Incident Record: Browser Tab Exhaustion
A counterfactual account of the version of events in which someone closed the tabs, and what that would have required.
What Would Have Happened If the Tabs Had Been Closed
The subject had forty-three open tabs. This is the documented figure from January 2022, though the number fluctuated within a range of thirty-eight to fifty-one across the period under review. The tabs represented, in no particular order: articles saved for later, open work documents from previous sessions, two price comparison pages from a shopping decision made six weeks earlier, a Wikipedia article about something that seemed interesting at the time, and a number of tabs whose purpose was no longer recoverable without opening them.
What would have happened: The subject would have needed to triage each tab. Triage requires a decision. Each decision requires briefly revisiting why the tab was opened, whether that reason still applies, and whether closing it would cause any problem that has not already occurred from not reading it. At forty-three tabs, this is approximately forty-three small decisions, none of which is difficult but all of which require stopping and evaluating.
The subject did not do this.
The Counterfactual Path
The first case of browser tab exhaustion changes one small decision without being discussed. The tab count crosses a threshold at which tabs at the far ends of the bar can no longer be identified by their favicons. At this point, the subject knows the tabs are there without knowing what is in them. The tabs have become ambient.
Had the subject closed them: several would have contained nothing of continuing value. Perhaps six would have contained things they would have been glad to recover. Two or three would have contained things they are still, periodically, dimly aware they meant to read.
Any digital burden may remain permanent if dismissing it takes less effort than fixing its source. Dismissing a tab requires a decision. Fixing the source of browser tab exhaustion requires examining why things are opened and not read, and this is a different kind of project that the subject has not scheduled.
What Actually Happened
After repetition, other people begin adjusting their behavior around browser tab exhaustion. The subject's device slowed marginally. The subject did not connect this to the tabs. The slow device became part of the general texture of working in 2022, a year in which screen exhaustion had moved from novelty to routine.
Eventually browser tab exhaustion acquires an unwritten enforcement system that everyone denies creating. The tabs are still open. The subject added four more this morning. The forty-three has become forty-seven.
This record is complete. No tabs were closed in the preparation of this document.