As somebody who has published cybersecurity research AND a good number of youtube videos about niche video games, I can promise you making a YouTube series on an obscure video game does not get in the way of doing scientific research. With the magic of unrestrained autism, both are possible.
Creative boredom died with smartphones, mine as well. I hate it! But I hate being bored and having to come up with shit to do more. :(
In 1820s Germany, the only guys documenting every beetle were basically the idle rich. The average person was working 12 hour days on a farm, or weaving cloth, or sorting through sewage for something useful.
Well would you rather have the idle rich making gaming youtube videos or documenting beetles?
I don’t really care about the idle rich. It’s good when society is rich enough that the non-rich can spend their time making YouTube videos.
I’d rather have them taxed so other people can have idle to document beetles or make gaming YouTube videos.
…good point
Most of the comments seem rather defensive. Is the post calling someone out?
I dont think so. I think theyre just trying to be accurate about whats its like to be the sort of person that gets very into their interests.
It seems overly nitpicky, like the larger point is being ignored because of technicalities
Welcome to ASD
The same guy would have very likely have died before he was even 10. And if he wasn’t dead very likely to work in a meaningless job to even survive unable to spend time on things on bugs.
It takes resources to do “useless” things.
Yeah, the people who did that in the past were born into rich families and could study beetles instead of till the farms. Now the person that would have tilled the farms works a full time job and uploads the rings videos because they couldn’t afford to go to collage for beetles.
Someone already listed all the beetles in 1820 what are we supposed to do??
Check they’re all still there and note any changes, which ones are no longer around, which new ones have joined them etc.
Loads to be getting on with there :)
We remake the list with modern enhancements such as lens glare.
Maybe Photoshop in a thigh gap
And ray tracing
And chromatic abheration!
Some Vsync if you’re feeling nasty
Someone just found a new species of legless skink in Australia. Could have been us but you playing.
…I read that as skank.
I need to be caffeinated.
Legless skank… this better not awaken anything in me
i hope Legless Skank (the punk band) awakens within you a strong passion for self expression
🎵 I’ve been through the desert on a skank with no legs 🎵
Skankin’ it slow.
You me and a legless skank in the Australian desert but you playin
Overthrow oligarchy
Right? Let’s get more of these people interested in left wing politics instead of insects or trains or whatever
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no thank you. being a decent person isnt transactional. not bartering over which groups someone can still treat like shit for fun. and being the kind of obsessive who tracks every local beatle or makes a youtube series about obscure shit. isnt the same thing as being someone who need to knock others down to feel strong.
Get into genetics, make new beetles.
Thr last thing we need is more beetles. There are so many of them as is!
Half of them have died off since 1960.
We’ve been through this, there’s a scale problem. Also I’m not sure the parts are compatible.
Personally, I find the insinuation that I can’t make a 26 part YouTube series about how collect all the rings in every sonic game, AND document every kind of beetle in my local province, belittling and insulting.
Beetling, if you will.
Alright, I’m waiting on the youtube playlist
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This did not in fact make me jealous and vie for His love in unhealthy ways.
Well i hope there are also over 10 species of you.
Shoutout to the oldschool runescape wiki people. One of the best and most thorough video game wikis I’ve ever used. If they never got hooked on medieval cookie clicker a decade or two ago who knows what else they would’ve achieved.
Any Austin embodies this AND he’s a talented musician, that guy is awesome
So what’s the issue about that again?
Controversial take: advancing science is better than spending weeks optimising how to play video games for children.
Controversal take: humans don’t have maximize productivity in every moment of their lives. It’s perfectly acceptable for someone to spend their spare time making in depth videos if that is something they enjoy doing.
Every moment of every day does not need to be spent maximizing productivity, otherwise what are doing on Lemmy instead of cataloging beetles?
There’s so much black and white thinking here, and maybe my previous comment is partly to blame too…
“Documenting beetles” can be exactly what you do in your spare time because you enjoy it, without productivity being your goal. You can do it just so. It’s nothing unusual.
The point of the OP is that some people have a lot of focus and curiosity that makes them fixate on solving stuff even if it seems mind-numbing to outsiders, and that a lot of that mind-numbing stuff-solving can actually be incredibly valuable for others, expanding our understanding of the world, etc. It does feel wasteful that such energy ends up spent on something that has way smaller or entirely nonexistent benefit for others.
I should have said this in my comments sooner, while the thread was still active, but here it goes anyway: we still absolutely need this sort of meticulous, “mind-numbing” work. Wikipedia is probably the best and most prominent example of such an effort that is run basically just on people’s free time and curiosity and willpower.
This also isn’t meant to say that playing video games should be avoided completely. I joked about my “utilitarianism calculator” in an another comment, but hopefully it’s obvious it’s an exaggeration. OP specifically talks of people who spend exorbitant amounts of time and effort optimising how to play a game, they’re not just enjoying it and relaxing with it as is otherwise normal for games and sports and similar activities. So it’s basically just the same sort of work as documenting beetles, but without the eventual benefits…
NOOOOO MY HOBBY OF STARING AT A SCREEN FOR 4 HOURS IN A ROW IS GOOD
Science has already done as much beetle documentation as one can do without a bunch of resources, though. You wouldn’t be advancing it, just redoing it for fun. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s also nothing wrong with playing video games for fun.
Replicating science is actually pretty important, and there’s no way a “civilized” area has the same beetles in 2025 as in 1820.
Spend time becoming a scientist instead of optimising how to play Sonic, get the resources for further beetle documentation, bam!
Why?
Because my utilitarian calculator says so.
I also don’t think it follows. A person who does nothing but play video games isn’t going to magically go and advance science.
