Today, I’m writing the rare sequel to a blog post. I wrote yesterday about my willingness to commit to the bit so long as it was a generally positive or neutral thing, and as I’ve reflected on that piece and thought about life in the internet age, I’ve realized there’s another important caveat beyond my “don’t use my powers for evil or negativity” caveat from yesterday. The other important rule of my bit commitment, so integral that I completely forgot about it until I saw someone break it on Twitter today, is “never commit to a bit on the internet.”
Continue readingCommitment
I Only Use My Willingness to Commit To The Bit For Good
Sometimes, I like to spend way too much time on something. In years past, I was not as skilled at directing this time and attention toward something constructive and positive. I’d spend hours scrolling through social media, trying to get my spoons perfectly clean (OCD’s a bitch), or getting everything perfect on a theaterical set I was building (instead of getting it good enough for something that was going to stay up for three weeks and then get tossed in a dumpster). Now, I’m a little better at directing my time. I direct this level of focus towards putting puzzles together, deep-cleaning my apartment, and various personal projects. Which isn’t to say that I can channel my compulsions into something useful, but that maybe I’ve gotten better at handling my mental health in a way that leads toward more positive coping mechanism than obsessing over whether or not my most-used utensil is bacteria free and not going to kill me by introducing rat posion/foreign bacteria/????DANGER???? into my system.
After a brief, jovial conversation at work, during which I politely asked a coworker to fuck off after he criticised my slap-dash wiring methods, I was asked by another coworker what was the most complicated and time-consuming way I’d told someone to fuck off. He was referencing my tendency to commit to elaborate bits and my willingness to spend a lot of time doing something right the first time, but I couldn’t think of any examples. Most of the time, I just tell people to fuck off directly. Ever since that conversation, I’ve been trying to think of any example of a time I spent a lot of time on something like that and I’ve drawn a blank.
Clearly, I don’t mind spending a lot of time on things other people don’t consider important or worth it. I spent hours turning in a paper because it was my degree capstone and I liked my professor a lot. In addition to the standard format copy I submitted just to cover all my bases, I took a cue from a discussion we’d had in in class the week prior and the peculiar way I’d written the title of this 20-page paper. I printed the whole thing out on several long pieces of paper, used my theatrical prop-building skills to turn them all into a properly parchment-looking sheet, and “nailed” (pieces of duct tape with the word “nail” written on them) the result to my professor’s office door the day the paper was due. It was not a cheap trick to pull for a broke college student, given that the only paper that would work for my purposes was some of the heavy-duty art-student paper I had to get specially printed at the print shop on campus.
I did a similar thing to ask a woman out, once. Wrote a short story based on some things we had discussed and some stuff we were learning about in a class we were both taking, and eventually delivered a hand-distressed “ancient myth” I’d discovered. It was fun, took way too long, and was 100% worth it. The relationship didn’t develop much further in that direction, but I enjoyed my time spent in the crafting. I’ve also spent hours wrapping presents in ways that disguised not only what the present was, but what part of the strange result was actually the present (if you twist a shirt tightly enough and then wrap the result in plastic wrap, it actually becomes a rather firm object you can use as the haft of an axe you’ve made out of tape, cardboard, and way too much wrapping paper). I’ve made various weapons, done one of the largely annoying but still fun “box in a box in a box in a box in a box….” style wraps, and even took the time to elaborately write out a certificate as a present, the first letter of each work spelling out where the recipient could actually find their gift.
The through-line of all of this is that I am willing to spend a lot of time doing things I find interesting, that I enjoy, or that I think other people will enjoy. My love of repititive and exacting tasks means I can zone out and never get bored doing something like that, so there’s generally very little reason for me not to do that kind of thing. But I’ve never spent more than a couple minutes on something that might upset someone. I’ve spent time crafting letters to establish boundaries and working out how to express myself in a situation that is emotionally frought, but I’ve never spent more than a couple minutes on something meant as an elaborate form of “fuck off.” I just don’t have the time or the energy for that kind of negativity. I was going to say “bullshit” instead of “negativity,” but I have plenty of time and energy for largely uninteresting stuff others might consider bullshit.
One of the upsides of my childhood is that I quickly learned that being mean to people isn’t worth my time. The more time you spend on telling someone you hate them, the happier they are. Bullies, trolls, and abusers are always happy to see you spend your time on them, regardless of the reason. There’s an old saying that the best revenge is a life well-lived, and while I like the sentiment, I’m not sure I entirely agree. Some people need to be punched, some people need to be told off, and some people need to be chewed out, but I’m not going to spend any more time than I feel is absolutely necessary for my own health and satisfaction (or the health or satisfaction of someone I’m supporting) on someone I don’t care about. Generally speaking, they’re not worth it.
I hope this doesn’t come off as smugly superior. I just think it’s worth thinking about that if you want to spend hours planning an elaborate revenge prank or whatever, it might be a better use of your time to just punch them in the face and move on with your life as best you can. Or just tell them to get fucked and walk away. Or offer to show up as a call-in guest to a small multi-person therapy session to tell them they fucking suck and can go fuck themselves before promptly hanging up. Lots of ways to just do it and be done, you know? Spend your time and energy one something better, life filing your taxes or picking gum out of carpet. At least you’ll have accomplished something lasting when those are tasks are done.
