I want it, and I want it NOW!

How the internet has made us slaves to instant gratification

In pre-internet times, before the age of pointing and clicking, few things were immediately available. You had to wait for stuff to happen.

This was especially true for entertainment and leisure.

TV shows and series were aired weekly. If you didn’t want to lose the plot in, say, The Fugitive or Yes, Prime Minister, then you’d stay in that evening, otherwise you’d have to find out from someone else what happened.

If you didn’t have the latest hit music, you waited for the weekly Top-10 hit parade on the radio or TV. If you wanted to go to a music concert, you stood in line at a store or outlet to buy your ticket.

There were typically only three weather forecasts per day: morning, noon and night. Those were the days when the weather still had the power to surprise.

If you took a picture with your camera, you waited until the entire roll of film – usually 24 or 36 exposures – was used up. That could take weeks, especially if you only took pictures on special occasions like birthdays or vacations. You then dropped off your roll of film at a photo-processing lab to be developed, which would take another few days. By then, the memory of some of the photos may well have faded.

The letter from your loved one that you were eagerly waiting for might not arrive in the mail for at least another week. And so on.

These cycles, imposed by the technological limitations of the time, were as natural as the rising of the sun and the passing of the seasons. You couldn’t hurry them along any more than you could make water boil faster.

Today, however, we have been conditioned by the internet to expect things to happen quickly. If you don’t get an instant reply to your text message or email, your most likely reaction is that something’s wrong, or that the other person doesn’t want to reply. The fact that they might simply be busy doesn’t even cross your mind.

Instant gratification has almost become an inalienable right, along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want it, and I want it now! A ten-minute delay on the pizza you’ve just ordered feels like an hour; a thirty-second wait for a file to download feels like an eternity. Some companies promise to deliver your groceries in just fifteen minutes – as if anything longer would ruin your entire day.

The internet offers us such a wide range of products and services that we no longer take the time to really try something out. Why bother when there’s another one just a click away? Our fingers swipe up in a blur, and our mouse hovers constantly on different options as we embark on a perpetual quest for the next best thing.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who sometimes spends half an hour or more browsing titles on Netflix, and yet is unable to select one to watch! And once I do, it’s entirely possible that I’ll flip to something new if it doesn’t hook me within 20 minutes. Even in music, the days of long intros are over as songwriters try and get to the chorus as quickly as possible before impatient listeners flip to the next song (artist royalties only kick in after 30 seconds).

How different it all was before the internet, when we had a natural degree of patience that would seem almost virtuous to people today. Why, Patience even used to be a girl’s name – though its popularity must have taken a serious hit since the internet!

Michael Gentle is the author of Life Before the Internet, a fascinating look back at a slower, simpler time, when Amazon was just a river. For similar articles, click here.

Image by vecstock on Freepik

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