> Hacker News isn't a game, it's not played as a game.
It sure looks like a game. You write a string of text that otherwise serves no purpose to see if you can goad a reaction, and it even keeps score so you can keep tabs on your gameplay performance. If that's not a game, games must not exist.
You got hang up on that point while I expanded the conversation with clear examples of a counterpoint to your argument: people are not mainly using personal computers for gaming. I don't understand why the hang up.
I use Hacker News to educate myself and share my perspective of the world with others, and they do the same in reply to my comments. That's not a game, at all.
Your narrow view looks at it as a game, that's your opinion and not a fact. I don't use Hacker News as a game and I guess I'm in the majority on this here...
> What could be said about the rest of your comment that would incite a reaction? I went for what I knew you couldn't resist replying to. If there is no reaction, what's the point? I may as well have just muttered it to myself in private.
You could have stated more clearly what in your experience makes you think people use their personal computers only for gaming, sharing with me why your perspective is that and enriching how I view the world.
Instead we get to this absolutely boring conversation where you just want to trigger reactions instead of actually making it more interesting.
Boring and pointless, you could absolutely have just muttered that to yourself. You could also have tried to share.
> See, even you realize that you have to go for the pointless fluff that gets reactions, and not the deep, meaningful work that will truly educate others but gets ignored.
Don't put words in my mouth, I didn't realise that at all, and think what you try to do is the type of content that grates on me the most on discussions here, pointless pedantic fluff that is uninteresting, and exhausting.
I won't engage anymore since we are here for very different purposes, good luck with your "game" :)
> Most of the rest of us post because we think we have something worth saying on its own merits
If that were truly the case, why not simply talk to yourself in the shower or keep a private journal? HN would serve no purpose. The only thing it offers, that is not offered by a shower or private journal, is the gameplay.
> The only thing it offers, that is not offered by a shower or private journal, is the gameplay.
No, for God's sake, it offers other people, sharing their knowledge or opinion. If that's not important to you then I have absolutely no idea why you are here.
I might as well be a bot myself for how little I get out of so much scanned material :)
>why not simply talk to yourself in the shower or keep a private journal?
You can't get much better advice than this. This is like a true gut response. These have been proven so effective for so long it can often be assumed that people are already doing it :)
And then some.
Well I like it. All kinds of people earn points from me for all kinds of reasons. I wouldn't want to downvote either without being motivated by something meaningful enough to comment on. So I'm one-sided and generous, enjoy it that way, and will ante up again.
But it's nothing like an actual game, there is no strategy for me and I'm not playing anything.
Literally, I spend dozens of hours reading articles and comments for every hour spent gaming, but so much of it falls into the category of amusement.
But people can and do "game" the system or play for points or only in ways geared toward "winning a popularity contest", that's them, I see that.
Looks like you're coming from different places which are all normal and have good "points".
Not that much different really, depends on where you draw the line.
At the extreme you could put video gaming, facebook, youtube, blogging, and anything slightly like that into the category of "amusements" unless it's entirely very serious with no amusement component at all.
It's another impossible line to accurately draw and probably a moving target at all times, but is it a big percentage? And are "serious" people getting their computing dollar's worth if so much is being diverted to amusement?
Or is it the other way around? Where those craving more of the amusement wondered why it took so long for the hardware & software to finally become widely capable of playing multiple video ads at once. While the real tech-types were doing nothing amusing at all, just trying to get their share of more computations out of computers whether it is entertaining or not.
What a way to shortchange those who thought they were due for greater amusement ;)
Some of them where the sky's the limit on how big a screen they will spend on, to amuse more boldly than the neighbors :/
It sure looks like a game. You write a string of text that otherwise serves no purpose to see if you can goad a reaction, and it even keeps score so you can keep tabs on your gameplay performance. If that's not a game, games must not exist.