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I'm tired of video games and, by extension, life.

 

I don't know if you're referring to the debacle going on elsewhere, but if you are, I feel you. I've tried several times to write on here about how I need a vacation from the internet and even from this forum, which is full of the nicest and most reasonable people there are. I'm just so damn tired of feeling like... I was going to type out an analogy of how this situation feels to me, but I got a headache just trying and really who cares?

 

I just need to be somewhere else besides a world where people can see one side asking for thoughtful consideration and another side screaming graphic death threats and decide that a middle ground is needed. Fuck your middle ground, it's covered in blood and shit.

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I'm actually thinking of taking a vacation from the internet for a few days, myself.

 

I finally took 4chan off my New Tab Page today. I always kind of waffled on it, because I know the place is disgusting but I only ever visited the relatively nice places like /Shiny Hunt Weekend/ on the Pokémon board and then only sparingly, but I think I finally reached the point where I felt too embarrassed by association to stick around. So long, /shw/. Thanks for the Japanese Ditto.

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I'm actually thinking of taking a vacation from the internet for a few days, myself.

 

I finally took 4chan off my New Tab Page today. I always kind of waffled on it, because I know the place is disgusting but I only ever visited the relatively nice places like /Shiny Hunt Weekend/ on the Pokémon board and then only sparingly, but I think I finally reached the point where I felt too embarrassed by association to stick around. So long, /shw/. Thanks for the Japanese Ditto.

 

Welcome to my breakup with /tg/ a couple of years back. They taught me a lot about tabletop and board games, but they're part of something that seeks to destroy everything that I find good in the world, so fare thee well.

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Holy fucking shit, what happened in the last two weeks? I went to Ireland on the 13th, got back Sunday night, went to the new semester of school the next day, and then had to drive to Houston Tuesday to pick up the dogs and drop off gifts to family, then Wednesday morning I find out I have some job leads for that dumb Simpsons mobile game that might work out and I start getting back to Thumbs in full Wednesday night and every thread is a shit storm and all this stuff has happened with so many video game avenues plus Ferguson place and I feel confused and upset and I still have so many pages more to go through on this forum. Aughghghhhhh.

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Some of the shittest humans decided to wage war. This also sums it up pretty well:

 

I just need to be somewhere else besides a world where people can see one side asking for thoughtful consideration and another side screaming graphic death threats and decide that a middle ground is needed. Fuck your middle ground, it's covered in blood and shit.

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Welcome to my breakup with /tg/ a couple of years back. They taught me a lot about tabletop and board games, but they're part of something that seeks to destroy everything that I find good in the world, so fare thee well.

 

Yeah, I'd left /co/ and /v/ before this. This is just the inevitable conclusion.

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It feels like I have actually had the opposite response to this than most of you. I have taken a 5 or 6 month break from gaming due to life issues leaving me perpetually disinterested in anything. The only reason I'm back, is because after a long, sad day I turned on the most recent idle thumbs and felt my heart break. Needing further context I came back here only to see a lot of your collective spirits lower than usual.
 

I love gaming, and no matter how sad my life is I want gaming, films, literature and everything else I love to be a part of my daily routine and part of the conversations I take part in. If this forum can't rise above the cultural depression we're in, I don't know who else could.

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I've somehow reached a point in my life where I'm down to about zero friends. It's something that's really been bothering me a lot lately and making me feel increasingly isolated and insecure. I've tried to get together with some coworkers that I get along with and share similar interests but it just never gels for some reason. Everyone else my age seems to have their own thing going on with their established group of friends and since moving to Phoenix 5 years ago, my established group of friends has pretty much faded away.

 

Why is making friends so goddamn hard at this stage in life? Maybe there needs to be a "finding new friends" equivalent of an online dating site (or maybe there already is) to make this shit easier. I'm just getting tired of being a loner.

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Thanks for the help with my weird quarter life crisis thing.

Just found out the details surrounding my breakup with my now exgirlfriend, and apparently she had been with a previous boyfriend during the time apart and was looking for a strategy to break up with me as painlessly as possible. So basically everything she told me about why we were breaking up successfully gaslit my understanding about our relationship, she was just looking for a fling before she went back to Russia. It's fucked up but I don't feel like I cant trust anyone anymore.

