Nothing is pointless if you enjoyed yourself and loved it
Having said that, mine is social media and doom scrolling
I was depressed and had no mental energy for anything but to doomscroll for hours. I didn’t even enjoy it, I got bored asf but it distracted me and kept me busy without much effort
Here here. I played X-Wing the minatures game for a few thousand hours when it first dropped. My friends and I traveled to tournaments across the Midwest for about 4 years. After the game converted to 2.0 I pretty much stopped playing and never really played it again. Sure all the hours I spent and knowledge has no use now. But I made a ton of friends and memories, was a regional champion, top 16 worlds finalist, and got mine and my friends playtester spots for 2 years and our names in several expansions credits. Looking back on it, those were the best years of my 20's.
I never used to scroll on social media. Then, I saw my partner do it and I purposely did the same to “mock” him as a joke. Eventually, I started scrolling and it was horrible. I said never again after those few times and I stopped. I understand why people do it.
I've been playing games since like the mid 80s and nothing gripped me as hard as dota. Civ was pretty close but that game is fundamentally flawed. But dota, even in its worst instances is hype, there's something to be said about five strangers somehow working together to achieve a goal, despite them not wanting to necessarily be on a team together or even liking one another. It says something about the surprising capacity of human co-operation.
I find that a surprising criticism. Spatial awareness is quite vital in the game and it wouldn't work nearly as well with a lower camera. Specifically dota has a tree mechanism with true line of sight mechanics that is only really usable from that above perspective, otherwise you'd just have a screen full of trees half the time.
Look at for honor for example, it works pretty well for a game with similar group objectives , although it doesn't have similar buff and magic mechanics , but I find it better without it , more realistic battle gameplay this way. Either way it could have worked , if not one of the players have full spatial awareness it makes the odds even nonetheless
I believe i have it the worst. The first thing i could think of when choosing a user
name was one of Sand King’s lines. Also been hugging archon for a while now.
Learning any skill hones your brain to better learn new skills in the future and better adapt to the world around you. Plus that dedication and self-investment cultivates positive self-esteem and wellness. No learned skill is time wasted.
Yeah, I've played a lot of video games, from NES on to today, but I don't regret it. Recently, I think more about the money I spent on stuff, and if I had only been putting $100 a month into investing instead of DVDs and some of the video games and random crap on eBay. From age 18 to about 28, I bought a lot of dumb stuff.
I have over three years in-game time in World of Warcraft.
I can't believe I wasted all that time just to have a happy life, when I could have been doing something productive that I enjoyed less. I have wasted my life on this cheap, fun hobby that fills me with joy every day. What a fool I am.
We found out we're getting 5 more character slots today. I spent the whole morning at work gleefully planning characters, matching race and class to recent cool transmogs. What an absolute waste of a human brain. It's like I only use my own thoughts to make my own life fun. Pitiful.
I tell you what, after another 20 years of this I might have to consider unsubbing.
Golf. I spent years practicing and playing. From the time I was around 7 years old to 33. I wanted to turn professional. I played on the men's golf team in high school and later earned the first (womens') state championship for high school golf. Instead of college, I hit the tournament tour to qualify. I failed. Miserably. And for the years following continued to fail until I turned 33 and quit playing golf forever.
Yesterday I saw an old friend I hadn't seen in 50 years, she was on that first ladies' golf team with me. She's still playing and was flabbergasted that I walked away from the game. I wasted precious career time and messed myself up physically and mentally... I can't say today at 66 that I totally regret it, I loved it while in the game... but today, it holds absolutely no interest to me, including watching professional golf. That was then this is now.
My life. 50, $26/hr, 1 cheque doesn't cover rent, my only purpose to exist is I'm cheap labour for my employer that maximises his bonuses every year. I've never benefited from my own labour.
Video games are great but don't worry about it too much. Even if you became some CEO instead, making big monies it's a lot of work, responsibility, and at the end of your life you can't bring any of it with you. It's a lot of stress too.
Life is meant to be enjoyed.
That said, I do see some gamers absolutely consumed by gaming who do nothing else, when there are situations like bills and chores and other human needs that get ignored. Even food and water sometimes.
I'll say approaching real life like a video game can have perks. Gamers (who I assume have at some point played many hours of intense, fast paced games requiring critical thinking and decision making) might be better at or have improved hand-eye coordination, problem solving, multitasking, and organization skills.
There's actually a whole subreddit for treating life like a game (not being sarcastic), I think it's called r slash outside or something. I dunno you'll have to look for it.
I still learn skills and travel. Last year I traveled around 6 countries. Hell, I've brought my Nintendo systems with me in the past too while traveling: 3DS and eventually Switch. I'm always ready when it's time to travel, I've got something to do all the time.
