Web fatigue occurs when you reach that crucial breaking point with the Net and your excitement for all things online turns to exasperation. Net buzz is replaced by Net boredom as one site after the other seems to offer the same information; Web chats and message boards contain the same views, gossip and chatter; and searches churn out irrelevant details with pertinent results lost among them.

The exhilaration you once felt when you got online makes way for exhaustion. You have so many options and so little time. As Odin Wortman put it in his article 'The Future of the Internet: Amazing Predictions', "After all, a walk in the park can still be more fun than the world's coolest Web site."

Browsing through sites and online journals of westerners, one gets the feeling that they possibly do prefer the stroll in the park. "My daily trip around the Web is less interesting than it used to be," reads a post on the site of a writer called John Scalzi who has a few books and articles to his name. He muses on the lack of interest prevalent on many sites: "Even the personal Web sites and 'blogs I visit seem to be struck with Web fatigue. People update less or have simply stopped writing at all, through a combination of disinterest in telling total strangers the intimate details of their lives and/ or perhaps a desire to stop writing about their lives, and to simply go off and live them… Most notably, the sense of the place being the future is replaced by the sense of it becoming the past; that what was meant to happen here has already happened and that what remains doesn't really matter."

"However, the Web is still a novelty in many parts of India. And with quite a few people only paying weekly visits to cyber cafes, surely Net fatigue could not have set in yet.

But those Indians for whom the Internet is no longer a novelty don't seem to be complaining either: "What would substitute surfing in a non-Internet world? I guess you'd go window-shopping, but then you'd get fatigued with that as well," says Gautam Patel, a Mumbai-based lawyer who's been online since 1994. Eight years haven't diminished his enjoyment and he shows no signs of Net fatigue.

Patel, who defines the Web as "something where weird, wonderful and completely obnoxious things are all bundled together," continues to be amazed at the amount of services and facilities online. "I needed a section of an American statute for a case. 15 years ago, where would I have got it?" he asks, "But I went to the Cornell site and they had it exactly as I wanted it. It's all out there; you just have to look in the right place".

Mining for information does seem to prevent fatigue among professionals here. "I may not be as excited as when I first discovered the Web, but I still enjoy going online and researching a book or movie or getting information that I ordinarily wouldn't have access to," says Ruchita Joshi, who works in the content division of a leading Indian portal, "The novelty has worn out, but what excites me is that there's still so much out there that's unexplored. There are new innovations all the time and always something to look forward to."

Joshi, who claims she's "one of those who are very tempted to check mail even on vacation," doesn't see herself tiring soon: "My time spent online could decrease, but that's probably the only thing that would happen. If anything, I see our dependence on the Net increasing."

Personal opinions indicate an increased interest in the Internet. So do statistics and reports worldwide.

A Nielsen NetRatings report released in January 2001 indicated that the Net had acquired hundreds of new users. Besides, people who were already online were spending more time. Evidence of increased use was manifested in online holiday sales that reached $9.8 billion -- more than double the previous year's $4.7 billion figure. The survey concluded that individuals were beginning to see surfing not as a special opportunity but as a regular activity.

More recently the Interactive Consumer Survey, an online study involving US households, conducted by the Boston-based Yankee Group in 2001 confirmed that time spent online remains high. Of households accessing the Internet from home, 45 per cent go online three or more times a day, 21 per cent twice daily and a further 19 per cent once a day. Further, 21 per cent spend more than two hours online per day, 13 per cent spend more than 1.5 hours and 16 per cent spend over an hour daily.

Aditya Kishore, media and entertainment analyst with Yankee Group states, "In the US, as a more mainstream audience gets online and as the novelty value of the Internet wears off, we see Web usage get more function-driven i.e., consumers go online for a specific purpose."

Is Internet fatigue a myth then? "It's more Web rage than fatigue. It has much more to do with the slow speed of connections of local service operators," says Patel, whose views are echoed by many in this Rediff Guide to the Net article.

Fatigued or not, with 1.5 million active Indian Internet subscribers and over 200 cities and towns going online, according to a NASSCOM (National Association of Software Services and Companies) survey, Internet fatigue seems very far away.

As Patel says, "The Internet isn't going anywhere; I think it's here to stay."

Also read: -- Net Rage builds in users -- Net Addiction

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