Meet Norman. He’s a balding, middle-aged man who lives alone an an apartment with his cat, also named Norman. His wife left him for a younger man a while ago. His son never calls him. He works in an office, and in the evenings, he watches re-runs of CSI. He rarely goes outside because he hates getting dusty. Norman likes being clean. He goes to the bank on Tuesdays. He’s trying to lose some weight. He lives an ordinary life.

Norman is a fictional character whose story is being written moment by moment by strangers on the Internet in the Reddit community Life of Norman, which has more than 57,000 subscribers. The group started a couple years ago as a sort-of joke, a mockery of a curmudgeonly fellow named Norman Tebbut pictured in a newspaper spoof. The joke grew into a subreddit where redditors would make up stories about Norman’s sad life, and laugh at his perpetual loserhood. But eventually, something interesting happened: The stories started changing, losing their punchlines and becoming more subtle, more complex, more real. People started to like Norman, and even identify with him.

Now, all day, every day, redditors construct the intricacies of the life of this unremarkable man, mostly in 500 words or less. Reading through the titles feels like watching paint dry. Norman goes into his office building. Norman makes a steak for dinner. Norman receives a text message. Norman does the laundry. Norman meets a friend and they talk about how they both used to enjoy opening Microsoft Paint, drawing some squiggles, and coloring in the spaces. Life of Norman is possibly the most action-deficient fanfiction series in existence—and that’s what makes it so compelling to its creators and audience. Fans have animated Norman, created a Choose Your Own Norman Adventure website and created a Life of Norman spin-off site, Life of Lisa, which pieces together the story of Norman’s fictional coworker Lisa, who lives an equally mundane life.

“Norman is the anti-hero in the dullest sense,” says Cameron Crane, a moderator of the Life of Norman subreddit. This month, Crane releasing a book titled The Book of Norman, made of many of the best crowdsourced Norman stories (proceeds will go to cat shelters, because … Norman). “In normal life, not all of us are the heroes we thought we would be as kids. But we all are the protagonists to our own lives, and that’s why Norman is the closest possible thing to a character who can be mirrored on through the readers. Which is sad, but only if you choose to look at it that way.”

One example of a successfully crafted Norman story: Norman yawns at work by Reddit user NudeWithSocks.

Halfway through his day at work, Norman yawned. “Oh no, don’t start doing that!” a coworker joked. Norman chuckled. “Yeah, I know.” “Rough night?” “You could say that,” Norman lied. Norman didn’t have a rough night. Norman had gotten eight hours of restful sleep. Norman was just always a little tired.

Redditors responded:

And here’s another story. Norman buys some Coke by TheFrenchJake.

Norman was grocery shopping, where he decided to buy two cans of Coke, not diet or caffeine-free, just plain Coke. He knew the sugar was bad for him but he was feeling adventurous and wanted to treat himself. “One for Saturday night, and one for Sunday night.” he thought. Saturday evening and Norman is eating the takeaway he has ordered from his favourite take-out. He fancies one of his Cokes, however he already drank his Saturday Coke that afternoon whilst sitting out on his patio. He is thirsty and really fancies a Coke. “Better not,” thought Norman, “this Coke is for Sunday.” That night, Norman is asleep by 10pm. Not having that second Coke was a good idea.

For whatever reason—maybe people are finally over the one-upping rat race on Facebook, or perhaps they crave security in insecure times—Boring is having a moment. An antithesis to FOMO, the constant wash of envy emblematic of the digital era of party pics and #blessed hashtags, there are now declarations of JOMO, which stands for the “joy of missing out.” On New Year’s Eve, my social media feeds were flooded with snapshots of friends proudly forgoing a night of bar hopping in favor of cozying up fuzzy socks and Making of a Murderer episodes. I figured it was a getting-older thing—I guess that’s just how nature takes its course when you reach your thirties. You know, with sweatpants. But it seems that the Boast of Boring spans generations.

Twenty-three-year-old pop star Selena Gomez is frequently quoted as an embracer of her homebody status (“I go home, I eat, I eat, I sit on my couch,” she told a red carpet interviewer of her usual holiday plans). On Snapchat, the popular self-destructing video messaging app, teens share unfiltered views of their mostly unthrilling daily events—getting a haircut or eating pizza, for instance. Introverts are (quietly) coming into the spotlight, thanks in large part to Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking and the website it inspired, Quiet Revolution. And boring is seen as a sign of health in romantic relationships (When “watching a highly anticipated movie or a badass TV show without your partner feels like a serious betrayal,” you’ve reached a critical point as a couple, according to one Internet list).

The entire concept of boring is fading away because boring no longer is. As writer Cosmo Landesman wrote in his Spectator piece “When did it become OK to be boring?,” the shift occurred with the rise in confidence of the middle class. In the 1970s, he writes, “suburban life, the soulless job, the grind of the daily commute, the dull dinner parties, 2.4 kids—these were the common clichés that characterised middle-class life.” But now middle-classers, particularly those online, wear the trivial bits of their lives with pride. Landesman writes, “They share the most ordinary and mundane stuff and, just like the stars of reality TV, they never stop and wonder: am I boring you? Yes you are, but it’s OK. We all do it now. And it has its benefits. As someone plagued with trying to be funny or interesting all his life, it’s a great relief not to have to try so bloody hard.”

The Life of Norman moderators believe that Norman gets at the “essence of normcore,” a vaguely defined term that was intended to mean “finding liberation in nothing special.” And while Norman is a little bit different to each person who encounters him, his popularity reveals humanity’s quest for something real. Community member BreakTheLevins explains it like this:

“Norman is just an amplified version of all of our collective quirks, qualms, and love of the familiar. It seems weird to a lot of people that so many of us derive so much joy from the day to day monotony of a fictional character, but that fictional character is something we created. And in a lot of ways, he’s like a mirror. Maybe I’m too weirdly invested in this, but to me that’s something special. There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?”

Perhaps Life of Norman is sort of The Truman Show of the fiction universe. There’s that scene in the film when master manipulator Cristof tells activist Sylvia that Truman can leave at any time—if he really wanted to. “If his was more than just a vague ambition, if he was absolutely determined to discover the truth, there’s no way we could prevent him,” he says. “I think what distresses you, really, caller, is that ultimately Truman prefers his cell, as you call it.” Maybe Norman likes his boring life. And who are we to say he shouldn’t? Crane explains, “One of the most lovely character traits to Norman is that he usually finds the silver lining in life. Sure, he has no hair, his gut is bigger than he’d like it to be, his wife left him and his son never calls him, but he still has Norman, his cat. He still has CSI. He yearns for a different, more adventurous life, but at the same time, the things he can monotonously count on are what makes him happy.”

But then again, in the end, Truman ditched the chains, and maybe that’s what The Life of Norman writers and readers want to do, too. After writing 40 stories about Norman and following his journey so closely, Crane believes he’s drawn to the character partly because he’s an example of what he doesn’t want for his life. Redditors will sometimes tell him that they’re grateful for Norman, sharing with him that they’ve been depressed and stuck in a rut and that Norman serves as a wake-up call.

That’s true for him, too. “At the heart of it, I think I’m just afraid, afraid of becoming Norman,” Crane says. “Norman isn’t a role model. It’s okay to be like Norman, but you shouldn’t accept it. He’s comfortable, and the only way to get ahead in life is to make yourself uncomfortable.”