Thread 82802867

I've stopped sinking fruitless hours into video games, and have started sinking them into learning Bach's lute suites.
2026 will be my year.

This. I deleted all of my steam games and decided drawing/blender/sfm will be my hobbies now. We are gonna make it bros.

>>82802867 (OP)
What made you stop wanting to play vidya? Or is it just white-knuckle willpower?

I barely play anything anymore but I used to be a full-time WoWfag. Literally, as in I spent over 50 hours a week logged in, for years. I haven't played Warcrack since 2019 but I miss it and have dreams about playing it, and if a single one of my frens from back then messaged and said "hey anon, wanna go again?" I'd drop everything going on in my life to do that again.

>>82802927
>What made you stop wanting to play vidya?
Not OP but I always had something in the back of my mind telling me it's a waste of time and I should be doing anything else.

>>82802949
>>Not OP but I always had something in the back of my mind telling me it's a waste of time and I should be doing anything else.
waste how?
Like I knew every minute I was playing WoW that, by society's standards at least, it was a waste of time. No IRL benefit. But nothing IRL seemed all that compelling, so I shrugged.

>>82802867 (OP)
im also very slowly very very very very very slowly learning the violin
its a fiddle, and i fiddle with it. learning how to play twinkle twinkle little star agian since i was 12, learning how to do vibrato, learning how to read sheet music, stuff like that

very very very very slowly and casually, becuse im a very slow person. like a tree or a turtle. because i learn at my leisure and a leisurely pace is a slow one

sorry but im too much in pain to work hard on anything, so everything i do in inherently leisurely

>>82802902
Same here. It might take a while before my attention span adjusts. Billions must try!

>>82802902
King

>>82802927
>What made you stop
Several factors.

The first was a realisation that I was wasting my life. I don't mean this in the self-help improooover sense where you constantly have to be squeezing the most out of every second. What I mean is that, after sinking well over a year of my life into video games (as in, if you added up all my hours from childhood to now, it would probably be 1-2 years), I can't say it's made me feel any better. If anything, they make me a worse person (more bitter/jaded/angry). I've developed decent dexterity and coding knowledge because of them, but after some point it's only to my detriment to keep playing them.

More importantly, I stopped finding them fun. Games are either too easy or too hard, and this is by design. When you play a game, you're letting someone else (the developer) determine how you should progress. Even though you are the one in control of your character, your role as a player is passive; all the decisions are made for you. Sandbox games are different (obviously), but I'm usually not interested enough in them to pour weeks of my life into learning all their mechanics.

When you focus on a skill, you get full control of how you progress. There is something meditative about focussing on small details, such as my posture, hand placement, or which finger I use to pluck which string. I'm shit, but I can sit for 1-2 hours with just a guitar, practicing. No electricity, no screens, no food, no drink, no nagging wife.

It's not about society's standards. If I cared about society I wouldn't learn Bach, or classical music more broadly. It doesn't make me popular. It's about doing what I want to do, not what someone else wants me to do. There's nothing prideful about my attitude here; I've spent a lot of years trying to escape others' influence. It's impossible, but I can at least cut away all the things that aren't important to me.

>>82803216
>Like I knew every minute I was playing WoW that
some of my most precious memories in my life were spent playing wow. i very much cherish doing m+ in dragonflight with a small team so much. its literally top 10 most important memories in gaming for me. i never could do raiding because of non-24 sleep wake syndrome, not even in classic or wotlk. in classic i did it but little, and i got easy gear because i raided late in the season where everyone was already bis'd out

wow was very important to me. sl i playhed a lot, df is my favorite retail xpac ever, vanilla imo is the best game ever made. i got 60 in hc and quit. i really love that game, and i regret ZERO playing it. my only regrets is not playing it enough. if midnight is good it would take a LOT to get me to not play it

i hate tww because i hate this woke black girl story, yuck. i loved the 4 dragon aspects in df, and sl story and aesthetics i liked

tww just didnt sit right with me idk. idk why i just didnt like it. but MAN i loved wow so much

also firemage sucks and i hate arcane mage with a passion. i cant stand arcane mage. ill play frost or fire, but i wont arcane mage no way. i cant stand it. and mage is the only class for me. in my heart im a fire mage who will TOLERATE frost, but i cant tolerate anything else

