Your opinion, are achievements in gaming/cyberspace comparable to real life?

[NotHardUp1]

Regarding the rat race, the only way to safely remove oneself from it is to be a faster rat. How else is one going to leave the rat race? We can't all go live in the forest. Say what you will about the rat race, I've come to believe it is the only way to live one's life. What's the alternative? We all go live in the forest and eat worms for food?

The alternative is subsistence employment, gig work, begging, and relying on others. There is a growing segment content to live in Mom's basement, sleep on a friend's counch, live in a tent city, and work just enough to stay in weed and food. That may mean part-time at Starbucks, driving minimally for Doordash, or similar.

 

[belamyi]

Well, in 5 billion years or so the sun will swallow the earth. So, everything is pointless anyway. Why bother?

Then why even bother to pretend you can find activities which are more pointless than others?

And what I was actually saying is that those pretended "higher purpose", "nobler", "more useful" activities fail and even contradict their goals and supposed worth more often than it is usually pointed out.
But since placing money in whatever makes it already worth it, nobody cares if all that "purpose" and "value" is rather make-believe, and that "worth" will end up blowing in one's faces.
Recreational gaming needs money, so it ultimately serves someone else's interests.


It all boils down to what I usually say: the crime lies more in the overblown moral judgment of something than in the plain fact or activity.

 

[belamyi]

The alternative is subsistence employment, gig work, begging, and relying on others. There is a growing segment content to live in Mom's basement, sleep on a friend's counch, live in a tent city, and work just enough to stay in weed and food. That may mean part-time at Starbucks, driving minimally for Doordash, or similar.

So religious charities can go serve needier and resourceless people elsewhere.

Not to mention that the talent and output of the people you described there is that of millions of so-called professors, "authors" or self-employed liberal professionals in general: only there is a market providing all that as formal "jobs" and "earnings" instead of informal benefits and occupations... while actually being the same worthless GROT. That is... for the time being.

Since most people are mediocre or worthless, at least make it appear like that is not the case.

 

[Dominus]

Then why even bother to pretend you can find activities which are more pointless than others?

And what I was actually saying is that those pretended "higher purpose", "nobler", "more useful" activities fail and even contradict their goals and supposed worth more often than it is usually pointed out.
But since placing money in whatever makes it already worth it, nobody cares if all that "purpose" and "value" is rather make-believe, and that "worth" will end up blowing in one's faces.
Recreational gaming needs money, so it ultimately serves someone else's interests.


It all boils down to what I usually say: the crime lies more in the overblown moral judgment of something than in the plain fact or activity.

I guess it's your writing style that confuses me. I'm not that bright. I really have trouble understanding the core of your statements.

 

[me203]

Reading all this, I remembered seeing some meme (IIRC) that floated about FaceBook (when I still used that cesspool of social media ). "I don't have time for FarmVille. I have a real garden to care for!"

To get to the original question, I guess I'd view real life--as dreary as it is--as more real than a game...

At the same time, though, there can be real value--even real life--by Internet. For one thing, I have more real discussions about some subjects that matter to me on-line than I do the real world. I certainly have more interaction with LGBT people on-line than the real world.

 

[Dominus]

The alternative is subsistence employment, gig work, begging, and relying on others. There is a growing segment content to live in Mom's basement, sleep on a friend's counch, live in a tent city, and work just enough to stay in weed and food. That may mean part-time at Starbucks, driving minimally for Doordash, or similar.

But anyone with 1/10th of a brain should know that none on your list is a permanent solution to life, not to mention how uncomfortable it is to live. I actually know a couple 35 year olds who sleep in their moms' basements. Anyway, how would one continue to live with those means at 60? 70? 80?

 

[belamyi]

I guess it's your writing style that confuses me. I'm not that bright. I really have trouble understanding the core of your statements.

Maybe rather "thinking style", reflecting in whatever I am able to type down.

 

[belamyi]

But anyone with 1/10th of a brain should know that none on your list is a permanent solution to life, not to mention how uncomfortable it is to live. I actually know a couple 35 year olds who sleep in their moms' basements. Anyway, how would one continue to live with those means at 60? 70? 80?

Do you think you, and mostly, if not absolutely everyone else, will be able to afford and lead the same life we are "enjoying" today (no matter what life that is in every particular case) 35, 40 years on from today?

 

[belamyi]

Reading all this, I remembered seeing some meme (IIRC) that floated about FaceBook (when I still used that cesspool of social media ). "I don't have time for FarmVille. I have a real garden to care for!"