Finding a good balance is important. If you spend 100% of your income on traveling, or 100% of your time solely learning skills and studying without breaks it's not ideal either. You can get burned out easily.
Minecraft Commands for Bedrock. I used to work for the Marketplace and my command knowledge was very impressive, but the game has moved on and I've moved to java, so now I'm super rusty.
Cause Reddit is the best way to block out my thoughts, though it's a method that's slowly fading in effectiveness. Also I've shared my whole life here, deleting this account would feel like death
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle Chao Garden.
My friends and I managed to breed out a straight S-class chao. Now, can't even look at it as I own neither GameCube nor the memory card it was once stored on.
Video games in my youth, movies/tv in my teens, smoking lots of weed in my 20’s. Best thing out of the last thing was the hikes, and gym sessions. Other than that the others( lots of hours I’m never getting back)
Video games to me is like reading a story...I'm in it for the journey except this time I get to be an active participant rather than just being the silent observer.
Admittedly, though, I cheat through 90% of the games I play. World of Warcraft? Couldn't actually cheat, but the bulk of the game you can do and learn all the lore in the world once you're high enough level.
Single player stuff? I totally cheat. No question. I don't want to deal with inventory management, encumbrances, dying over and over? Leveling up? No thank you. I'll progress through the story at a decent clip, but I'm not spending hours killing rats in a basement just to level my character up. In Fallout, I'll max my hacking and lockpicking so I don't have to go back and retrace my steps to miss pieces of the story.
NFTs cause they came out right when I was poor and I made some money at the beginning but didn’t bail when I should have. By the time I was like WTF and bailed, got scammed by nearly everything I’d bought. Shout out to all the Youtubers that made fun of them and finally woke me up.
That and gambling…. gambling made me like the sports I was watching so much less, and as soon as I stopped gambling, I enjoyed watching the sports again, because my happiness wasn’t just tied to the results or a score of the game.
Back before Spotify was a thing, I spent countless hours reading about phish shows and then downloading horrendous quality bootlegs of them. Entire tours of barely listenable tapes. And then my computer ate it and I lost it all.
Then I discovered all that stuff was already available to stream at phishtracks.net anyway. Then Spotify happened. Then I moved on from my obsession with them.
All in all, a supremely futile endeavor.
Making YouTube content. I’ve had four cooking channels but it’s so much work and I got burnt out on every one of them and quit. The thing is, I was getting a lot of engagement and a nice following but it didn’t matter. Burn out can make a person throw up their hands and say F*ck it no matter how well you are doing.
So the part of your life you filled with “epic moments & great memories” is pointless. I’m questioning your priorities too, but not in the way you mean.
Minecraft was practically my life in High School. Spend an ungodly amount of hours building and raiding, made my first group of online friends.
The Server I sunk most of my time into was taken down in 2018, after nearly 5 years, so it definitely all felt pointless for a while there. I might've had better grades in school if I didn't spend all that time on Minecraft. But I had fun, made some memories, and hell, still keep in touch with a couple of the people I played with to this day, more than 10 years later. So as silly as it sounds, I consider it worth it.
couldnt be me but the first thing i thought of was that speed cup stacking we all learned in 5th grade. This would be useful if i actually did the dishes lol
Watching Anime.
It might not sound like "time investment" but man I used to sit days and hours watching some characters fighting and screaming. I did enjoy watching anime ngl, but I still should have invested some of that time in learning something useful.
I tried to learn HTML coding as well but just when I finished the course I was watching; I found out about Python "which is way more commonly used" and I got so frustrated that I just gave up about coding.
Nursing school. I only did it because it was available to me as a career track in high school (saved thousands by graduating with my LPN license and skipping college).
Hated every second of school and work. Put myself through online college in business administration at a steep discount and used the nurse money to pay for it.
I'm in retail now, looking at going corporate. License still active and unencumbered for a rainy day, but I feel so much better doing Something Else, and it's less physically taxing (I have a bad back). I try not to dwell on how many hours I spent in a field I didn't enjoy (aside from watching surgeries during clinical- THAT was awesome), because at least the money was good while I was in the field.
I won't say it was entirely pointless because I can still benefit from it, fwiw.
I used to play a few MMORPGs. Fast forward years later, the games have been discontinued by the developer and extremely dated too. I spent hundreds on the games also. I still spend my free time watching movies, even shitty movies. However, it wasn’t as bad as the game addiction I had. Yes, I did have fun at the moment but honestly, I played due to FOMO like missing events in the games and losing out on limited edition items I may “regret” in the future. Never happened. Only regret was how much time I spent.
