The People Who Watch a Progress Bar All Day, and What They Say About Themselves
They do not pay. They do not twist. They do not post about it. They keep the tab open. A loose census of the spectators of boring.now, who outnumber the spenders by an estimated forty to one.
The first thing she does in the morning, before she puts on socks, before she fills the kettle, is open a tab. The page she navigates to consists of a single horizontal bar that is presently 12 percent full. She watches it for between thirty seconds and three minutes. Then she puts on socks.
She is one of an estimated several thousand people for whom this ritual has become, in the past three weeks, a part of the day. She is not a customer of boring.now. She has never paid a dollar to advance the bar. She does not intend to. When asked directly whether she would describe what she does as a habit, she said, “I would describe it as keeping an eye on it.”
Operators of the site, who declined to be named, told this publication that for every visitor who pays to interact with the bar, approximately forty arrive, watch, and leave. The site has no login. It has no analytics dashboard for visitors. The forty-to-one figure is, the operators clarified, “a vibe rather than a number.” The vibe checks out.
A taxonomy of the watching
Over the course of two weeks this newsroom solicited, via informal channels and a single ill-advised group chat, brief written accounts from visitors who watch the bar but have not paid into it. We received forty-seven responses. After removing the four submitted by what we are confident was the same person, the remaining forty-three sorted themselves into four loose categories.
The Auditoropens the tab to confirm the bar is still there. The bar is always still there. The Auditor closes the tab. This visit lasts under fifteen seconds. The Auditor performs this ritual one to four times per day and reports that it is “reassuring,” “calming,” or, in one case, “the only thing on the internet I trust to do exactly what it said it would do.”
The Forecastertakes the bar’s current position, divides by the days since the last reset, and announces to the household, the group chat, or the empty kitchen a projected completion date. The Forecaster will revise this figure several times per day. When asked what they expect to happen on the projected completion date, the Forecaster pauses and says, “I’ll have to think about that.”
The Loyalisthas chosen a name from the public leaderboard and roots for them. The Loyalist has not contributed to the leaderboard themselves. The chosen name is usually one of the smaller spenders. One Loyalist explained: “TrustFundTrevor doesn’t need me. NoOneAsked doesn’t need me. longtime_lurkerspent fourteen dollars and is in twelfth place. That’s my guy.”
The Coroner is waiting for the bar to reset. They are not invested in the outcome. They are interested in the aftermath. They watch primarily during the late evening on the theory that resets are more likely to be observed live by people who are not, at the time of the reset, doing anything else. The Coroner has not yet seen a reset. The Coroner is patient.
What they say about themselves
A theme runs through the responses with sufficient consistency to warrant a paragraph of its own. Visitors describe the watching as a low-grade form of company. Several use the phrase “a presence in the corner.” One described it as “the digital equivalent of a houseplant that doesn’t need watering, but does need to be looked at.” Another, less generously: “A screensaver I have to keep paying attention to. By choice. I do not understand it either.”
Dr. Marian Holbrook, a digital sociologist who has now appeared in three of this publication’s features on the site, characterized the spectators as “the natural constituency of any sufficiently quiet thing.” She added: “You don’t need to participate to feel like you’re in the room. The bar moves whether you watch it or not. People find that consoling.”
A note on the title of this article
The word “cult” appears in the headline. We considered softer terms. None fit. A cult, in the sociological sense Dr. Holbrook prefers, is a small voluntary group oriented around an object whose significance is contested by everyone outside the group. The visitors of boring.now meet this definition with embarrassing precision. None of them, when shown a draft of this article in advance, asked us to change the word.
The bar is at 12 percent. Several of the people quoted in this article are, in all likelihood, looking at it right now.