Commentary: I wasted my 20s. (Joshua Fluke) #grindreel
22 July 2019 [link youtube]
#quitvideogames #quiteverything #grindreel
Youtube Automatic Transcription
oh man that's what I would I would just
go back I have spent so much time playing video games in my life and well I had a good time I had fun I could have just made so much more progress seriously I have maxed out every class and Wow in every single expansion except for the most recent one where I decided to really get it together that's a lot of time that's a lot of time in just that game and I don't play it just Wow or it didn't play just wow League of Legends and dota 2 the game just resets and you try to do better next time people live with this strange assumption that moderation is the mother of all virtues when the reality is moderation becomes the excuse for them never cultivating never developing any virtues at all this guy sincerely regrets the hundreds of hours he wasted playing video games but he refuses to come to the obvious inexorable conclusion that he should not play video games at all and he refuses to recommend to his audience that they quit playing video games entirely instead what he seems to endorse his moderation it's not clear to me what that really means if you think that cocaine is something bad and unhealthy and evil and wrong you're not going to tell people to be moderate users of cocaine even if we set aside the issue of illegalities criminality danger even if we set aside the health risks the negative effect on your heart on various internal organs even if we set aside the issue of brain damage if you just look at cocaine and say hey you know what if you get into using this cocaine stuff it's gonna lead you into a life that's kind of reckless heedless dangerous to yourself and others this is really gonna have a kind of negative impact on your character development on your education on your career in that simple sense it's bad and evil and wrong therefore don't become a moderate drug user absolutely refused absolutely quit cocaine today now and for the rest your life that's the conclusion to come to on cocaine but you had this guy sitting here and it's like he can't shake off this habit of mind you know don't don't throw the baby out with the bathwater there is no baby in that bathwater there's no reason to be moderate here there's no benefit that's gonna excuse the compromises you're making and it's interesting listen to this next little segment listen to what he has to say he describes the effect of playing video games these hundreds of hours as being like a lion tamer forcing the lion to go to the hoop is being like you know training a dog but in the end the dog in question is not even learning anything as remotely useful as how to jump through a hoop to please its master if I could go back in time and tell myself one thing it'd probably be to stop spending so much time on video game stop levelling up in a video game that's gonna come out with a sequel and you're gonna lose all your progress and you're gonna have to do it again anyways you do something so that you can get something so you can do that thing again it's just a giant circle like in Diablo 3 you get better gear so that you can kill stuff faster so that you can get better gear to kill stuff faster it's just a giant loop that's what most RPG games are a lot of people get lost in that and it's progress that you can't hold on to and you're living inside the realm of someone else's rules and constructs in that you know I would go back in time be like make progress in life where it matters Josh things that you can hold on to things that you can move forward with instead of these things that get reset with a patch at some other person's discretion the next thing I would go back in time and tell myself would be is this what you want Josh everyone else says this is what you're supposed to do be happy you're supposed to go to college you're supposed to get a degree that's in something safe and good that pays a lot and just will take care of you and then you'll get a job and you'll work that job and you'll have a nice life so what does that mean nice life does that mean my mortgage is paid every month but I am miserable what does that mean I don't know what that means I didn't ever ask myself that question I just kept doing what I was supposed to do I kept going where I was supposed to go and I kept trying to make myself happy and it was never it was not it wasn't it didn't work didn't work we're using here short clips of a much longer video to describe the video as a whole he discusses his experience playing video games as meaningless dissatisfactory repetition that he found enjoyable or challenging or fun but that he ultimately decided was vacuous empty self-defeating didn't make it happy he describes his experience with University in much the same way meaningless frustrating repetitious didn't make him happy and he says many times that he looks back on it and he wonders why he never asked himself the profound questions why he never asked himself hey what was he really trying to do here what was he willing to go he describes his experience in the workplace sounds like he had a conventional job in something like engineering or Electrical Engineering he got a degree in engineering and got a job of that kind for just about two years he describes it in exactly the same way profoundly dissatisfactory repetitious to humanizing but these things are not parallel in reality the gratification he had from playing video games the hundreds of hours he was investing in playing video games right the sense of reward or entertainment he was getting from that it was sustaining the other elements of his life that otherwise might have been unsustainable like when I talked to people about marijuana use they often claim that the effects of marijuana are relatively minor you know compared to heroin or cocaine therefore shouldn't be taken too seriously one of the most insidious things about marijuana is precisely that it can make unbearable things in your life seem bearable right it can prevent you from challenging yourself from