Not All Leisure Is Fun...

So there's this group of gamers - actually, probably just of people in general - who don't really consume leisure material for "fun". They play games, watch movies, read books, or listen to music in a way that doesn't necessarily call for enjoyment. Instead, it's to eke some other meaning out of the medium. In gaming, this manifests itself as especially competitive gamers - "gatekeeping" being an operative term. A recent example comes to mind - Doom Eternal, by Id Software, is a pretty damn tough game. I love it even so, but it's definitely not a casual shooter. That being said, if someone I know played it on a lower difficulty than I do, I wouldn't berate them for it, and I would encourage them to pick the difficulty right for their skill level. There are purists who can't stand the sometimes obscene difficulty curve being watered down in any capacity, even for the broad enjoyment of others, and the exploits of this particular side of the community are all too visible on Twitter and other official media for the game.

I'm not much of a movie or music critic, but as I understand it, especially challenging works - like, say, Dogville - tend to carry some higher level of critical analysis than, say, Avengers: Infinity War (well, in regards to the movie's content, anyway - many reports have been written of Marvel's once-in-a-lifetime gambit with the MCU from a financial perspective!). I know someone who's very particular about liking deeply experimental music - stuff that to me basically sounds like someone slamming their head on a bunch of drums, tossing it through a compressor, and then paulstretching it in Audacity until it sounds unrecognisable. I don't like it, put simply - I like my music to be music, to some extent, or it doesn't work. I don't begrudge him liking the experimental stuff, either - but we did have a conversation lately due to his tendency to flood a music thread on a forum for some friends with this kind of stuff. No one's really fond of it, and he directs the blame at others for not being more hardcore as opposed to just being content with people's differing levels of taste. What I tried to explain to him is that if you want to get people in on your hobby, you have to start basic, and you have to tell a n engaging, personal story about it. Otherwise, nobody's convinced, and some might be actively pushed away.

Books I've had to analyse in depth for years - and I've been writing my own stories for a while, too. I've developed my feelings towards really, er, "creative" analysis of books in recent times - I used to think it was all poncing about, and now, I only think it's a little poncing about. Saying "the author chose the colour blue because it's sad" when the curtains are just blue is, still, overthinking things - but at the same time, when I received feedback and someone made a connection I hadn't made about my own writing, it was oddly complimentary. That other people inject their own personal meaning into my work to better their enjoyment of it is pretty satisfying - but I also don't enjoy people injecting their own political views on my work. One of my stories featured an escort, and receiving feedback from a peer, they disliked it for that reason alone. Not my handling of the woman, or any kind of stereotypes I may've propagated (which, seeing as she's present for not very long at all, I'm not sure I did), but just because there was an escort, and generally prostitutes get a pretty bad time of it. At a certain point I think you have to analyse whether it's a personal or objective problem with something, and that's a realisation I've had to make in my own life.

For example - I don't like gatekeeping in games. I don't like over-prescribing meaning in movies, or overly experimental music that then gets used as ammunition to insult the tastes of others, and I especially don't like people berating stories for content that isn't there. However, part of understanding this is understanding why people have these views, and it really boils down to one thing - people want to be the odd-one-out, but not, at the same time. They want to feel ahead of the curve, whilst simultaneously leading a trend. They want people to know they did it first, but then they want others to follow in their footsteps. I don't disrespect wanting to trailblaze.

But sometimes, I just want to shoot some goddamn demons.