Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spivak | Hacker News Reader

Can't forget video games, video game streamers, variety podcasters, pornography, sports tv and sports commentary, edutainment, documentaries, cartoons, comics, fanfic, romance novels, action movies, Vince Flynn books, political masterbation such as Last Week Tonight and Sean Hannity, news farms like NYT and WSJ, or smoking weed.

You chose a cross-section of content that that is universally derided by the average HN user; if you're not willing to use the front facing camera you're just taking potshots at your outgroup.

View on HN

You lump a lot of things into this bucket. I am curious what you consider as not a brainrot?

I mean I came up with the list by going through the kinds of mindless passive entertainment that has little to no to negative intellectual or artistic value that either I or my coworkers (who are mostly Dads hence Vince Flynn) enjoy that I think intersects with HN types.

It's easy to call out the kinds of low-value activities that you don't personally enjoy or partake in. It's a lot harder and more uncomfortable to see them in yourself and have some empathy and not judge others too much for their brain-off vices.

Only when I die and see the big stats board do I want to know how many hours I've wasted on Slay the Spire. And while I love it dearly I can't really delude myself that it's anything other than Candy Crush for nerds.

You do know that there exist more games than just candy crush? There are many games that I personally would order in the same magnitude of culture importance than musical symphonies. Portal 2, World of Warcraft, The last of us, Breath of the wild, just to name a few.

It's always video games that strikes a nerve with people on the internet. Yes I've played and beaten all the games you've mentioned. Sure artistic video genres exist just like artistic porn exists but we're not meaningfully engaging with the activity as it really exists by pretending that's what I'll find if I go to xvideos.

I've sunk 16k+ hours into WoW in my lifetime, you named perhaps the most brainrot game that has ever existed in the history of video games. It's makes Tiktok look like long form essays, doing meth instead would be considered harm reduction.

It's easy to identify when the activity is low status to your in-group. The Big Bang Theory has significant cultural importance but I bet you'd agree it's still brainrot.

>> by going through the kinds of mindless passive entertainment that has little to no to negative intellectual or artistic value

Why are video games on that list then?

Video games are probably the least bad here considering most of the popular ones are like 100 hour stories and are usually played in 1 hour chunks. Not the typical short form brain rot.

I meant to include color matching and gatcha games in my list.

Being long doesn't necessarily mean they aren't bad for attention spans. I recall seeing a reviewer complain about a story driven game recently where the characters were constantly restating plot points to make sure you didn't forget. And the more important thing in games than narrative, I think, is how much the gameplay itself makes you think long term (or not), and the pace of things. Do you have to keep a goal/strategy in mind or just constantly react to what's immediately in front of you?

It really depends on what your definition of "the popular ones" is. One of the most popular games is Candy Crush, which is not a 100 hour story game but fairly quick mobile activity game.

On the other side you have Ubisoft's genre of "brainrot" games, which on the one side will have a compelling story, but on the other will have hundreds, if not thousands of similar repeating side-activities that people can jump in and out of without needing to think too much.

And on the other other side you have story-rich games, e.g. God of War or RDR 2, which have a film-like setup and budgets to match.

Don't forget link aggregator sites run by venture capitalists to advertise their investments.

Of course, how could I be so forgetful?! Probably the brainrot of being on here so long.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com