence | Embodied Existence |
|---|---|---|
| Essence | Self-consciousness | Communion with the world |
| Mode | Observation · Analysis | Participation · Immersion |
| Sense of Time | Ennui & repetition | Rhythm & cycle |
| Way of Being | Hallucinatory, non-active | Tactile, alive |
| Philosophical Background | Descartes, Husserl, Joyce, Heidegger | Zhuangzi, Merleau-Ponty |
4. A Reflective Guide for Content Creators
The only way to avoid boredom is to reopen the connection to World, Rhythm, and Body.
Every creator must ultimately return to one question: “How alive am I?”
Here are three guidelines for that penance.
(1) Accessibility to the World – Stop Talking to Yourself
👉 The Problem: Content that mutters to itself inside its own world, like abstract modern art, is boring.
The audience asks: “What does this have to do with my life?”
👉 The Insight: Content is not a diary for self-organization; it is a Bridge into Another’s World.
Meaning is completed not in the speaker’s mouth, but in the listener’s world.
👉 The Action:
- Don’t explain concepts with language or numbers. Show a situation they can feel.
- Create an entrance (Rhythm, Smell, Scene) where the reader can walk into your world.
👉 The Reflection: I admit it. When writing, I sometimes drowned in “organizing my theories,” pushing abstract terms and concepts to the front. Especially in the Toyota Pub series, I tried to measure the sentence “Dishes requiring many hand movements are hard to cook in parallel” with a concept like “Parallel Production Index.“ Thinking about it now, it is utterly embarrassing.
(2) Verb Rhythm – Move the Thought
👉 The Problem: Listing abstract concepts without connecting narratives via action verbs is a sedative.
Novels or videos using the “Stream of Consciousness” technique—contemplating the thinking self, the feeling self—usually fall into this trap.
👉 The Insight: Not being boring means thought is constructed into a narrative by Verbs.
Don’t say “I felt this.” Say “I did this.”
👉 The Solution: Create short, strong rhythms.
You might doze off reading Nietzsche’s thick, difficult books. But:
“What does not kill me makes me stronger.”
Short, intense aphorisms driven by verbs hit home.
👉 The Reflection: I always place Hip-Hop Aphorisms at the end of my articles. I try to use them as a rhythm to drag the reader into action.
(3) Physical Intervention – Make the Fingers Move
👉 The Problem: Content with no hole for the reader to participate is boring. It is no different from a sightseeing bus tour around Seoul. Passive and distant.
👉 The Insight: Boredom arises from the inability to manipulate. Humans immerse when they participate; they feel meaning when their hands move.
👉 The Action:
- You need possibilities for manipulation: Rewind, Comment, Chat, Share Memes.
- At the very least, induce a light action like “Try this.” Through this, the reader enters the creator’s world.
👉 The Reflection: Since I run a blog, the areas for creating physical meaning are limited.
I tried to do Aphorism Calligraphy, but I haven’t practiced since moving to Gori.
But if the rhythm of the hand dies, philosophy becomes boring. I must restart.
5. Conclusion
The three nerves that wake boredom are World, Rhythm, and Body. When these three are alive simultaneously, the content is Alive.
- World: I am inside the world.
- Narrative: Events flow with verb rhythm.
- Body: I can physically intervene.
To not be boring is the act of reviving the sensation of living in the world.
The antidote to boredom is not more stimulation; it is more existence.
5. Next up
[The Phenomenology of Boredom:A Practical Analysis of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika” for Content Creators]
If you enjoyed this article, you can support the project – thank you!