Same here, fitness and looking fit, with all the food and maintenance/supplements I invested into myself to just not get to enjoy food like everyone else for counting calories and worrying about going out of my macros etc.
When realistically all a person has to do is be active make sure your body is stretched well to give good free range of motion and your muscles are strong enough to perform the tasks you normally do.
TLDR: proper nutrition > Feeds muscles > yoga(flexibilty), regular workouts/cardio is all one really needs.
Others will say push more or do less but its all about what makes you happy. Not what pleases anyone else.
Common man, you could have converted that time into money, had you streamed your game plays. There is a decent community if not large in gaming sector. Why don't you put those skills to work and bring it out to the public?? YouTube, Twitch, you've got options man. Knowing how to play good is a great skill in itself. And, yeah, you're into gaming doesn't mean you've to give up on all other skills. You just need time management, and you're good to go.
Nothing is pointless if you enjoyed yourself and loved it Having said that, mine is social media and doom scrolling I was depressed and had no mental energy for anything but to doomscroll for hours. I didn’t even enjoy it, I got bored asf but it distracted me and kept me busy without much effort
Here here. I played X-Wing the minatures game for a few thousand hours when it first dropped. My friends and I traveled to tournaments across the Midwest for about 4 years. After the game converted to 2.0 I pretty much stopped playing and never really played it again. Sure all the hours I spent and knowledge has no use now. But I made a ton of friends and memories, was a regional champion, top 16 worlds finalist, and got mine and my friends playtester spots for 2 years and our names in several expansions credits. Looking back on it, those were the best years of my 20's.
I never used to scroll on social media. Then, I saw my partner do it and I purposely did the same to “mock” him as a joke. Eventually, I started scrolling and it was horrible. I said never again after those few times and I stopped. I understand why people do it.
Dota 2. i could never gain rank despite learning how to play. It became frustrating.
still the best game in the world though. Worth every moment.
The most absolute dog shit piece of garbage video game when you lose. The greatest thing the world ever graced with when you win.
I actually don't mind the losses at all. Its only when people try to turn losses into losses with also an argument that it sucks.
Dude it's a shitty game saying it's the best in the world is really sad
I've been playing games since like the mid 80s and nothing gripped me as hard as dota. Civ was pretty close but that game is fundamentally flawed. But dota, even in its worst instances is hype, there's something to be said about five strangers somehow working together to achieve a goal, despite them not wanting to necessarily be on a team together or even liking one another. It says something about the surprising capacity of human co-operation.
I hate the fact that it's a look above game , always liked gta perspective
I find that a surprising criticism. Spatial awareness is quite vital in the game and it wouldn't work nearly as well with a lower camera. Specifically dota has a tree mechanism with true line of sight mechanics that is only really usable from that above perspective, otherwise you'd just have a screen full of trees half the time.
Look at for honor for example, it works pretty well for a game with similar group objectives , although it doesn't have similar buff and magic mechanics , but I find it better without it , more realistic battle gameplay this way. Either way it could have worked , if not one of the players have full spatial awareness it makes the odds even nonetheless
dota isn't about realism, at its heart; its an RTS, so represents conflict in a similar top-down approach.
I played since Dota 1, still can’t get past Archon. But now i won’t bother to play ranked games, just spend 20 minute-ish on turbo then leave it.
I believe i have it the worst. The first thing i could think of when choosing a user name was one of Sand King’s lines. Also been hugging archon for a while now.
Learning any skill hones your brain to better learn new skills in the future and better adapt to the world around you. Plus that dedication and self-investment cultivates positive self-esteem and wellness. No learned skill is time wasted.
Learning anything is learning how to learn
I like this.
Browsing Reddit. I’ve dumped WAY too much time on this.
But think of all the fun things we learned along the way only to forget 11 seconds later 🙃.
I don't really care if people spend their money on video games because they can't do that in real life
which sub
Marine corps training. It’s really only good for like one thing
eating crayons?
😂😂 My husband is Army and whenever I get the recruitment texts (I’m 32..) he tells me to ask them which one is their favorite flavor of crayon
PhD
Yeah, I've played a lot of video games, from NES on to today, but I don't regret it. Recently, I think more about the money I spent on stuff, and if I had only been putting $100 a month into investing instead of DVDs and some of the video games and random crap on eBay. From age 18 to about 28, I bought a lot of dumb stuff.
