I lean toward "efficient entertainment", but I do sometimes wonder what that chunk of my free time would look like otherwise.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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People can spend their time how they want, but when I hear people bragging about spending literally thousands of hours on game X and/or Y, it kind of makes me sad.
That being said, sometimes they're well adjusted and satisfied people and that's just what they want to do with the majority of their free time.
I do hear people make those kind of comments, but then in other conversations I hear them talking about how they're dissatisfied, life is unfair, their life sucks, they can't find a girlfriend, school is stupid, they hate their job, they have no friends, etc., those are the people that make me feel sad.
Have you ever heard of rat park? People who are deeply satisfied with their lives (good job, happy and stable relationships, food and housing security) don't typically spend thousands of hours mindlessly playing games or doing drugs or other forms of escapism. Addiction can affect anyone but it has a stronger hold on those with nothing else.
Those people are psychologically manipulated to spend money. There's no legislation for this sort of thing so they will remain abused forever since this is a huge money maker.
One of the things I'd like to put on the table is that most people who spend thousands of hours on video games are actively engaging on a mental level, most people spend thousands of hours in front of a TV basically disassociating. Could I be going out training to climb everest sure, that's not what I want to do, and the same could be said for most people who don't play video games.
If someone was bragging about the thousands of hours of television they watch and was then later complaining about their dissatisfaction with life, I would feel the same way. It isn't watching TV, playing video games, or training for climbing everest that's the problem, per se. It's how much a given activity consumes of your finite time, how much of an effect that has on the rest of your life, and your level of satisfaction with that exchange.
Learning to play music, having friends and a social life, being really good at video game X or Y, having a significant other, excelling in your career, educating yourself, and so on: these are all time-intensive tasks and there are only so many hours in a day. Letting any element of your life consume a majority of your time necessarily comes with sacrifices in other areas.
I get sad when people can't seem to connect the sacrifice of having thousands upon thousands of hours invested in various video games with the dissatisfaction in their lives caused by not giving time to other areas. Again, I know people who balance video games into their life and are satisfied. I also know people that basically game and work and that's it, and they're satisfied. I'm not judging how "full" someone's life is, as far as that goes.
I just sometimes see people that think it's unfair they don't just automatically get those other aspects of their life, but they are simultaneously unwilling to give up some gaming to spend the time working on them. Sure, gaming is easy, immediate, and can be fulfilling. But, it can also feel like "what did I do for the last ten years that weren't in-game accomplishments in games I don't play anymore?" That's really up to the individual.
That's fair. I guess my point was more it isn't a problem unique to video games and people tend to overlook their vices and say well at least I'm not addicted to .