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I've somehow reached a point in my life where I'm down to about zero friends. It's something that's really been bothering me a lot lately and making me feel increasingly isolated and insecure. I've tried to get together with some coworkers that I get along with and share similar interests but it just never gels for some reason. Everyone else my age seems to have their own thing going on with their established group of friends and since moving to Phoenix 5 years ago, my established group of friends has pretty much faded away.

 

Why is making friends so goddamn hard at this stage in life? Maybe there needs to be a "finding new friends" equivalent of an online dating site (or maybe there already is) to make this shit easier. I'm just getting tired of being a loner.

 

 

Me too dude :\ 

 

I had to leave school for 3 semesters for health reasons, and now my friend group has graduated. It's really difficult to insert myself into existing groups at this point too. It sucks.

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Same here. Outside of work, I know literally no one on this side of the country other than my wife. There are a few people at work who I suppose I would consider friends, but we never hang out outside of work, and whenever we talk we pretty much just bitch about work. I don't really interact with people very much in general because of my social anxiety, and whenever I do get to the point where I feel like I can open up to somebody, I start to worry that they don't want me around because I bring them down by being such a grumpy miserable bastard all the time.

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Me as well.  In fact at this point I'd say the people I'm currently the best friends with are ones I've never met in real life.  It mostly has to do with the fact that I'm not interested in the things most people I'm physically around are, nor are they interested in what I am.

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Sorry to hear that you guys are going through the same thing. I really miss the days when I could just call up a friend and we would hang out and play video games for hours on end. With those friends gone it seems like everyone else my age has totally different priorities in life and I have a hard time finding people I can really relate to.

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Dang. I would hang out with you dudes and play video games all WEEK.

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FWIW, I'd pretty much hang with about anyone one these boards.  I actually have a pretty good sized group of local friends that I don't see nearly as much as I would like.  We bought a house in the country a few years ago, so it's about an hour+ roundtrip to see anyone (or for anyone to come see us).  We love our little house in the sticks, but it wreaked an unexpected amount of havoc on our social lives, particularly for me.   I've felt increasingly socially withdrawn the longer we're out here, as I work from home, so I can literally go days or a full week without seeing someone other than my wife (and kid, since she's been home on summer break) unless I make myself go to town.  But increasingly I finish up work, and just don't feel like I've got the energy to go do anything.  Blargh. 

 

I've also been trying to talk myself into taking a break from the Internet, other than what I need to do for work, and perhaps a break from gaming in general.  A lot of that is related to the above sense of isolation, and knowing that I use the Internet as an easy out for not going and doing things I enjoy, because it's so much less effort to just sit down at my PC. 

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FWIW, I'd pretty much hang with about anyone one these boards.  I actually have a pretty good sized group of local friends that I don't see nearly as much as I would like.  We bought a house in the country a few years ago, so it's about an hour+ roundtrip to see anyone (or for anyone to come see us).  We love our little house in the sticks, but it wreaked an unexpected amount of havoc on our social lives, particularly for me.   I've felt increasingly socially withdrawn the longer we're out here, as I work from home, so I can literally go days or a full week without seeing someone other than my wife (and kid, since she's been home on summer break) unless I make myself go to town.  But increasingly I finish up work, and just don't feel like I've got the energy to go do anything.  Blargh.

 

I have a robust group here in St. Louis, but I still feel lonely a lot because I've picked a fairly isolating line of work, even once I get my PhD. Not to mention, I'm very conscious that my friends are people I know 1) through my program or 2) through my ex-girlfriend and her brother, and either are apt to disappear in a moment if the common thread is gone.

 

I'd love to hang out with any of you, but I'm incredibly shy and not too good with strangers, so I'm sure I'd be a narf. Also, I've burned out hard on video games after beating Dark Souls 2 a second time, so I've got no elite skills to show off right now.

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I've got like a dozen friends, it's great.

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I've got like a dozen friends, it's great.

 

I'm glad I wasn't the one to say that :P

 

ps. If any of you are looking to meet people in the lower mainland of british columbia, my mom says I'm pretty cool

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I've somehow reached a point in my life where I'm down to about zero friends. 

Why is making friends so goddamn hard at this stage in life? 

 

I'm basically at the same point, I moved away from all my contacts for my new job and it's incredibly hard to make new friends in this line of work. Most people's contracts last between a year and 3 years. As I start getting friendly with someone their contract is up and they're gone. Making friends is hard once you leave college. 