challenging others from asking the questions you know what am I doing here what am I doing with my life why am I making these compromises so looking at this video as a whole there's a really interesting three-way parallel here his total dissatisfaction with video games his still dissatisfaction with the university experience his total dissatisfaction with the world of employment that for him was at least monetarily very satisfactory he very rapidly bought two different vehicles in a house he mentioned that the house was really cheap it's definitely possible the house cost less than one of the vehicles in the United States America that's this quite possible you can get a cheap house but nevertheless in some obvious ways his experience with the university of employment delivered in exactly the ways that were promised for many of us that's not the case but he saw in this ultimately the same kind of fruitless game as he just described it here so strangely he feels that he's struggling to jump through these hoops you know being held up by the lion tamer or being held up by the dog he feels like he's trying to satisfy these goals in a reality of someone else's creation I guess I have some kind of new goals for myself new things that I want to do I'd like to make a million dollars by the time I'm 30 I don't know how am I do it yet so in the end we have a case study here of a guy who was disillusioned with video games but his disillusionment was narrowly with video games only right he was disillusioned in the sense that he thought playing video games would make him happy and he now realizes that isn't the path to true happiness he thought studying hard and I don't know achieving something university would make him happy and he was disillusioned and he thought that was game conclusion that was not the path to true happiness all right he had whatever struggles in the workplace he mentioned that he read various kind of books about the philosophy of Management and being an employee changed his view on these things he became disillusioned with the corporate rat race with whatever professional job he had with whatever career he had in engineering he decided that's not the true path to happiness he never got disillusioned with happiness itself right it's like someone who's trying to get high you tried to get high by huffing glue trying to get high by drinking vodka trying to get high with marijuana cocaine LSD and someone who gets disillusioned with various methods of getting high but they never get disillusioned with the high itself he's yet to sit down and realize it's the pursuit of happiness itself that's tragically flawed I hope you don't ever earn that million dollars you say you're gonna earn by age 30 and by the way he was already 29 years old when he made this video so we'd have less than one year to make a million dollars I hope you don't make any terrible regrettable ethical compromises to try to make it focus at one year cuz it's not easy to do if keeping everything aboveboard but if you do you're up for the same kind of disillusionment you can do a whole lot of things with $1,000,000 but it can't ever make you happy [Music]
go back I have spent so much time playing video games in my life and well I had a good time I had fun I could have just made so much more progress seriously I have maxed out every class and Wow in every single expansion except for the most recent one where I decided to really get it together that's a lot of time that's a lot of time in just that game and I don't play it just Wow or it didn't play just wow League of Legends and dota 2 the game just resets and you try to do better next time people live with this strange assumption that moderation is the mother of all virtues when the reality is moderation becomes the excuse for them never cultivating never developing any virtues at all this guy sincerely regrets the hundreds of hours he wasted playing video games but he refuses to come to the obvious inexorable conclusion that he should not play video games at all and he refuses to recommend to his audience that they quit playing video games entirely instead what he seems to endorse his moderation it's not clear to me what that really means if you think that cocaine is something bad and unhealthy and evil and wrong you're not going to tell people to be moderate users of cocaine even if we set aside the issue of illegalities criminality danger even if we set aside the health risks the negative effect on your heart on various internal organs even if we set aside the issue of brain damage if you just look at cocaine and say hey you know what if you get into using this cocaine stuff it's gonna lead you into a life that's kind of reckless heedless dangerous to yourself and others this is really gonna have a kind of negative impact on your character development on your education on your career in that simple sense it's bad and evil and wrong therefore don't become a moderate drug user absolutely refused absolutely quit cocaine today now and for the rest your life that's the conclusion to come to on cocaine but you had this guy sitting here and it's like he can't shake off this habit of mind you know don't don't throw the baby out with the bathwater there is no baby in that bathwater there's no reason to be moderate here there's no benefit that's gonna excuse the compromises you're making and it's interesting listen to this next little segment listen to what he has to say he describes the effect of playing video games these hundreds of hours as being like a lion tamer forcing the lion to go to the hoop is being like you know training a dog but in the end the dog in question is not even learning anything as remotely useful as how to jump through a hoop to please its master if I could go back in time and tell myself one thing it'd probably be to stop spending so much time on video game stop levelling up in a video game that's gonna come out with a sequel and you're gonna lose all your progress and you're gonna have to do it again anyways you do something so that you can get something so you can do that thing again it's just a giant circle