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Comment by TaupeRanger | Hacker News Reader

I think Seneca would roll his eyes at most of these responses TBH. Who cares if you're just gaming to "pass the time"? When you're gaming, you're having fun and enjoying your life in the moment. It's only afterward when you start the cycle of criticizing yourself for not doing something "productive" with that time that the negative feelings enter. In fact, the whole exercise of feeling bad about yourself for playing a fun game and relaxing is exactly PART of the problem Seneca talks about - unless your gaming habits cause you to destroy your links to other important sources of joy and health, you shouldn't feel bad about having a fun "pastime" activity, that is just as valid as keeping a garden or reading a good book of fiction.

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Specifically, commenter you responded to cares. Because, as he puts it "it’s really easy to get sucked into spending too much time and ending up tired or sacrificing other recharging activities like exercise and socialization." He literally describes negative overall impact he perceives. He is not feeling bad for gaming for irrational reasons, he says it makes him tired and makes him sacrifice exercise and socialization.

He even admits it is theoretically possible to do it differently, but also observed people not doing it differently in practice.

The problem is that the things you think you enjoy and that recharge you may not actually be what you empirically enjoy and what empirically recharges you.

For example, playing a game, or browsing youtube, or scrolling through social media, or reading the news, or even browsing HN for that matter you may think of as something you do to relax. It could be, however, that actually, doing some woodwork, or practicing a musical instrument, or learning a language, or going for a walk in nature, empirically recharges you a lot better, and you actually enjoy the days when you get to do these activities a lot more - and it makes your time outside those activities more enjoyable too.

These are just examples, it may not work for you in the same way, and all of these activities can be done in 'recharging' and 'non-recharging' ways perhaps. The important thing here is that what you think recharges you and what empirically actually recharges you may be very different things.

It's been a while since I read Letters from a Stoic, but I have a feeling Seneca would scoff at frivolous pursuits - leave such things to the Epicureans. He comes off as a bit of a (humorously) grumpy old man in that book though.

As an ex WoW player, I’m rolling my eyes and I haven’t been dead for 2000 years.

Many games turn into jobs. The sense of fun degrades over time, and the self recriminations aren’t baseless.

If you're not having fun with the game and you're extinguishing your social and physical health, then you have a gaming problem. If you're admonishing yourself for playing a single player game to recharge and relax, as in the cases I responded to, you have a self-admonishment problem.

Replace game with solitaire, is it now viewed differently?

Does every human activity need to be productive? Why would you care what others think about your hobbies?

My point was merely, some have a bias for types of hobby, not its healthiness.

I know someone who, while depressed was playing solitaire and one other casual game for hours every day, for months. It was definitely not healthy.

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