I guess you might have missed the "are ya winnin son?" meme from a few years ago. Life isn't about the college you get into. Being in the top 20 of tetris players is going to be very rewarding, and they can go to college later if they want
> Being in the top 20 of tetris players is going to be very rewarding
I was a pretty high-level Scrabble player, devoting a handful of years of my life to it, and it’s one of the biggest regrets I have. Total waste of time and only a attempt to ignore the other things I hated about my life.
That's kinda cool. I did that too, albeit on a much lower level with other games like WoW. But they don't need to be that, and there's nothing inherently destructive about it. At some point you realize that you're relationship to the thing is destructive (hopefully) and you step back and make changes. If it wasn't scrabble, it could just as easily been something else.
A more appropriate analogy for me would actually be frontend development in my early twnties. I was genuinely interested in the technical bits, independent of the fact that I hated various aspects of my life, but I escaped into it and later realized that it wasn't worth it because I was fired anyway. But I don't regret building up skills in that.
Point is, your kid finds something they're good at, maybe you cultivate it rather than try and repress it. Maybe they get too obsessed because they feel repressed by their parents in other areas, that's a thing. But you teach them appropriate life balance skills and hopefully they have the framework to step back when it's time.
Is is though? What’s the point. You’re in front of a screen during the best years of your life attempting to get good at something that is at the end of it trivial from a lot of perspectives. It’s kind of indistinguishable from smoking pot and sitting in front of your TV.
That being said, I’ve followed the scene for 6 years and always found it very interesting to watch.
I guess I could have qualified it with might be very rewarding. A lot of people go to Uni and feel like they've largely wasted 4-8 years of their life and compromised their financial future as well. Tetris is a relatively innocuous pursuit.
Pot and TV can be fun too, and is mostly indistinguishable from what most Suburbanites do in their late twenties anyway. In my view you want to teach your kids how to assess if something has become a destructive obsession.
Likewise, if the kid is objectively good and entertaining, there is a market for it just like any other
