Honk!
Male
Joined on 4/11/05
Your last paragraph sums up my entire point of view on the topic at hand. I don't even post on this account anymore because I consider it such an embarrassment every time I log in and see this huge level icon and B/P rank. It's just a reminder of so much wasted time, time that I could've used for much more important things.
You're not alone at all, my friend.
You can't change the past, so don't be so upset about it. Learn from it; become stronger.
Thank you so much for this post! I have been debating on quitting b/p a lot lately, and I think I'm finally going to quit it. I think I convinced myself that I was only b/ping while I was already on the computer when many times that was the main reason I was on the computer. I've been wanting to spend more time away from the computer lately, and I think this is a vital step.
When I look back, I feel terrible for all of the missed opportunities... all because I wanted silly points. I'm ashamed of my previous priorities. There are better things to do, and I'm going to do them!!
I came to your profile expecting maybe a new news post, and I got that and the final push to quit. Haha, I don't know if that sounds really dramatic, but I've been looking for reasons to quit and never really came across anything until this.
Hope all is going super duper well for you! BEST WISHES <3
Jake speaks the truth too!
I'm thrilled to hear it, and I hope you're doing excellent as well.
I admit I would do plenty of silly things when while worrying about this website. If I missed a deposit, I would become upset! During a family gathering during a holiday, I spent a good deal of time b/ping. And so forth -- not good.
When I think back about what I could have done instead of b/p, deposit experience, or even worry about this website, it's pretty incredible. I may have enjoyed the time WHILE I was doing it, but in terms of impact on my life, it had none. I don't talk about Newgrounds with my friends (what's there to say? I used to vote on Flash movies online?), and it hasn't given me additional, more interesting skills I could use in life, like learning a language, learning to dance, becoming a MORE INTERESTING person, really.
I feel I've got some interesting characteristics and talents, sure -- but the amount of time I spent here could easily have been spent on learning on doing really more interesting things that will actually impact how you interact with others, what you can do with others, etc.
When you move away from the computer, Newgrounds is just so small and tiny and to have spent so much time on it is crazy. I think once that realization comes, however, it's a good thing. And even if you don't stop "cold turkey," hopefully you'll become bored with it, and find yourself busy with the much cooler stuff out there in the world.
People change. I think you shouldn't look back at the time you spent posting/B/Ping/etc as "wasted time". You DID enjoy doing all this, didn't you? So, if you enjoyed it, it wasn't wasted, imo.
I am still active in B/Ping, even though I reached the final rank in B/P a long time ago. I look at it this way: Now that I am a Supreme Commander, I can use my voting power to help the flashes I like and hurt the flashes I don't like.
I review flashes and audio, because I like to express my opinion about things, reviewing gives me an opportunity to do just that.
Same goes for posting. I met some awesome people here on the NG forums that I otherwise wouldn't have met. I even met a few users in real life when I was on vacation in their home town, something that never would happened if I hadn't been active on NG.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to convince you to start B/Ping or depositing again. Like I said, I just like to express my opinion. ^^
I am still active on this site, because I like what I'm doing here. But I also have to be careful not to let this site eat up all of my free time. I used to review all the flashes and audio that got requested in the review request club, but when some things changed in my life I just couldn't keep up with this. Now I only do some occasional reviews every now and then.
I also gave up the "list making" in the Level Up! Lounge, because it felt more and more like a chore to do. I stopped enjoying to do it, so I stopped doing it all together. If some day I stop enjoying depositing my Exp or visiting this site, I will stop visiting it.
So yeah, I can understand your point of view, but right now, I don't share your point of view. ^^
Anyway, everything I was trying to say is, that you shouldn't look back and think "Oh my god, all this time I wasted!" when you enjoyed "wasting" your time here.
I don't think we can change each other's opinions -- in fact, I find it pretty difficult if not impossible to change other people's opinions at all when it comes to subjective stuff -- IMO it really requires a paradigm shift that can't be achieved through sheer discourse.
That said, I would say that just because one is enjoying something -- the same reason I gave myself to continue back in the day -- does not mean that one should be doing it, or that time is not being wasted.
I might enjoy playing video games, watching TV and drinking beer more than doing my homework, so does that mean time spent doing those activities is not wasted? No -- I think it's still wasted time. If it isn't, then the only way one could waste time would be to literally sit and do nothing.
