I lean toward “efficient entertainment”, but I do sometimes wonder what that chunk of my free time would look like otherwise.
There is currently a 20yo in Germany, working tirelessly to document every beetle in their province.
The world is large and diverse. Its fine.
I would imagine every generation had their vices (lack of better word) that previous generations harped on. Why back in my day it was MTV (ok, occasionally they were right). But I’m sure when newspapers came out it was similar to tablets and phones. When tv came out, the radio-heads bitched about the “idiot box”. So on and so forth. Any history buffs out there care to elaborate?
Thank you very much for sharing that article! t’s an awesome read.
Pastime I think is the correct term.
And then there’s the voynich manuscript, an old hoax/fantasy book documenting plants and animals that don’t exist, in a made-up language.
That some people have dedicated their lives to “noble” pursuits and others to “wasting time” is entirely a function of who is telling you the story and how much money they stand to make off that other person’s work. You get one life, do what you want with it as best you can.
Generations of monks did nothing but pray, work, and copy books for their entire lives. Is that a waste because they weren’t writing novels instead? Because every one of them wasn’t Mendel, obcessed with growing peas?
Play some video games, work on stuff if you want, or don’t. Most people in history worked very hard and have been completely forgotten, all their works erased. With how easy it is to share your work online, you could even be famous for being good at video games (speed running, lore analysis, gimmick runs, etc) which may not change the world but objectively has more impact on more living people than writing small business websites or small farming rice in South Asia.
But I dont want to cure cancer, I want to make dinosaurs!
This answer scares me from a user named Mechaguana. You aren’t planning anything the rest of us should be aware of are you?
Just in case you’re not in on the joke:
Literally listening to the author’s podcast as I came across this (Elliott Kalan, and he has a few podcasts, but the OG and my favorite is The Flop House).
Yeah the people who were cataloging all the species of beetles in Germany were upper class types. Most people in 1820 were tilling fields or working in desperately terrible factories.
The 1800s gave us the likes of Michael Faraday the 2000s gave us the likes of Hank Green.
Hank Green is awesome.
Don’t forget the insane rates of drinking and alcoholism in the 19th century.
That reminds me I need to swing by the liquor store I’m out of bourbon.
Came here to effectively say this. If we were people in 1820’s Germany, 99% of us wouldn’t have nearly enough spare time to even think about cataloging those beetles.
It’s not video games keeping me from doing my niche interests. It’s my 60 hour a week job consuming all my mental resources. Then I have to go home and do all the other things necessary to keep myself alive. Not much left for getting immersed in cool projects after that.
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The time sink that video games demand
Video games don’t demand your time more than any other hobby… do you avoid woodworking because you’re scared you’ll make an elaborate wardrobe instead of a little box? Do you avoid swimming because you don’t want to go across the English Channel?
You can play small games and you can play for an hour a week, there’s no need to burn every hour of every day on it like a teenager.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts. Please Jeff, you must stop crafting intricate cabinets. No more driftwood tables either. I’m sick of cleaning up resin goddamnit.
I want a TV show about wood working addicts.
If you look around, probably on YouTube, I bet you can find episodes.
I can see some indie games as being easy to pick up and put down without a huge time commitment.* However, we shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of games today, especially some of the “AAA” types, are purposedly designed to be addictive.
*Despite being a small indie game,
CracktorioFactorio will ruin your life. The factory must grow.Bigger games can also be quick. A match of rocket league is like 10 minutes. There’s no story so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want.
We also live in the golden age of indie games anyways, plenty of smaller quality games that don’t demand all of your life. I haven’t played a AAA game in ages. The biggest games I currently play are league of legends and that’s cause I started when it was an indie company before it became AAA and ff14 and I only do ff14 like 3 hours a week or so with my fiancee cause she loves it.
It’s possible, but it can really change the type of games available to you too. I used to love Skyrim and similar, but eventually found I needed a minimum session of 2-3 hrs, otherwise I hadn’t even done any real playing, just inventory management, or getting crafting supplies. These days, with kids and work, I like rally simulator games, it can be satisfying to just do one or two stages, which can take as little as 5-20 mins. But it’s a whole different thing, no story, character development, surprises…a bit like going from watching Kurosawa films to watching the sports highlights.
Agreed. It’s the same reason I occasionally pop in Madden or 2K. I can play a game or two and then just be done with it.
It’s way too easy for people to be exploited through video games, just as with gambling, for it to be “just another hobby”. They can also become addicted.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills, not “achievements”).
