So, I figured something out about video games. I really liked it better when I was ignorant about how much of the game I’d finished. You know? Right now, I’m playing a game that has metadata on the map and in the menus. For example, if I click on the map, it’ll tell me how much of the area I’ve “completed”. And there’s a lot more of that kind of information in the menus. How much of the game I’ve completed, where I can go to finish what I’ve missed, and handy little pictures to help me on my way. I can totally ignore the menu stuff but it’s there.
Don’t get me wrong, all of that data is great if the player is a completionist and wants to know that kind of information, but I’m not a completionist, Far from it. I’m more of an explorer. I prefer to come across things organically and be all, Oh, there’s something new here. Neat. You know? I’d be completely fine finishing a game and never knowing that I didn’t find that one quest where I had to wait until midnight to talk to the old lady then talk to her grandson and then embark on an hour long trek all over the map to restore the family name and recover the long lost heirloom, no matter how epic it is.
Like, I don’t mind little icons on the map that say, “Hey, there’s a collectible in the area in case you want it.” I don’t even mind little markers above NPCs that say, “I have a quest!” But I do mind a checklist saying, “There are 260 of these collectibles, and you only have 150 of them.” That makes me twitch. Because even though I’m not a completionist, there’s a little part of me that wants to get them all. I very rarely give in to that, but it’s there. And I hate it. And there usually isn’t a way to turn that information off. You know?
This is kind of a minor issue about video games, but I think it taps into a bigger problem I have with our connected world. There’s a thing called FOMO — Fear of Missing Out. I don’t have that. Okay, I think there’s a little FOMO in everyone, but for the most part, I have the opposite. JOMO — the Joy of Missing Out. I don’t need to know what’s going on in everyone’s life. What the celebrities are doing, who’s marrying whom, or how many followers someone has. None of that is important to me. It never has been. And when I was working, it was super easy to ignore all of that, but now that I’m disabled… eh, not so much. When things like crocheting are exhausting, it’s way easy to just turn to online for distraction. And online is built for a FOMO mind, y’all. Probs because that sells stuff.
When it comes to social media, I’m usually maxed out at two accounts. Sometimes I’ll get a wild hair and sign up for four or five, but then I’ll delete most of them within a month. I think I’ve had Xitter three times at this rate. Never again, though. It really sucks. Right now, it’s Facespace and Instabook and I haven’t used Instabook in a while. And I’ll tell you right now, if it weren’t for the few people that I’m keeping in touch with on Facespace, I wouldn’t have that. Even that has way too much information coming at me sometimes, especially when there’s news breaking. It’s overwhelming.
Ironically, I absolutely love how connected we are nowadays. Back when I was a kid, I had half a dozen pen-pals that I wrote letters to. By hand, y’all, this was before personal computers. So yeah, we hand wrote letters, stuck them in an envelope and put them in the mail. And since they were worldwide, it would take weeks to hear from each other. There was a service that connected us all. I can’t remember where and when… I think it was through my church? Maybe girl scouts? I dunno. But back then, it was so slooooooooow, and now anyone from just about anywhere can talk to someone else anywhere else in the world nearly instantaneously. And I think that’s awesome.
What I’m trying to say is I’m not some kind of technophobe. I like technology. It’s information overload that’s getting to me. Our monkey brains aren’t built for all of this data coming to us at once. They weren’t when it was the 24 hour news cycle on TV and they aren’t now. I guess that’s why instead of connecting through social media, I opt to mindlessly watch videos, or play video games. But, as I opened with, I suppose sometimes even that’s too much for my lizard brain. Ha! Though, to be fair for me, I do have that brain fog working against me. Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s and all that. So yeah.
Anyway, that’s what’s on my mind today. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Happy Christmas if you celebrate, and I’ll chat at you later.
