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Since a young age, we’ve all been taught that anything important is worth the wait. In contemporary times, waiting has been engrained in our culture from waiting for a website to load to waiting for our food to arrive to even waiting days in lines for clothes. There is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when the wait ends and we are rewarded for our patience.
I had the pleasure of meeting the Mac’s spinning rainbow wheel several times just trying to get the gif above (Giphy’s site is not a fan of my laptop). But after several achingly long minutes of my laptop trying to comprehend the massive amounts of moving pixels on the screen, I was able to slowly quickly copy the url. This lead me to consider several things. Should I have used a different site? Should I get a better laptop? Instantly, I was looking for alternatives for waiting to be obsolete. In Jason Farman’s article “Fidget Spinners”, he claims that, “Waiting will never be eliminated and, deep down, we don’t want it to be.” I’m going to have to disagree on that one Jason.
When I saw the multitude of gifs on Giphy begin to slow down, anxiety overcame me. When everything had frozen, a piece of me died and I cursed at my own stupidity as Giphy had crashed on me many times before in class. While the loading icon does imply that something is happening, it brought me little comfort to see the little rainbow wheel pop up on my screen. There was only frustration and I wanted to take my anger out on the stupid, colorful icon that was unnecessarily happy. Saying that we are joyful after waiting X amount of time to receive what we want seems like an equivalent of our parents making us finish our homework before watching TV. It is merely a chore and an obstacle set upon us by outside forces.
In conclusion, waiting is a cruel mistress. Sometimes, the end results is rewarding. Sometimes, it can be the bearer of bad news. My friends at Georgia Tech who have had their programs crash on them after hours of work will have more information on the latter.
Posted from our fascination by Tony N.