It’s not often that I make a new thread in the Pit. In fact, I’m not sure, but this may be my first one.
One of the guys I’m living with this year, I have deemed Pit-Worthy. Luckily, he’s not actually a mean guy; I’ve known some assholes in my day, and he definitely isn’t one of them. I can tolerate the little annoyances, like how he unwraps food and then leaves empty cardboard boxes on the kitchen counter. But there are some things that just make me want to brand him a loser. For instance…
For the first few weeks after I moved in, I noticed he plays a lot of videogames. A lot of videogames. In fact, he gets up around 9 or 10 in the morning, gets on his computer, and really doesn’t stop playing games until midnight. Basically the only times he gets up are to eat and go to the bathroom. That’s not really an exaggeration. At first I thought this was just a little vacation he was taking to make up for lost time since, he was, after all, working his ass off all summer without his computer. Fair enough: The guy deserves a break before school starts. Then I find out his school doesn’t start until winter. It’s been two months now, and he’s still on the same 14 hour a day videogame schedule. He’s applied for a few jobs (which he didn’t do until a week ago) but he hasn’t made any followup calls to any of the places he applied to.
Okay, so maybe he deserves to have a few lighthearted jokes made about him, but that’s not why I decided to make a whole pit thread devoted to my roommate (which I do admit is, in essence, making fun of him behind his back.) I mean, I’m a computer programmer myself, so I know what it’s like to be sitting in front of a monitor all day. But the one thing that pushed me over the edge and inspired me to write this was something that happened earlier today.
He’s reformatting his computer and he needs to know the date so that he can set his computer’s clock correctly.
“What’s the date?”
“The 23rd, I think.” I look at my watch. “Yeah.”
“What month?”
Well, I work nights, and am not on any schedule…as in, I pretty much just go in to work whenever I want to work. I often lose track of both the date and the month, because of my lack of “I have to be at work on X, Y, and Z days”.
When you don’t have things that need to be done on a timetable, it’s far easier to lose track of time passage than you who live by a schedule do.
Also, as long as he has money to pay for his bills, why does it matter if he plays videogames all the time? Is that better or worse than people who watch TV more than 6 hours a night if they’re employed, or all day and night if they’re unemployed?
I play PC games 40+ hours a week (mostly online, and I’m involved in beta testing 3 different games at the moment), myself, in addition to working at a job that pays very well, that I only need to work a couple nights a week at, keep my house clean, make dinner for my family, etc.
Does the fact that I play games as much as some people put in at a full-time job, in addition to all the other things I do, make me a loser too?
But seriously, there’s a difference between being enthusiastic about video games, and spending every waking moment on them without getting any exercise or exposure to the outside world.
Like I said, it could be worse; he at least has his own hard-earned money and is not mooching money from his parents or welfare. Nothing he does hurts me personally, but I’m cranky and I feel like making fun of him because I’m a mean person.
My friend had a roomate like this. She would spend virtually all her free time playing this online game. I found it kind of unnerving- while I might get kind of caught up in a new game and spend a long time on it at first, this trails off quickly and I get into a normal routine.
I crave variety, and that extends to my entertainment. I think its kind of off-putting to see someone spend so much time on one thing. I kind of wonder how someone would be able to function in a non-video game environment if they had spent 2 months worth of 14 hour video game marathons!
Now that I’m level 65, and have all these spells at my command, life is much easier. I spend far less time in traffic now that I can port instead of driving. If my wife needs me for some boring chore, a quick cast of invisibility and I’m off the hook! Levitate is really handy if I’m fall-down drunk. And if I should ever be agroed by a hill giant while strolling through the woods, by golly I’m ready for him!
You know, there’s millions of people who watch TV from the time they get home to the time they go to bed, and watch it pretty much constantly on the weekends, just sitting there, staring at an idiot box.
I don’t personally see the attraction, but I don’t consider them losers.
Why is it off-putting? What if a person is happy with what they’re doing? I thinks it’s selfish to put judgment on people and what they do because you think’s it’s a waste of their time.
Let me rephrase before I get scolded. If said person has expressed a little depression and is looking for a life style change, maybe mention it. But if they’re content, let it go.
The key words there are “from the time they get home…” Home from what? Working at an actual job, going to school, contributing to society? Then sure, watch TV, knock yourself out, you’ve earned your right to be a vegetable. I don’t know if I made it clear from my original post, but my roommate is on his computer from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed, all day, every day, rain or shine. At least he never gets lost. We always know exactly where he is.
(Of course I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend many a summer vacation doing the exact same thing when I was a kid.)