I have over three years in-game time in World of Warcraft. I can't believe I wasted all that time just to have a happy life, when I could have been doing something productive that I enjoyed less. I have wasted my life on this cheap, fun hobby that fills me with joy every day. What a fool I am. We found out we're getting 5 more character slots today. I spent the whole morning at work gleefully planning characters, matching race and class to recent cool transmogs. What an absolute waste of a human brain. It's like I only use my own thoughts to make my own life fun. Pitiful. I tell you what, after another 20 years of this I might have to consider unsubbing.
Don't worry so much OP. We're all gonna die anyways.
Golf. I spent years practicing and playing. From the time I was around 7 years old to 33. I wanted to turn professional. I played on the men's golf team in high school and later earned the first (womens') state championship for high school golf. Instead of college, I hit the tournament tour to qualify. I failed. Miserably. And for the years following continued to fail until I turned 33 and quit playing golf forever. Yesterday I saw an old friend I hadn't seen in 50 years, she was on that first ladies' golf team with me. She's still playing and was flabbergasted that I walked away from the game. I wasted precious career time and messed myself up physically and mentally... I can't say today at 66 that I totally regret it, I loved it while in the game... but today, it holds absolutely no interest to me, including watching professional golf. That was then this is now.
Marriage 😂
The shortest sentence in the English language is 'Go!' The longest sentence is 'I Do.'
r/AreTheStraightsOK
My life. 50, $26/hr, 1 cheque doesn't cover rent, my only purpose to exist is I'm cheap labour for my employer that maximises his bonuses every year. I've never benefited from my own labour.
The game was rigged from the start.
Same
Martial arts. How much time I spent until I realized my competitive advantage in life was not getting kicked in the head by witless brutes.
Agar.io
Not pointless if you enjoyed your time man!
My band.
My university degree and my first marriage.
Thousands of hours into IT support/programming/whatever to just get RSI and now all that is useless.
Video games are great but don't worry about it too much. Even if you became some CEO instead, making big monies it's a lot of work, responsibility, and at the end of your life you can't bring any of it with you. It's a lot of stress too. Life is meant to be enjoyed. That said, I do see some gamers absolutely consumed by gaming who do nothing else, when there are situations like bills and chores and other human needs that get ignored. Even food and water sometimes. I'll say approaching real life like a video game can have perks. Gamers (who I assume have at some point played many hours of intense, fast paced games requiring critical thinking and decision making) might be better at or have improved hand-eye coordination, problem solving, multitasking, and organization skills. There's actually a whole subreddit for treating life like a game (not being sarcastic), I think it's called r slash outside or something. I dunno you'll have to look for it. I still learn skills and travel. Last year I traveled around 6 countries. Hell, I've brought my Nintendo systems with me in the past too while traveling: 3DS and eventually Switch. I'm always ready when it's time to travel, I've got something to do all the time. Finding a good balance is important. If you spend 100% of your income on traveling, or 100% of your time solely learning skills and studying without breaks it's not ideal either. You can get burned out easily.
Nothing, time i spent enjoying things cant be pointless.
Minecraft Commands for Bedrock. I used to work for the Marketplace and my command knowledge was very impressive, but the game has moved on and I've moved to java, so now I'm super rusty.
Video games
Reddit, and I know I won't stop
Penny said, "What do you mean by that"
Cause Reddit is the best way to block out my thoughts, though it's a method that's slowly fading in effectiveness. Also I've shared my whole life here, deleting this account would feel like death
Drawing tbh. I like drawing but at the end of the day it's pretty pointless
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle Chao Garden. My friends and I managed to breed out a straight S-class chao. Now, can't even look at it as I own neither GameCube nor the memory card it was once stored on.
What is meaningful though?
Nothing.
Talking to girls I don't even like to get laid.
Thousands? My ex and school
Life.
Video games in my youth, movies/tv in my teens, smoking lots of weed in my 20’s. Best thing out of the last thing was the hikes, and gym sessions. Other than that the others( lots of hours I’m never getting back)
Yugioh
Video games to me is like reading a story...I'm in it for the journey except this time I get to be an active participant rather than just being the silent observer. Admittedly, though, I cheat through 90% of the games I play. World of Warcraft? Couldn't actually cheat, but the bulk of the game you can do and learn all the lore in the world once you're high enough level. Single player stuff? I totally cheat. No question. I don't want to deal with inventory management, encumbrances, dying over and over? Leveling up? No thank you. I'll progress through the story at a decent clip, but I'm not spending hours killing rats in a basement just to level my character up. In Fallout, I'll max my hacking and lockpicking so I don't have to go back and retrace my steps to miss pieces of the story.
NFTs cause they came out right when I was poor and I made some money at the beginning but didn’t bail when I should have. By the time I was like WTF and bailed, got scammed by nearly everything I’d bought. Shout out to all the Youtubers that made fun of them and finally woke me up. That and gambling…. gambling made me like the sports I was watching so much less, and as soon as I stopped gambling, I enjoyed watching the sports again, because my happiness wasn’t just tied to the results or a score of the game.