 

The good part is when I visit family I end up spending a few extra days because my friends down there always want to catch up.

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I shouldn't actually complain too much, I do have a great group of friends. I just need to prioritize seeing them more and not let inertia keep me rooted at home when I don't need to be. 

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Yeah can we all transplant to the same city and hang out? A lot of my real life friends annoy me and I'd be willing to trade them out every once and a while. I also don't really make an effort to hang out with them much though, it's usually them coming to get me. I guess it's easier just to hang out with my wife all day and there's no stress involved in that. I guess I'll end up with no actual real life friends at this rate.

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I haven't lived in the same city as any of my best friends in years. That's more than ok for me though, I can only cope with so much social interaction.

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Why is making friends so goddamn hard at this stage in life?

Me too dude :\ 

Same here.

Me as well.

 

Same. I moved to the sticks and, predictably, even though I'm only half an hour away from one of the largest cities in the UK, my social life has tanked a bit. City transplants are hard too; a friend switched careers and moved to my hometown, she's quite gregarious yet it's taken her two years to feel like she's even started building a group of friends. Late twenties/early thirties can be particularly hard for this kind of stuff, because people are getting busy with kids, mortgages, weddings, etc. One of my larger social circles just petered out over the course of a few years for those reasons.

 

It's not the first time I've dealt with this. I went from an early-twenty something with social phobia and no friends, to slowly realising I was an extrovert and briefly getting a reputation for knowing absolutely everyone. Not to diminish the resulting friendships, but making friends is totally a numbers game. There are so many people you meet with whom you won't click, but every so often you'll find someone and have a connection. The best advice I can give is to meet people harder. Meet more of them. Do more things. Trying new stuff like evening classes can be be a great way to meet like-minded people, but the biggest thing I'd recommend if you have the time, will and maybe a few like-minded friends to help, is to start a small, local event centred on something you're interested in. Starting a friendly board games night helped me make a lot of friends with common interests, and over the years I helped run it, I even met a few partners too.

 

Edit: Likewise starting a hackspace. It began as one guy appealing for other people interested in starting one, then three of us meeting in a pub. It snowballed into something big with hundreds of members over the past 3.5 years. Naturally I can't know them all, and some of the people in a group that big are awful, but some of them are really good people I'd probably never have met otherwise.

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 I also don't really make an effort to hang out with them much though, it's usually them coming to get me. 

 

I used to be like that, but now that I don't have easy access to my friends, I always make the effort to see as many people as possible when I get the chance. I've found people really appreciate it if you make the effort, and some people get bent out of shape if you don't. 

 

 

Trying new stuff like evening classes can be be a great way to meet like-minded people

 

Doing things is expensive! I've been looking for a good evening class for a while - either something handy like bike maintenance or something more academic like learning Italian or Czech, but they're not cheap at all. Then there's the fact I get home from work and I'm usually dead tired, and really not in the mood for making small talk with people. 

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I shouldn't actually complain too much, I do have a great group of friends. I just need to prioritize seeing them more and not let inertia keep me rooted at home when I don't need to be. 

 

That's pretty much how I am too. I do have some great friends, not a huge amount by any measure - I do feel insecure about that sometimes in the same way - , but I'm a very self-sufficient person, I can easily sit at home for a week and work on my game. These days especially. I live with my girlfriend so I get a nice amount of social interaction each day anyway whether I seek it out or not, that makes me forget to sometimes just call people up and hang out. It's easy to lose track of that, and hard at the same time to keep those connections fresh. That's why I've always liked (and sought out) to live with other people, from my parents to roommates to now a significant other. Having someone in the house, even if you don't want to talk right now is just kind of soothing and nice. If I had gone to live by myself I think I would have turned into a cat lady-man.

 

It would be pretty awesome if the Idle Forums were a real location, then we could all hang out. I just went to a dutch Idle Meetup, and I'd advise more people to set up meetups like that, it was great to just banter about games for a few hours over a hot coco.

 

Which is also nice to see decent humans in the real world and realize that all this meta drama is only contained in our internets. I usually steer away from Kotaku comments but there were a fair number of people in the comment of a recent article that said they didn't really care about gamer culture, they just wanted to play games, and had missed most of the drama. Which I think is a nice reminder that there is still a silent majority of decent gamers out there.

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