Very often, I will do things which make me upset after the fact. During, it feels like it’s natural. I like examples!
I’m bored. I want to do something to not be bored. So I will open up my YouTube homepage and look for something. I will scroll, and react to a video I deem good enough to quench my boredom. I’ll click on it, and kaboom! Then, the recommender algorithm shows me another reasonably interesting one. Nothing to raise an eyebrow at, but something to get me to click to skip. 1 hour passes. The problem is it can be so simple, maybe it’s late at night, and I don’t even want to risk the idea that I might not be able to fall asleep fast enough. Just one more video.
Maybe I’m anxious about going outside to do something, to work out, or to start a new project. Either way, the times where I play video games or watch YouTube like that is to avoid something. To avoid boredom, to avoid anxiety, whatever really. It’s like porn, if you use it, the question isn’t what you get out of it. You ask what you get away from.
So what happens after you do something like this? Where you do something where the first though after is “I should go tie a noose” or “fuck why did I do that again” or “it is so over?” Well, you have this upset feeling, upset that you did this. And you don’t like this feeling. So you try to get rid of it. How do we do that?
The bad way to do it, but one of the ways we like to do it is that we make it seem like we need a quota of “do good stuff.” When you feel bad about playing video games, it’s always in the land of this quota of do good stuff. I didn’t do enough good stuff to play video games today, man! A lot of can be learned from childhood, when your parents said “You can go play after you finish your homework Chumbuk.” But what do we learn from that now, when your parent’s don’t provide you the outsourced validation that you can relax and masturbate? We come up with our own things.
We give ourselves little consequences. If I waste time in bed in the morning, I feel bad, so I choose to do something to stabilize. “I will now take a cold shower, since I wasted time this morning.” But I’ve been taking cold showers for almost a year now, it’s really not that serious. But me framing the cold shower like that – since I’ve been taking some warm ones too nowadays – makes it seem like a punishment for my action. Something to put the scales of justice back in order. So I do it, and I feel better about myself.
But what makes me feel better about myself? What am I taking the cold shower for? I am taking the cold shower to justify the time I wasted this morning. I punish myself so that I can feel better about doing something negative. Why do I feel better? It’s because I provided myself the illusion of change. Maybe cold showers are a bad example, but if I did something positive for the sake of doing something positive it would be a positive change. But if I did something positive for the sake of allowing myself to do negative things, then I am just maintaining the status quo of the scales of justice. Good enough, yes, just good enough. Nothing is actually changing!
These quick punishments never truly change you. You are upset, but you don’t actually want to change – you want to keep playing those games. You do it to justify your actions, you won’t take a big enough change to challenge the status quo. No? You disagree? Why is your PC still there then, with those games installed and nothing to stop you? If you wanted real change, you’d make it.
I know it’s really hard, I’ve been stuck in this loop my whole life. But I’ve managed to make good progress. It’s easier to sail to a new island than to destroy the one you’re docked at and then sail to the new one. So sail to that new island, it won’t be easy, but if you really want to change, then you will do it. The ideal is a place where you don’t see the appeal of video games or YouTube, a place where you don’t even want to look there. It’s hard to get there, but if you want to, then go. Though it comes with sailing to an island. Just make sure you don’t look back, try to minimize that.
ANDY YE 