like in Diablo 3 you get better gear so that you can kill stuff faster so that you can get better gear to kill stuff faster it's just a giant loop that's what most RPG games are a lot of people get lost in that and it's progress that you can't hold on to and you're living inside the realm of someone else's rules and constructs in that you know I would go back in time be like make progress in life where it matters Josh things that you can hold on to things that you can move forward with instead of these things that get reset with a patch at some other person's discretion the next thing I would go back in time and tell myself would be is this what you want Josh everyone else says this is what you're supposed to do be happy you're supposed to go to college you're supposed to get a degree that's in something safe and good that pays a lot and just will take care of you and then you'll get a job and you'll work that job and you'll have a nice life so what does that mean nice life does that mean my mortgage is paid every month but I am miserable what does that mean I don't know what that means I didn't ever ask myself that question I just kept doing what I was supposed to do I kept going where I was supposed to go and I kept trying to make myself happy and it was never it was not it wasn't it didn't work didn't work we're using here short clips of a much longer video to describe the video as a whole he discusses his experience playing video games as meaningless dissatisfactory repetition that he found enjoyable or challenging or fun but that he ultimately decided was vacuous empty self-defeating didn't make it happy he describes his experience with University in much the same way meaningless frustrating repetitious didn't make him happy and he says many times that he looks back on it and he wonders why he never asked himself the profound questions why he never asked himself hey what was he really trying to do here what was he willing to go he describes his experience in the workplace sounds like he had a conventional job in something like engineering or Electrical Engineering he got a degree in engineering and got a job of that kind for just about two years he describes it in exactly the same way profoundly dissatisfactory repetitious to humanizing but these things are not parallel in reality the gratification he had from playing video games the hundreds of hours he was investing in playing video games right the sense of reward or entertainment he was getting from that it was sustaining the other elements of his life that otherwise might have been unsustainable like when I talked to people about marijuana use they often claim that the effects of marijuana are relatively minor you know compared to heroin or cocaine therefore shouldn't be taken too seriously one of the most insidious things about marijuana is precisely that it can make unbearable things in your life seem bearable right it can prevent you from challenging yourself from challenging others from asking the questions you know what am I doing here what am I doing with my life why am I making these compromises so looking at this video as a whole there's a really interesting three-way parallel here his total dissatisfaction with video games his still dissatisfaction with the university experience his total dissatisfaction with the world of employment that for him was at least monetarily very satisfactory he very rapidly bought two different vehicles in a house he mentioned that the house was really cheap it's definitely possible the house cost less than one of the vehicles in the United States America that's this quite possible you can get a cheap house but nevertheless in some obvious ways his experience with the university of employment delivered in exactly the ways that were promised for many of us that's not the case but he saw in this ultimately the same kind of fruitless game as he just described it here so strangely he feels that he's struggling to jump through these hoops you know being held up by the lion tamer or being held up by the dog he feels like he's trying to satisfy these goals in a reality of someone else's creation I guess I have some kind of new goals for myself new things that I want to do I'd like to make a million dollars by the time I'm 30 I don't know how am I do it yet so in the end we have a case study here of a guy who was disillusioned with video games but his disillusionment was narrowly with video games only right he was disillusioned in the sense that he thought playing video games would make him happy and he now realizes that isn't the path to true happiness he thought studying hard and I don't know achieving something university would make him happy and he was disillusioned and he thought that was game conclusion that was not the path to true happiness all right he had whatever struggles in the workplace he mentioned that he read various kind of books about the philosophy of Management and being an employee changed his view on these things he became disillusioned with the corporate rat race with whatever professional job he had with whatever career he had in engineering he decided that's not the true path to happiness he never got disillusioned with happiness itself right it's like someone who's trying to get high you tried to get high by huffing glue trying to get high by drinking vodka trying to get high with marijuana cocaine LSD and someone who gets disillusioned with various methods of getting high but they never get disillusioned with the high itself he's yet to sit down and realize it's the pursuit of happiness itself that's tragically flawed I hope you don't ever earn that million dollars you say you're gonna earn by age 30 and by the way he was already 29 years old when he made this video so we'd have less than one year to make a million dollars I hope you don't make any terrible regrettable ethical compromises to try to make it focus at one year cuz it's not easy to do if keeping everything aboveboard but if you do you're up for the same kind of disillusionment you can do a whole lot of things with $1,000,000 but it can't ever make you happy [Music]