But it can also become a symptom of dangerous reality abandonment. The worst for this is in my opinion still better than substance abuse, but a danger nonetheless.
Anything can be addicting. I knew a woman who was literally addicted to maraschino cherries. There are people who are addicted to work.
Anything done to excess is an addiction. So choose yours’ carefully.
Yes, everything can be, but games are designed to be addicting. Most are designed to keep you engaged as long as possible, some even to profit as much as possible from the player.
Almost everything you can buy is designed to be addicting. From video games to peanut butter. Because that’s how you get people to continue to use your specific product.
So choose your addictions carefully and try to keep them as under control as possible. Sadly, some can do that and some cannot.
True. This might be a more personal thing for me, which is why I felt the severity might be higher than it actually is.
Personal bias about addictions is a real thing and you aren’t alone. The shrapnel of an addiction can leave some pretty heavy scars on those who have to live around an addicted person. And it matters not a whit about what the actual addiction is.
If you have those scars, I hope you find internal peace.
Yes, it can be a very nice hobby; with some games you can even show something for the time spent (As in skills
Nah, miss me with this mindset. Not every minute of your life needs to be productive, you should have at least one hobby that you can’t show something for the time spent.
Agreed, not every minute needs to be productive.
Hobbies (like woodworking, to which I was trying to relate my text) can be very self affirming, especially if you get very good at them. I was thinking about this self affirmation, not about productivity when I was writing that.
For AAA, live service, “games as an industry,” sure. However, there are plenty of examples of games that are passion projects, respect your time, and have mutual respect with their community. You just won’t see them advertised on billboards.
This sounds like all of the people who were complaining about comic books back in the day. Or books before that.
I don’t like this thing, therefore it’s terrible and everyone should hate it and I am not prepared to have a discussion about it.
It’s the same thing every time a new far reaching tech is invented even the printing press was looked down on
It is a crap shoot if an autist’s fixation winds up being something beneficial to a single soul.
Which is okay. Focusing on a happy life is imho better than to strive for becoming an efficient worker in some way or another. There is a lot more to life than this.
Well, it’s not to say they wouldn’t be happy with the beetle cataloging. But yeah, you never know how either the beetle catalog or the sonic ring tutorial might positively affect another human being - so they’re both contributions. I find that if you’re doing most anything in life with true joy and enthusiasm, you’re contributing!
They still have the option to catalogue beetles, that was never off the table. But they chose Sonic because it makes them more happy.
I was just referring back to the OP post, where I thought it was describing how humans only have so much time in the world, and focus to use - so are modern time-spenders like video games hogging/stealing (thief) that valuable time/focus or not?
In this instance, did they “choose” Sonic, or did Sonic negate the chance of the same skillset being applied to beetles? Sonic might make them more happy - or maybe they never found out how much beetles would make them happier.
The tricky thing is that there’s less “real” stuff to be done. Take my silly passion for rocks/minerals as an example. Back in the day I would’ve happily made geological maps but my country has already been fully mapped in detail. Similarly the guy in OP’s post can look up the bugs of his area online because they’ve already been documented. Videogames can give us a sense of exploration and progress that is hard to find in real life these days.
There are more unanswered questions in science than ever before, but researching them has become less accessible
Hey we share an interest!
My family would always say “why don’t you do something with minerals?” And usually I say “well there’s no job that is just admiring dioptase, and I really don’t want to work for the enemy (oil companies)” lol
What if I told you that you can do both things?
You really can’t, though. There are a finite number of hours in each day.
It’s not an issue, since we have 10x more such guys than in 1820.
I thought they were going to say now there’s a 26 part video on beetles. The beetle man never went anywhere. He’s also on YouTube lol
I can’t remember the name of the channel, but I’ve followed a guy rehabilitating a grocery lobster, one that took care otters, another with sea monkeys, and people just cleaning carpets. People with niche interests didn’t go anywhere. If anything, they’re more accessible because of the internet.
Leon the lobster! The channel just uploaded a new video a week ago. Channel name is Brady Brentwood, if you want the update. I haven’t watched it myself yet.
Thank you!
Oh man, those videos of people cleaning rugs are fantastic.
Right? That and power washing videos. Just 👌🏾
The worst thing about (thing I don’t like) is that people do it instead of (working towards [goal]).
Why aren’t you (working towards [goal]) ?
And yes, I get the whole undertone that this is about people with autism or hyper focus or whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t make it any funny.