That's like saying that one does not care for playing an instrument unless one is a professional player with a "real" career: even "real" businesses and institutions are aware that gaming shapes and trains the same skills and abilities necessary for "the real thing". If you care more for the damn herbs and their well-being "in real life", fine, but do not forget that there is real worth in the skills necessary for the other end, that of playing.

 

[belamyi]

Reading all this, I remembered seeing some meme (IIRC) that floated about FaceBook (when I still used that cesspool of social media ). "I don't have time for FarmVille. I have a real garden to care for!"

To get to the original question, I guess I'd view real life--as dreary as it is--as more real than a game...

At the same time, though, there can be real value--even real life--by Internet. For one thing, I have more real discussions about some subjects that matter to me on-line than I do the real world. I certainly have more interaction with LGBT people on-line than the real world.

It's like when people are not satisfied with life in a village and say that life there "is not real life", or that the life of billionaires "is not real life"... what you ultimately say when you talk about something being "real" is not that it is more or less material, but that you find more or less worth in it, and something being displayed to your senses through electronic media may make simpler-minded people believe that is "less real". Just like saying that a piece of writing, a literary work, a "deep" and very well developed "philosophic" work would be "less real" or more "immaterial" than... speech? Than... what exactly?

 

[Dominus]

Do you think you, and mostly, if not absolutely everyone else, will be able to afford and lead the same life we are "enjoying" today (no matter what life that is in every particular case) 35, 40 years on from today?

My parents live a much better lifestyle now than when they were working. Got a paid off house. Can travel when they want to. How did they do it? By treating all 5 of us (siblings and I) right. They get social security and monthly cash gifts from all of us. I have it on auto payment.

My point is it is about strategizing for the long run.

Having said that, there is a minimum limit to being able to live at a comfortable level in our old age. While i dont know what that minimum limit is, I definitely know it is NOT surfing couches.

I don't know where I'll be 40 years from now. No one knows. But I do have a long term strategy. And where I am at right now, anything is more comfortable than this LOL.

 

[Dominus]

Maybe rather "thinking style", reflecting in whatever I am able to type down.

I can see that. I find myself having to read your posts twice to kinda understand what you are saying. I'm thinking I got early dementia.

 

[belamyi]

My parents live a much better lifestyle now than when they were working. Got a paid off house. Can travel when they want to. How did they do it? By treating all 5 of us (siblings and I) right. They get social security and monthly cash gifts from all of us. I have it on auto payment.

My point is it is about strategizing for the long run.

Having said that, there is a minimum limit to being able to live at a comfortable level in our old age. While i dont know what that minimum limit is, I definitely know it is NOT surfing couches.

I don't know where I'll be 40 years from now. No one knows. But I do have a long term strategy. And where I am at right now, anything is more comfortable than this LOL.

You are getting it wrong, and not because my "writing style": I was not pointing at personal strategies, but at the external, circumstancial conditions that determine the paying-off of personal strategies in 1992 and in 2022.
One thing is having a goal, and another taking for granted what makes it possible to achieve that goal.
Being a commoner is not the same in 1952, 1972, 1992, 2012 and 2032 depends on the conditions set for common people.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

In my experience, games are just that, games.

The question is; whose game are we playing, when and why?

 

[Dominus]

You are getting it wrong, and not because my "writing style": I was not pointing at personal strategies, but at the external, circumstancial conditions that determine the paying-off of personal strategies in 1992 and in 2022.
One thing is having a goal, and another taking for granted what makes it possible to achieve that goal.
Being a commoner is not the same in 1952, 1972, 1992, 2012 and 2032 depends on the conditions set for common people.

We can't really control external forces. What we can do, however, is keep our eyes open and try to deal with the external forces with what we have.

We are probably living in the most stable time in human history with the most opportunities available to the most number of people. I know it is a popular thing to say that we are barely making by. But in reality, when a "poor" family regularly throw out perfectly good food, I call it a sign of how prosperous times are. Because of the extreme poverty level that I grew up in, I have an emotional reaction everytime I see people waste perfectly good food.

I'm rambling, aren't i?

 

[belamyi]

We can't really control external forces. What we can do, however, is keep our eyes open and try to deal with the external forces with what we have.

We are probably have been living in the most stable time in human history with the most opportunities available to the most number of people. I know it is a popular thing to say that we are barely making by. But in reality, when a "poor" family regularly throw out perfectly good food, I call it a sign of how prosperous times are. Because of the extreme poverty level that I grew up in, I have an emotional reaction everytime I see people waste perfectly good food.

I'm rambling, aren't i?

No, you are not.
Apart from that-, it's acceptable.