I don’t know if it’s a ND thing or not but sometimes I realize I use games a crutch when I’m stressed or have a lot to do. Because games have simple repetitive tasks with clear goals and ways to accomplish them, I find them comforting in some way? It’s like “I don’t know the next step for this thing going on in my life but I know how to get this special item in this game” and it just makes life make sense for a few hours. I don’t play super often. Probably less than 10 hours a week. But I do notice myself reaching for games the same way I bite my nails or pick at skin. Like a nervous habit.
Gamer purge for hexbear when?
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/uj I wonder if the distinction is between mentally passive and active hobbies… there’s def a difference between vegging out and watching mindless TV, and like reading non-fiction or learning a new skill, etc.
What is with the gamer interiority complex on here? I swear people used to commit to the
Christman argument against videogamesLiberalization of the hexbear around the midterm elections.
Time enjoyed is never wasted
spoiler
Just make sure you’re actually enjoying yourself
-someone with 2k+ hours in Destiny 2
That’s true, but there are enjoyable things that improve you and enjoyable things that don’t. I usually feel better about the time I spend on the first type of things.
That’s cool! Just remember that feeling joy and forming happy memories is justification enough!
Hexbear and Bluesky are indistinguishable in the way most users are liberals and also extremely susceptible to baitI mean, you could make the same argument about books? “I can learn things from a book”- yeah, and you can learn things from video games. You can also learn nothing from a book.
I think people go “video games” and think it’s nothing but Call of Duty, meanwhile you have Expedition 33 out there making people argue about unreliable narratives, abuse of authority, grief, so much fucking grief. etc
Art and experiencing art is like one of the main if not the main, points of existence? Telling our little stories and experiencing other people’s little stories in return to grow and further understand other people and our surroundings.
Not even getting into puzzle video games. Like, the amount of research that has been done on Tetris is mind-boggling.
Both are hobbies, what’s the difference. I hate gamers btw.
I thought we were friends! Nah, I’m kidding, I generally hate gamers even though I myself am one…
Playing videogames is completely non productive and like all hobbies that’s what makes it based. “Wasting” your time and potential from a capitalist lens is good and should be encouraged. Life should be enjoyed to the extent we are ethically able. Production should not be the goal
Wasting time like life isn’t a gift to be enjoyed. What? Is your life some kind of obligation? Some kind of resource to squander? God’s going to want some kind of P&L report at the pearly gates? If God’s an author then they’ll be there excited to see you again, “So, what did you think of the sunset? Pretty cool, right?! I was experimenting with purpose, love, connection, and joy. What did you think?”
Most of the time you can sit in a park at sunset even if you’ve gotten a pretty raw deal or you’ve fucked up pretty bad.
i believe you will come to find that the purpose of all life is oboemaxxing.
The oboe is as productive as videogames, broadly, but I’d argue anything thats broadly fighting entropy is productive even as a hobby. I think the understanding here, that productivity is just what you do in the context of wage labour or similar isn’t that great. Cooking, fixing shit, bugfixing open source projects, anything like that. I’d go further, it’s probably good for one of your hobbys to be something like that.
If we’re attributing value, I like to think that, within capitalism, a good hobby is one that fosters connections and cooperation between groups of people.
Games that develop cooperation and combat social alienation and anti-social behaviour? Based.
Any other type? Life-waster at best.
I disagree solely because some of us need quiet by ourselves hobby times so that we have the energy and capacity to be intentionally present socially. Not every hobby can or should be social. As someone who loves social activities I absolutely need my own quiet time or I can’t be who I want to be with others
I agree with the sentiment, and I feel the same way most of the time (work has been intense and I have social anxiety).
I don’t know enough games to give good examples and make my point, but I guess a “good game” category wouldn’t necessarily be built on multiplayer strategizing or whatever, but would also include stuff like Stardew Valley and Don’t Starve.
I’m thinking of a specific feeling, the one I used to get when I was in a Tolstoy’s short stories binge. There’s this warmness that I rarely get from any other literature, and I think it mostly came from the connections between the characters, or between me and the characters. I felt warm, included, even hugged sometimes. Then, back in real life, connecting to other people was infused with this magic that I can’t explain.
The reading itself wasn’t (immediately) a collective effort, but it was instrumental in pruning anti-social behaviour in teenage me.
so reading books is wasting your life too i suppose. i think you’re painting vast amount of art with a broad brush.
Trying to describe how gaming was different than playing music made me realize how similar they could be, I agree it has a huge dependence on the game itself. Playing music generally fosters cooperation and teamwork and the use of intellect/mental energy that is superior to what the average western capitalist-derived games evoke. Good music can soothe emotional distress and enhance class consciousness. Good games can do this too, and bad music can have socially negative effects.
As a hobby, either is fine. As a skill for personal and social development, I would debate that music is superior, but that particular games could probably be just as adequate. In my own experience, even the best games do not ease my mind or enhance focus like playing music does.
Art in general has a possibility for both of these (social and skill development) that is way more intense than with video-games IMO, and I think this is the threshold that the latter still didn’t cross towards an art form.
Of course, there’s different types of art just as there are different types of games. Making art can also be alienating and toxic, but there is still nothing quite like playing music in a gathering of friends, or getting together to make paintings, a silly short film or even a sand castle at the beach.
By the way, some of my fondest memories are of a bunch of friends going to someone’s house to play GTA San Andreas, FIFA or Need for Speed for the whole day
This is just a single unit of the occasional existential spiral i get when I remember that meaning is a construct and nothing about reality contains it. But then I pull up out of it by concluding that there is then no basis for any vague programmed anxiety about being productive, and that makes me feel better on a deep level
playing an instrument is an infinitely better use of your time, but that doesn’t mean gaming is pointless. i play games to give myself a break from guitar practice. both hobbies can coexist, and rest is important.
keep on tweeting though!
I have never fully understood [why my children prefer to stay with their mother and play video games over the weekend instead of coming over to my apartment and watch me play the oboe]
[repeating as a standalone comment]
If we’re attributing value, I like to think that, within capitalism, a good hobby is one that fosters connections and cooperation between groups of people.
Games that develop cooperation and/or disrupts social alienation and anti-social behaviour? Based.
Any other type? Life-waster at best.
Man who has 1600 posts with no likes on Bluesky angrily tries to explain why other people are wasting their time by having fun
Haha imagine making 1600 posts on some random irrelevant social media
I’ll have you know I’ve accrued dozens of upbears over the years!
I don’t post here on my “free” time, I post here when Im “outside”.
it’s relevant to me, dammit [cries]
Reading these in my head in Squidward’s and Patrick’s voices
