Who wants to inhabit an even more virtual world of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation? | Hacker News Reader

Who wants to inhabit an even more virtual world of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation?

newyorker.com

You hate to say it but how many people look back at a youth waisted playing years worth of first person shooter video games and say "time well spent"? Only children and people who never matured to adulthood. People need to get a real life. Literally.

I grew up with people who spent hundreds of hours on games and don't seem to meaningfully regret it.

Games are entertainment, like movies, novels, sports, etc. Most people don't regret the things they did for entertainment as children, and some people consider games to be more mentally stimulating than (say) soccer.

Being a bit older than yourself I would suspect...And sitting next to several dozen people of all ages on their death beds, I can say not one said they wished they watched more movies or played more video games or even played more sports. They ALWAYS said they wished they had more time with their loved ones. I get it if an artificial world is ones stand in for real life particularly if one's real life ain't that great. I'm not criticizing how people spend their time. I'm suggesting that the real world of experiences might be just as fulfilling if not more so. Just my 2 cents.

> They ALWAYS said they wished they had more time with their loved ones.

Yeah, but... doing what? Eating meals, playing board games, taking walks... I'm sure a lot of them would include time watching movies, plays, and TV with loved ones.

Playing video games with friends and siblings is some of my most cherished memories of childhood. I don't play much now, but it is a shared, interactive, exciting experience where you can discover and learn together.

Your interpretation of things doesn't sound judgmental, but it sounds like you don't understand that the entertainment is valuable for the same reason as a board game or a play -- it's a shared experience with a loved one. The details aren't important, and now the details are often that the games are digital.

One of the only reasons I'm still socially connected to many people is that I am on social media with them and also occasionally play games with them. High school reunions are meaningless these days because we already see all the people we want to see -- we just see them digitally.

I'd argue that the digital connections are hugely beneficial for exactly the death-bed stuff you're talking about, because digital connections have no geographical limitation.

To the "doing what question"... almost unanimously they all said that they wished they "said this or that".. Not so much did this or that... People tend to look back on their lives and almost always wish they had told someone: They loved them; They were sorry for something; They wished they spent more time getting to know someone personally (their Dad, their spouse, their friend) It's not so much about the doing but about the talking. Sharing what's inside your head and getting to know what's in other folks head is the secret. If games get you to do that, that's great, but no one is ever going to remember the play. Just don't focus on the superficial things. Such things don't last. I lost a friend recently who was amazingly accomplished and you know what people spoke about at the funeral; How great a dad he was. That's life, let's not loose that in a virtual world.

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