Are we losing the art of being black and bored?

There was a time when boredom was just boredom.

You sat on your grandmother’s sofa. The television was on, but nobody was really watching it. Someone was cooking in the kitchen. Your phone wasn’t there to save you from the silence. You might have picked up a magazine, stared out of the window, or simply existed.

Now, the idea of doing nothing feels almost impossible.

For a generation raised online, boredom has become something to escape rather than experience. The second nothing is happening, we reach for our phones. We scroll. We watch. We post. We consume. And somewhere between all that consuming, I wonder if we have forgotten how to simply be.

For Black communities, this feels particularly interesting because so much of our contemporary culture is built around visibility.

We are documenting everything. The outfit. The holiday. The dinner. The concert. The relationship. The morning routine. The “little life update.”

Even rest has become content. We don’t just go on holiday anymore. We have to have the photo dump. We don’t just get dressed. We have to post the fit. We don’t just discover a new restaurant. We have to make the recommendation.

Life increasingly feels like something happening in front of an invisible audience. And perhaps that is why boredom has become so uncomfortable.

The pressure to always be doing something

There is a particular kind of pressure placed on young Black people to be productive.

Build the career. Start the business. Make the money. Create the platform. Have the aesthetic. Know the culture. Stay informed. Stay visible. Stay relevant. It is exhausting.

And the internet has made it even harder to distinguish between having a life and documenting one.

There is always another trend to understand, another conversation to join, another artist to discover, another opinion to have. Even culturally, we are constantly consuming.

We know what everyone is wearing, listening to, watching and arguing about. But when was the last time you had an experience that belonged entirely to you? Something that wasn’t photographed. Something that wasn’t posted. Something that didn’t become a story.

Boredom can be cultural, too

This isn’t simply about putting your phone down. Boredom has historically created space for culture to emerge.

Think about how many creative movements were born from people simply hanging around each other.

The house party. The record shop. The barber shop. The salon. The community centre. The block. The bedroom. People talked because there was nothing else to do. They argued about music. They exchanged clothes. They recommended films. They introduced friends to friends. Someone brought a record. Someone else had a camera. Someone had an idea.

Culture happened organically because people had somewhere to exist without necessarily having to produce something.

Now, so much of our interaction happens through platforms designed to keep us moving.

The algorithm doesn’t want you to sit with one song for an hour. It wants you to hear the next one. It doesn’t want you to sit with one photograph. It wants you to swipe. It doesn’t want you to think too long about an idea. It wants your reaction. Faster. Funnier. Shorter. More immediate.

And maybe that is changing the way we experience culture itself.

Everything is becoming content

One of the strangest developments of internet culture is that almost anything can become content.

A breakup becomes a storytime. A bad date becomes a TikTok. A family argument becomes a meme. A childhood memory becomes a carousel. A private thought becomes a caption.

There is nothing inherently wrong with sharing. In fact, sharing has allowed Black people across the diaspora to find each other in ways that previous generations couldn’t have imagined.

A girl in London can discover a designer in Lagos. Someone in Paris can find a community in Accra. A young Black creative can realise that the things they thought made them strange are actually part of a much larger cultural language.

That is beautiful. But there is a difference between connection and constant exposure. And I think we’re beginning to feel it.

Because when everything becomes content, privacy starts to feel almost rebellious. Keeping something to yourself becomes a form of resistance.

The beauty of an undocumented life

Maybe we need to bring back experiences that don’t exist online. The night out where nobody takes a picture. The outfit you love that never makes it to Instagram. The song you listen to alone.

The conversation you have with a friend that never becomes a screenshot. The holiday where you don’t spend half the trip looking for the perfect angle. The random Tuesday where absolutely nothing happens.

There is something incredibly liberating about knowing that a moment doesn’t need to be witnessed to be real.

Perhaps we have become so obsessed with proving that we are living that we’ve forgotten to actually live.

And I don’t mean this nostalgically. I don’t think the answer is to reject technology or pretend social media isn’t one of the most important cultural spaces of our generation. It is.

For Black culture especially, the internet has become an archive, a meeting place, a marketplace and a stage.

But perhaps the healthiest relationship we can have with it is one where we remember that the archive isn’t the same thing as the experience.

Some moments should disappear. Some memories should belong only to the people who were there. Some versions of ourselves should never become content.

Maybe being bored is the point

I think there is something deeply creative about having nothing to do. When there is no algorithm telling you what to watch, you might discover what you actually like.

When there is no trend telling you how to dress, you might develop your own style. When there is no conversation demanding your opinion, you might realise you don’t have one. When nobody is watching, you might finally figure out who you are.

And perhaps that is what boredom gives us. Not emptiness. Space. Space to think. Space to imagine. Space to remember. Space to become.

For a generation constantly being asked to perform its identity, productivity and personality online, maybe the most radical thing we can do is occasionally disappear.

Go somewhere without taking a picture. Listen to an album from beginning to end. Sit in a café without filming it. Call your friend instead of sending a voice note. Wear an outfit that nobody sees. Have a thought that never becomes a tweet. Be Black. Be young. Be alive. And, sometimes, be completely and gloriously bored. Because not every moment needs to become culture.

Some moments are allowed to simply be life.

Written by Perrine Bapambe