However, if we broaden our definition of wasted time, we might be able to say that time spent doing something so useless, mindless, or inconsequential in terms of impact on real-life skills is indeed a "waste." I could have, instead of b/ping, taken up a sport, made friends through that network, and gained skills that would be relevant in my life (being healthy, having social contacts, etc).
I could have learned an instrument, a language, or really done anything that I could actually use in my life, and that would be interesting to tell and to share with others. Quite frankly, I don't feel that spending time on Newgrounds does that.
I think it's natural to have regrets. Some people have regret not having worked as hard as they could have in school, blaming it on "wasting time" with other activities that didn't further their lives in a more positive, constructive way, like studying or gaining important skills. Since Newgrounds doesn't allow for people to really develop important life skills -- I can't b/p outside of this website -- then I think spending time here is to waste time. That doesn't mean wasting time is BAD -- we all need to blow off steam -- but it's wasted time nonetheless, and could have been spent in much better ways.
B/P and Experience both do have end points: Supreme Commander and level 60, respectively. You can set whatever goals for yourself you want, though. As for myself, I have well defined goals for B/P, or I wouldn't be doing it: I'm going to reach Supreme Commander, which will likely happen about this time next year, and then I'm going to raise my Saves to the nearest 5,000 and raise my Blams to 10,000, and that will be the end of it.
The huge draw to online stats is that it's essentially a game. At SXSW this year there was a presentation done about the game layer on top of the real world, where companies use game mechanics to entice people to them. Frequent Flyer Points are one example. LinkedIn has lots of them. By offering immediate gratification, they make people more likely to be drawn to them. Stat points on websites do just that, exactly the way they do in games.
I have some goals for my stats on this website. Once I reach them I'll stop using that aspect of the site. I can't see myself really spending 9 more years collecting experience to reach level 60, for instance, but I'd like to reach 10,000 experience. That's my personal endpoint.
In the meantime, I agree with Haggard: if you're enjoying it, then it's not really wasted time. Time spent in the most productive or efficient way? No. But certainly not wasted.
My response here would be similar to the one to Haggard with respect to how we're defining wasted time.
You agree in the end that time spent here is neither productive or efficient -- if that's the case, I would say that it's wasted. But I think the time "wasted" here could have been spent doing other, much cooler activities. We can't be productive 24/7 -- most of us are not learning machines that can be active all the time -- but we could spend time with friends, do social activities, or do other things that actually deal with our real lives, and in that respect are more productive and ultimately more interesting than anything we might do on a single website.
I agree with what Haggard said.
I could look back at the countless hours I've spend on this site gaining BP, depositing experience, posting etc. and say "that's a lot of time I wasted". But if I hadn't been here, was I really gonna spend all that time on anything more productive, useful or interesting? Probably not. I might've played more video games and watched more stupid sitcoms on TV instead. Or I would've found some other website to spend countless hours of time on.
You can't study or work on your career all day long, you can't always hang out with your friends, so don't think that you could've made much better use of that time.
Just make sure gathering useless points on NG isn't your #1 priority of the day, cause then there is something going wrong.
"You can't study or work on your career all day long, you can't always hang out with your friends, so don't think that you could've made much better use of that time."
This is a good point, but I believe one could still "make better use of that time" with respect to doing things OUTSIDE the internet. The crux here, I believe, is that when one spends so much time on a site like Newgrounds, they literally make no impact on their lives outside of this tiny, tiny sphere. Time with friends, learning skills that one can take with them through life, are so much greater.
And honestly, it's hard to completely buy the argument that one wouldn't have spent their time any better had they not done so on Newgrounds. Had I no access to Newgrounds, I may have had no choice but to make more friends and develop more skills in order to entertain myself.
Regardless, there's no use dwelling on the past -- I can't change it, and while I consider it wasted time, it's not like I can suddenly get it back. But I'm no longer making excuses for myself in order to keep coming back -- I think it's important to look at your situation NOW and really think about what you could be doing instead.
blah.
Ah, THIS is what I've been thinking lately. Thanks for the enlightening post. :P
In all honesty, I wouldn't have gone so "deep" in Newgrounds if I knew I'd regret wasting so much time in here. I mean, I'm 17 right now, but from 13-16, I'd waste most of my free time in here.
I used to enjoy it a lot, indeed, but looking back on what I could have done, the friendships I could have developed, all the wasted time... it's sad, indeed. There's still time to start again, though.