>>82803276
>The first was a realisation that I was wasting my life
see, i think your whole philosophy is contradictory because its ALL a game
EVERYTHING is a game. girls, making money in real life, dating, sex, power. its ALL a game with rules that reward things and punishes other, with winners and losers

you just want to sacrifice your videogames for real life GAMES, which is fine, i just dont know if its optimal

soon all jobs will be automated by ai robots. the whole concept of trading your labour for income is soon going to be automated. for example going to college for computer programming right is a 100% waste of time, ai does it better and will always do it better. the same will be true for all jobs soon enough

it would seem to me that life is meant to be enjoyed, and it would seem like the outside world is sort of conceptually doomed because of ai taking over all jobs

>I can't say it's made me feel any better. If anything, they make me a worse person
really? gaming saved my life and i think if i didnt have videogames id have killed myself, my life would be miserable. how would having fun and making progress make you feel jaded? how does that make any sense? it sounds like you are blaming videogames for things they didnt even do? i dont appreciate this unjustified videogame slander

>When you play a game, you're letting someone else (the developer) determine how you should progress
more of this delusional self-contradicting philosophy. the outside world is a game you are FORCED to play and your stats in it are assigned at birth, like looks, height, race, parents, childhood. this is a game with clear winning and losing thresholds (having lots of sex and love, money, power, children, success vs being a virgin homeless loser)

you're delusional my friendo. i just dont think you appreciate that enjoyment of videogames is built on philosophically sturdy grounds

>>82802867 (OP)
When I stop playing I get things done but I want to draw and I'm just stuck in this rut where I cannot commit and get frustrated trying. I don't know how people just let go and are able to just go with the flow. Feel like something is broken inside me.

I've been meaning to do things for 4 years already, haven't accomplished anything yet. Maybe I'm just defective?

>>82803276
>The first was a realisation that I was wasting my life. I don't mean this in the self-help improooover sense where you constantly have to be squeezing the most out of every second. What I mean is that, [...] I can't say it's made me feel any better.
>More importantly, I stopped finding them fun.
don't get me wrong, I definitely understand the anhedonia part of it

But if you're gonna quit something like video games, I can't help but think you have to have something you're motivated to go towards, something to replace it with, that's what I found lacking. To be honest the closest I've come to the meditative state you describe was when I was in front of a boss, for that three minutes, I was free and I did what I was there to do and nothing else in the world mattered. (I could hit any of 40 keybinds but I could never play an instrument. Being completely tone-deaf might have something to do with it)

idk. None of the things that are Acceptable Life Goals ever grabbed me and motivated me and made me say "no, actually, I want to do this instead of fucking around in vidya".

>>82803293
Love me some classic, some TBC, some WLK. Played Cata and it sucked but whatever. Sat out Pandaland, came back for WoD and my guild had all vanished, never saw most of them again. After that it was just private servers. Tried to go back for Classic but all my frens were gone or said "lmao anon why would you wanna play that again?" I did anyway, for a while, but eventually I just couldn't keep going.
>non-24 sleep wake syndrome
I structured my sleep schedule around the game. I'd go to my shitty community-college classes half awake, come home, nap, wake up to either DPS or offtank Karazhan and stay up all night after. More fun than I ever had IRL.

Thanks for reading my blog. Cheers from Uldaman-US Alliance.

>>82803247
Twinkle twinkle little star is such a classic. Perfect that piece and you can perfect any piece. Progression is meant to be slow.

>>82803430
>its ALL a game [sic]
Yeah it is all a game, and I'm making my own rules. Money, dating, sex, and power don't interest me, only learning Bach suites at this point.

AI is irrelevant here because the entire point of doing things is for the joy of doing them.

>Gaming saved my life
Gay.

>The outside world is a game you are FORCED to play
Slave morality. You don't have to do anything you're told to do. The things you think matter only matter because you're a slave to someone else's rules. I hope clarity reaches you soon enough. Inshallah.

>>82803527
If you enjoy the process of gradually getting better, then you will eventually accomplish it. Focus on the process, not the result. Godspeed.

>>82803551
I wouldn't even call it quitting video games. Quitting makes it seem like I'm losing something. Really, I'm gaining something, which is what you're saying as well. You can't leave a habit unless if you feel like you'd be gaining something by it. It's not about having Acceptable Life Goals, it's about following your own wishes. Most people are entirely lead by external forces, so they want a good job, a good house, a good car, a good spouse. I wouldn't mind a good woman, but they're hard to come by; I'm not going to settle for garbage just because everyone else is getting married and having children.

I'm looking to quit video games, but ai have nothing to replace it with. I need inspiration on things to try, new hobbies. Any suggestions?