This flash really made me think about my time wasted.

 Spoiler

If you enjoy your hobbies more than other things, then you're not "wasting" the best years of your life. If you'd rather sit at home playing games than "doing something productive", and you're truly enjoying yourself, you're not wasting your life.

Such entertainment is created for the purpose of your enjoyment. If you don't enjoy something about it, then stop and do something that you would enjoy. Perhaps you should balance out your hobbies a bit then if you're worried about "wasting your life" on video games. I'm sure the guy who made this didn't really play video games exclusively and nothing else. I'm sure he watched TV, watched movies, probably read books. He was social enough to get marries, and you can't get married if you're doing nothing but playing video games all day (unless it was some sort of online relationship he was referring to).

The person who made this is simply reflecting on their own life and filling in the "what if" scenarios. He's glorifying them, thinking "Boy, my life would be so much better if I did x instead of y" in his head. I'm sure there are many people who do this, after all humans aren't perfect creatures and make mistakes. Everyone here has regretted at least one decision they made in life, even if it was small. I regretted not paying attention to my Gameboy bag when I was younger and my mother dragged me to a birthday party for a friend's son. I was playing my Ninja turtles, and was so into the game, that I forgot where I placed my bag that had a handful of other games. I lost my freaking Super Mario Land that day. I still remember that day in my mind, and I still remember all the times where I thought "man, Super Mario Land would be so perfect to play in this situation."

That's what this guy is doing. He's looking back in life and thinking too hard on the "what if" scenarios. Want to know something? Most people aren't content with their lives, especially at the age I'd imagine this guy (he was married once and got divorced, I'd imagine he's somewhere in his 30's). So, he traced back his life and tried to target what was wrong about it. Funny thing is, I'm sure if he did everything that he regretted not doing, he'd still not be content with his life. He'd fine some other hobby along the way that he would regret. If he's giving up one form of entertainment, surely he'll find another. By that point, he may or may not blame his choice of entertainment as he bewails the path he's taken on life.

You can choose to take his word if you want, but really, when I see this I see a saddened man who's trying to shovel the blame as to why his life is so bad on his hobbies. He thinks he spends a lot on video games? That's nice buddy, but guess what? Look at any other form of entertainment and you'll see that you spend money. Do you know why? Because if there's some fun to be made out of it, someone will find a way to make a profit off it. Through our lives we live through a cycle of getting money from job, most likely doing something we'd rather not be doing, so that way we can spend that money on something we want to be doing. If you didn't spend that money on games, you'd spend it on partying all day with your friends, or on buying sports gear for playing football with the boys, or even dump it all on some broad that you thought was "the one" until the spark eventually died and you went your separate ways.

Humans have unlimited wants. If he didn't play video games his life, he'd surely fill the void with something else. He thinks that if he could redo his life without games, that he'd mold the ideal life, but he's sadly mistaken. He'd still have problems. Hell, he may even end up in the same situation he is when he made this video, but he'd make a video blaming how much attention he paid to girls while neglecting his friends or something.

This video truly represents the fact that no human views their life as "perfect" because there is always something else that you want. You could have all the money you could wish for, and in the end there will still be something you want that's unobtainable. Forcing yourself away from something yoy truly enjoy so you can partake in something you enjoy less is a move that I feel is rather foolish. There's no reason to take his word to heart, because chances are you won't "improve" your life by breaking away from what you truly enjoy for something that society values more.

tl;dr - He was married, he couldn't have been nearly as addicted to games as he leads us to believe. He's using gaming as a scapegoat for why his life sucks.


By the way, I didn't read anything in this thread yet. I might update this post with quotes and such after I'm done.



Exactly.

[COLOR="Green"]

 Spoiler

Everything you do in life is for entertainment or for your own personal want/needs.

You have a job. Why? Because you need money so you can do other things.
You work out. Why? Because you feel that being stronger helps you in some way.
You go out on a hiking trip. Why? Because you enjoy the scenery and the smell of outdoors.

Everyone is different, and you should do things based off what you like and don't like to do.

However, you must find a balance between entertaining yourself, and taking care of things.
If you have family, they come before your hobbies or your entertainment.
If you have schoolwork, it should come before your hobbies.

What this video is really showing is that you should diversify your sources of entertainment. You shouldn't spend all your time playing video games or sitting at a computer. You should go outside and hang with friend, or read a book, or watch a movie with someone you care about. Try to live life to it's fullest, and experience everything it has to offer.

Side note: Whoever GayChinchilla22 is, you are the funniest poster in the Funhouse to me at this point in time. God I don't even know why.[/COLOR]

To both of you guys: Video game wise I'm not really at the level that I was at anymore. I sort of went through the same phase this guy did (whether it's authentic or he was glorifying his regrets). I'd be at my friend's house only to tell them I need to leave early because I had a WoW raid because they only happen at that time frame for the guild I was in. They understand, but was I really being justified into doing that? I feel like a jerk thinking back on that. It also contributed to a very volatile senior year, because I nearly failed a Bio-chem class the first quarter because I remembered telling my teacher that I allowed gaming to be a higher priority than school as well as not doing as well in other classes (although being in the IB program didn't help either); another dumb decision. Then add in Maple when Pirates came out. I was really hard pressed to take advantage of every single 2x event as possible to rush to the top few hundred pirates; that almost got in the way of college but I soon learned to not take 2x events so seriously, that there will always be more of them so if I really needed to hit the books that weekend I just forget about the event. Eventually I stopped caring so much about ranks, going from wanting to be in the top 10 Pirates to just the top 200-300.

As for now, I placed a harness on my gaming urges, but i still have a bad addiction to spending time on the internet on anything that is a ticking link bomb. I also have the urge to lurk webcomic forums whenever a new comic is out, just to see how other people liked/disliked the comic. 8-Bit Theather, Order of the Stick, Awkward Zombie, Teh Gladiators, CTRL-ALT-DEL, Bear Nuts, Goblins, and there's probably several more webcomics I follow that I don't even remember. Reading the comics themselves doesn't take long, but reading the threads for each one as well as threads of interest in each forum really adds up.

As I already said before, I'm really reconsidering staying in the weekly DnD AIM group because there's just too much time wasted from people needing to AFK for dinner or some other matters. During that time, trying to do homework or study is impossible for me and I am already strapped for time in making the most of my weekend time for homework and the following week's readings. The AIM group is seriously a mixed bag: I like it because it's a DnD group, but I hate how much time we waste just doing nothing or arguing if a certain game mechanic can be used in a certain way. Currently it's slightly more good than bad because of the latter but it's certainly a worse use of my time than going to visit my friend or my friend's friend (the DM).

Overall, I'm realizing the inefficiency in my time management and priorities, in that I can do much more than I do now. I mean, yes I haven't gone completely down the path that the person in the video went, but it's more of a warning that I should make better use of my time.