A Date with Destiny
After several months of delays, flaking, and people doing that thing were they commit to something but understandably have to bail when their mental health, physical health, or life gets in way, I am finally set up to do the raid on Destiny 2. I’ve literally been waiting to do it with this group of people because this group of six is my clan, they’re the people I want to play this game with. I’m not a hardcore gamer, I don’t really care about having a top-tier character or the best loot, and I don’t really enjoy grinding away (repetitively repeating tasks in order to reap the completion rewards as much as possible) in most games, so I was never going to do this with a group of strangers. I like to play video games with my friends, so I’m fine waiting until they’re all ready. Usually. The past 8 months of waiting have been a bit much, though.
It isn’t only Destiny, either. I’m having trouble getting friends together for almost any of the “old” online games. I used to play Overwatch a minimum of twice a week, but now it’s getting rare for me to play it at all during any given week. People have moved on to other games. Heck, I have as well. I spend more time playing Switch games than I do on playing computer games. I had a brief affair with Borderlands 2 again, and I even got to play it with a few of my friends, but that first week of playing it was all we had. We’re back to doing our own things for now.
Most of the time, that’s okay. It’s perfectly natural to go through cycles of spending more time with friends and then less time with friends. The same of true of bigger games without any real end, like Overwatch and Destiny 2. Something will prompt you to return to a game like that and then you’ll play a lot of it until something else captures your attention. If that was all of it, I wouldn’t mind it that much. I’d be quietly waiting for the cycle to come around again with some other game and then I’d dive right back into it with my friends. For the Destiny raid, though, it’s different.
My roommate, the head of our little clan and the center point for the entire group (since I only know half the guys in the group because of him), has been actively trying to organize a raid for months. Our clan has changed members and he’s even gone so far as to get a new person into the game and leveled all the way up JUST so we have a sixth person to do the raid with. And, you know, cause he’s a really nice dude who wants to share his interests with his friends, but also because of the raid thing. He’s found strategy videos for use to watch, shared diagrams and charts on how to navigate the read, done extensive research into the tricks of the raid, helped everyone optimize their characters, come up with a list of the best gear for each class, helped us all get the gear we want to use, and even managed to make the raid sound like a lot of fun despite the amount of work it sounds like from his pile of diagrams, videos, and charts.
And yet here we are, 6 months after the closest we ever came to doing the raid (we had four people online for it and the remaining two flaked last-minute). We’ve got a time set, we’ve got gear picked, we’ve got characters optimized, we’ve got teams picked, and people have actually started watching the guide videos. But only four of us are firm commitments. One has left some wiggle room in his commitment for last minute cancellation and another has committed, but he’ll be coming back from dog-sitting for his girlfriend and, as often happens when people encounter their significant others, he is liable to be distracted. I wouldn’t hold it against either one if they wound up bailing on us in order to go on a date/prepare food for the week or because they wanted to spend some time with their loved one, but I can see my roommate getting more and more frustrated.
Not only have people been flaking out or ignore his attempts to organize raids in the past, but they start asking if we’re ever going to do a raid after all of the dates my roommate set in the survey has passed by with only him and I responding. Neither of us can nag any of the people into responding to the surveys or queries, and no amount of enthusiasm on our parts has been enough to get four other people to commit to a date and time for a raid. It is incredibly frustrating to try to get people organized, have them ignore us, and then have them start complaining that we’ve never done a raid. I can only imagine how much worse it is for my roommate since he actually wants to have a fully optimized character and all the best loot (which is only possible if you grind through the raid at least once a week).
I mean, if I was in his shoes, I’d have lost my temper with this group and just done it on my own, with a bunch of strangers. There’s even a feature in the game for finding a group willing to random players join them for stuff like the raid, so it’d be easy to do, if somewhat time-consuming. He knows I don’t really care and the only other friend who cares would just do it on his own as well, so the only reason he’s still trying to organize us is because we’re his friends and he wants to play with us.
So I’ve cleared my night. I’ve had a couple of quiet conversations about the importance of honoring commitments. I’ve watched the videos and will do so again before the raid. I’ve responded to the messages and reviewed the charts and pictures. I’m ready enough to back up my roommate and be the second leader he’ll need to make sure everyone stays focused, on-task, and working as a team. I’ll be taking an hour or two before our scheduled time to get ready, including making sure my outfit and accessories are appropriate. Honestly, it feels a lot like preparing for a date that’s been a long time coming, minus the emotional turbulence and anxiety since I don’t need to worry about someone liking me.
I don’t think I want to pursue that metaphor too far. I don’t think I’m ready to make any kind of commitment, not while I’m still hung up on Breath of the Wild… And I know Destiny 2 isn’t the kind of game that will settle for an occasional fling. They’d be fun, but we’d both know that I’m mostly wasting both our times if I don’t make a serious commitment. For now, I’m just going to focus on the raid and we’ll see how it goes from there.