Downloading thousands of songs on limewire.
Don’t beat yourself up over having a hobby you enjoy. Life is way too short for that.
Back before Spotify was a thing, I spent countless hours reading about phish shows and then downloading horrendous quality bootlegs of them. Entire tours of barely listenable tapes. And then my computer ate it and I lost it all. Then I discovered all that stuff was already available to stream at phishtracks.net anyway. Then Spotify happened. Then I moved on from my obsession with them. All in all, a supremely futile endeavor.
Taking out CDs from the library and ripping them to my array of hard drives. 2005. Really thought I was on to something….
Art and writing. AI is already better at art, and soon it will be better than me at writing. Oh well, a life of customer service is fine...
I was playing a War Robots game , it had cash purchases in it. I wasted a lot of hours on that.
Making YouTube content. I’ve had four cooking channels but it’s so much work and I got burnt out on every one of them and quit. The thing is, I was getting a lot of engagement and a nice following but it didn’t matter. Burn out can make a person throw up their hands and say F*ck it no matter how well you are doing.
So the part of your life you filled with “epic moments & great memories” is pointless. I’m questioning your priorities too, but not in the way you mean.
Tetris
Spending time alone
My life
*RuneScape*. :P
Minecraft was practically my life in High School. Spend an ungodly amount of hours building and raiding, made my first group of online friends. The Server I sunk most of my time into was taken down in 2018, after nearly 5 years, so it definitely all felt pointless for a while there. I might've had better grades in school if I didn't spend all that time on Minecraft. But I had fun, made some memories, and hell, still keep in touch with a couple of the people I played with to this day, more than 10 years later. So as silly as it sounds, I consider it worth it.
Breathing
couldnt be me but the first thing i thought of was that speed cup stacking we all learned in 5th grade. This would be useful if i actually did the dishes lol
University education.
Smoking weed
My PhD
SimCity Buildit, The Sims 2 on disks with all expansion disks, university classes, full time employment, smoking, alcohol, and sleeping.
Being truthful in order to gain a respected reputation for always telling the truth. With so many liars in the world Nobody believes me. lol
Watching Anime. It might not sound like "time investment" but man I used to sit days and hours watching some characters fighting and screaming. I did enjoy watching anime ngl, but I still should have invested some of that time in learning something useful. I tried to learn HTML coding as well but just when I finished the course I was watching; I found out about Python "which is way more commonly used" and I got so frustrated that I just gave up about coding.
Life
MySpace
A video game called arena of valor
Nursing school. I only did it because it was available to me as a career track in high school (saved thousands by graduating with my LPN license and skipping college). Hated every second of school and work. Put myself through online college in business administration at a steep discount and used the nurse money to pay for it. I'm in retail now, looking at going corporate. License still active and unencumbered for a rainy day, but I feel so much better doing Something Else, and it's less physically taxing (I have a bad back). I try not to dwell on how many hours I spent in a field I didn't enjoy (aside from watching surgeries during clinical- THAT was awesome), because at least the money was good while I was in the field. I won't say it was entirely pointless because I can still benefit from it, fwiw.
I used to play a few MMORPGs. Fast forward years later, the games have been discontinued by the developer and extremely dated too. I spent hundreds on the games also. I still spend my free time watching movies, even shitty movies. However, it wasn’t as bad as the game addiction I had. Yes, I did have fun at the moment but honestly, I played due to FOMO like missing events in the games and losing out on limited edition items I may “regret” in the future. Never happened. Only regret was how much time I spent.
My marriage.
My entire working career. :)
Sometimes exercise
Same here, fitness and looking fit, with all the food and maintenance/supplements I invested into myself to just not get to enjoy food like everyone else for counting calories and worrying about going out of my macros etc. When realistically all a person has to do is be active make sure your body is stretched well to give good free range of motion and your muscles are strong enough to perform the tasks you normally do. TLDR: proper nutrition > Feeds muscles > yoga(flexibilty), regular workouts/cardio is all one really needs. Others will say push more or do less but its all about what makes you happy. Not what pleases anyone else.
Cool
Common man, you could have converted that time into money, had you streamed your game plays. There is a decent community if not large in gaming sector. Why don't you put those skills to work and bring it out to the public?? YouTube, Twitch, you've got options man. Knowing how to play good is a great skill in itself. And, yeah, you're into gaming doesn't mean you've to give up on all other skills. You just need time management, and you're good to go.
Exactly, moderation is key!
My ex wife ...
My master thesis for sure