Escaping and speedrun content

[SerinaGold]

I have relapsed again not for playing but for what haunts me more, watching gaming content. It is still a plague for me and I am trying not only to completely stop playing but to stop watching any gaming content online. I have been struggling with speedrunner content online and I found a response online that really changed my viewpoint and even agreed with many points I see Cam and the community talk about. Speedrunning is an addiction. I will let the OP explain it in a way that really resonated with me and may help someone else out as well. I also wanted to mention that this has really resonated with me and makes me really want to dedicate myself to real life goals, I dont have to be the best but I want to learn some real life skills and hobbies that I can do to really better myself and show real life improvement. Right now I've been trying to learn that guitar I've had for 10 years and work on my spanish speaking skills. 
 

speedrunning is dedicated to spending weeks, even months, refining a single playthrough, and at any point if something isn’t smooth enough, you have to start over. It’s not something you can do in a spare-time hobby because its about beating the time, not playing the game, and you can’t do that on your occasional spare time.

You sit in a dark room, probably recording yourself, and you spend hours and hours of your time focused on an overall time to beat, maybe even by just a few minutes. You shun time with friends, family, socializing, your awareness of the world’s events dwindles. You compromise your relationships because you’re hyper-focused on applying a very specific, extremely specialized skill to probably not but hopefully shave off the total time taken on a particular couple of video games.

You don’t explore new games or new tech. You aren’t developing coordination and multi-tasking skills for other uses, you’re just repeating a process over and over for it’s own sake. You’re not puzzle-solving and sharpening your mind. You’re not even play-testing games to ensure quality for thousands or millions of potential players. You’re not developing anything. Your skillsets aren’t transferrable to anything. You’re not learning anything, not improving the world, not increasing your job qualifications… you’re not even improving your quality of life. If anything, you’re making it worse.

If you’re creating content for entertainment—there’s a LOT of other things you can do with that, with greater outreach and more impact.

Speedrunning isn't a casual hobby or sport of entertainment…it’s an addiction.

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Take something like figure skating. The activity in of itself, like video gaming, is harmless. You’re performing a dance with moves that are very difficult to pull off, and more difficult to perfect with timing, grace, and strength. Even if you’re not competing, you’re exercising, you’re increasing balance, coordination, and learning about yourself physically. You can make videos on it, you can entertain people (it is dancing performance, after all). You can apply your skills to be an ice skating coach and make some decent money. There’s a community of other skaters to get involved with. You can challenge yourself with hockey-style skating or explore freestyle ice skating.

But speedrunning is the videogame equivalent of figure skating for the Olympics to get a gold medal. You can’t figure skate casually and as a fun side hobby to be a gold medalist. You have to start young and practice so thoroughly it consumes your life. So many young girls get trapped into it and race themselves to “keep up”, improve, learn, shunning friends and family to beat something as the absolute best.

But at least with figure skating, the routines are different, the dances you pick are different, and there’s a few real-world, and physically healthy, applications available from it. You can’t make $30 / half-hour coaching speedrunning.


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That has really resonated with me and makes me really want to dedicate myself to real life goals, I dont have to be the best but I want to learn some real life skills and hobbies that I can do to really better myself and show real life improvement. Right now I've been trying to learn that guitar I've had for 10 years and work on my spanish speaking skills. 

[WishINever]

I'm glad I never got into that, sounds dreadful. The goal is the only payoff but grinding towards the goal becomes the addiction. Seems really cool on the outside but once you get into it, it sucks your soul away. Besides, aren't the top speedrunners all cheaters anyway? Seems like just another form of "competitive" gaming that is all BS. I briefly got into watching doom speedruns bc i was interested in the game mechanics. Doom is alive and well.