Thursday, April 24, 2014

JotMotW: Entry #3: Menial Fulfillment Through Emotions

So many of us crave success along with distraction, a place away from the dismal world we take part in, where depression and frustration thrive. Most often, such a distraction comes in the form of the mind-boggling flash games found in abundance throughout this diverse internet. 2048 and Flappy Bird, for example, are a few popular examples that I see. These games are the most pointless, for even though we might gain quicker reactions and more complex coordination, they serve no purpose except to show off someone's programming skill.

Flash Games
Internet flash games are without a doubt some of the most pointless things out there, and yet we seek them out, finding ones that we enjoy and hate, developing addictions in a furious desire to beat the game, to "gain validation from the machine", as xkcd puts it. The more the addiction progresses, the more every tiny victory feels like the greatest uplift you can experience, and the more every defeat becomes soul-crushing. Games can toy with your emotions. The feeling of failure versus success, life versus death, creation versus destruction. We can hate games, not because they're bad, but because we're aware of what they can do to us, and we can be powerless to curb our addictions. Flappy 2048, for example, is considered by Reddit to be the product of Satan's new career in game design. Something as innocent as clicking to levitate a block can be infuriating, mind-numbing, and yet no matter how much we know it can get to us and make us twitch, we still play it with glee, only for, as a dish is thrown down onto tile, so our hopes are dashed in a similar manner. Again and again, game after game, the emotional roller coaster never stops, we keep playing on and on, that "play again?" button taunting us every time we encounter the inevitable adversarial defeat, but why do we seek this in the first place? Why do we particularly enjoy it?

Because it's easy success, with a small amount of opposition to keep us interested, so we can simply reach out and take it. We go through so much shit every day, we're bored and tired of the complex activities of daily life, complex activities which would normally grant success and defeat and the resulting emotions, but we're exhausted, we're tired, we're lazy. We don't want to live the real life, we want to sit at home at our computer and live the Sims life. The easy flash games are completely menial, a certain activity repeated in some form or fashion, over and over, and they grant us solace from the complexities of life. We are attracted to the simplicity of the games, and they give us the same feeling as life.

I am worked too hard, I believe. I tire of the complicated and stressful curriculum, and as so I am drawn to the simple yet equally stressful games. They are a subtle peace of mine, whether or not I choose to regard it as such. Grant me relief, give me rest, make life come at me just a little bit slower, and I can handle it, I can work it out and succeed, but my sleep-deprived self is unable to do so. Slow this life down, if even a little bit, and I can win this, but until then, my mind will be on the game.



So I started to write this as a journal entry, but it actually turned out to be like the kind of posts I'd write on this blog in the first place. I'm letting my inner writer shine through during this project, which is one of the few I've actually enjoyed. Expect more of these in the future.
Lastly, I hate reminding you guys this: I want feedback. I don't want you to reply to this, saying "oh, this is great" or "I agree", I want to know your thoughts and reactions to my words. Be descriptive, refer to specific moments if you like, I don't care, just tell me what you think.
Other than that, please give my blog a follow, if you enjoy my posts. That's all, please enjoy!

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