I've been coming here more and more sporadically - depositing and that's it, mostly. I think we have matured and realised what we've been doing during all this time. I mean, I've "met" some great people over here, but it just isn't the same as going out and "talking" to people, you know.
I'd sell my account right now, heh. :P
"That doesn't mean wasting time is BAD -- we all need to blow off steam -- but it's wasted time nonetheless, and could have been spent in much better ways."
Well yes. But isn't this always the case? Instead of "overlseeping" on a sunday morning you could go out swimming, dancing, running, etc.
Instead of reading this novel you could go out, developing other skills, etc. . It's what economists call "opportunity cost", there's always something you could do instead.
If you only look back at the times you did nothing but "wasting your time" with regret, I think you are doing something wrong. We all have to take some minutes/hours/days off sometimes, it's only natural. For me a life full of working, studying, developing skills is not really worth living. "Work Is for Man, Not Man for Work".
Like you said, it largely depends on how you define "wasting time".
Maybe I have a different view on newgrounds because I didn't discover this site before I was 19 and didn't sign up before I was 20 (that was back in 2001, yes I'm that old ^^).
By the time I signed up, I already had learned how to play an instrument and already had learned another language (english ;) ), lol.
Then I lost interest in newgrounds again, did some other things, found a girlfriend (whom I married in march!). Maybe because I already took a very long break I never became too obsessed with B/Ping or posting or reviewing. I'm now nearing 50k B/P, but those points where racked up over a very long time.
I never had so insanely high paces like harryjarry or Afro_Stud and I always wondered how the hell they manage to do that. Even with the "Portal Guard" I never was able to get a higher pace than 40 a day. Just because I had other things to do (studying, my gf/wife, friends, etc.). I don't care too much about B/P points so it's no big deal for me if my pace is a quite slow one.
I do care about my Exp and I haven't missed a deposit for quite some time now. Maybe this isn't too good of an obsession, but it's easy enough to vote on 5 flashes a day and then spending the time elsewhere. It's also easy to find someone on this site to do the depositing for you.
So yeah, I think my view on and my experience with newgrounds is quite different from yours. I guess that's why our opinions differ so much. ^^
You could tell it to Afro_Stud but I don't think he's human anymore.
Its a male thing, men enjoy mastery. Its why we play more of those videogames than girls. Even though its completely not connected to our life; mastering something and becoming really good at something just feels good. Its the reason why you've done it. Its the reason why I've played games like modern warfare for over 200 hours.
Girls seek more connection to the real world.
I know a guy who's really fast with his rubic cube. He can solve one in 25 seconds or something. At the end its just an amount of algorithms he has learned but he has performed them thousands of times.
The rubic cube is complex and simple at the same time, just learn a number of turns and you can solve it! But why continue solving it thousands of times when you already know how?
I've asked him once why he did it so much and what use it was in his life and he said: 'At least I have something I am really good at.'
Now that I think back to that I remember another game I've played probably too much: Starcraft II. I played it and played it just to see my rank go up. Started in the silver league then went to gold and platinum. I thought to myself: When I get into diamond league I stop! But just when I got into diamond Blizzard introduced the masters league: The best 2% of all active players.
I've played it until I got master, after I did I stopped with the 1v1.
Lets have a moment of (wasteful) silence for all the hundreds hours that we've spent on short-term satisfaction...
But hey, whether you've spent your days drinking beer in a bar, playing computer games untill 6 am, jerking off all day long or study your ass off all the time: at the end it doesn't matter.
When I'm an old man lying in my bed waiting to die I want to at least be able to say:
At least I was really good!
Im just glad im not the only one who feels this way.
I always thought it was crazy how to get to level 60 you need to deposit every single day for more than a decade straight.
But i believe you actually gained Real Like SKILLS even by spending time earning these points. Now you just have to use this skill and turn it into something you think is not wasted time. It maybe earning money, having fun or anything else! :)
*Real Life* :)
I haven't deposited or got b/p points in over a year now because I feel the same way.
My name is cast and I'm starving to death. Please help me.
Addict
I used to have a HUGE obsession with B/P and post count.
But yeah eventually after a while things get repetitive
absent
Repetitive indeed -- but even that wouldn't be a problem so as long as I could impact my life with my collection of b/p points. Alas, I cannot.