gamifying hobbies, sauceless super bowl

zwift era

• Weirdly dry super bowl this year. The only thing thing I’m excited for is to tell my Mom that’s the Emerald City Route Artist when Jaxon Smith-Njigba makes a catch. This is a great nickname it has been making me laugh all week. This is much better than athletes being nicknamed their initials + number.¹ Football aesthetics have kind of been a nightmare ever since they let players be whatever number they wanted irrespective of position groups, but that’s a conversation for another day.² The Sam Darnold story is cute but I’m over it, Kenneth Walker is really swag and now they’re actually giving him the redzone carries. Seahawks are really good, if a little boring.

  

• There was a Brady story line about how he wasn’t supporting the Patriots enough that sounded really boring. Was this interesting? If you followed it sound off in the comments below. I try and steer clear of most Brady related things but I do enjoy seeing the divorced guy Instagram posts. Shockingly he became a better commentator than Romo this year, who should be fired.³ The Patriots side of things is just whatever easy schedule blah blah blah. I’m not from Boston so I hope they lose by 40.⁴

  

  love this

• Bad Bunny halftime show will be good and functional like all of the Apple produced ones. They are probably “better” than how they used to be but in general I find it too reliant on a lot of steadicam. Not a new take but I feel like they never can nail the sound mixing during this. Bad Bunny is cool and hot and it will be nice to see him on TV. If you’re engaging with any of the turning point stuff even as a joke you’re kind of stupid to me. They’re just playing the hits — you should know better.

• Last sports thing: I love the Olympics. Very excited to watch the figure skating and hockey. I also thought the penis enlargement story about the mens ski jumpers was awesome.

FOR Gamification

The vibe on the internet right now, in general but especially on Substack, is to go analog, or introduce friction, or to work on yourself to be more attentive, etc etc. These are good goals I think, but I’m choosing to do kind of the opposite, especially in my approach to hobbies. I did go analog briefly a couple years (flip phone, pedometer to track steps, no social media, more journaling). For me this was good for attention, which has obvious benefits, but in general (FOR ME) negative for social life that I ended up deciding to post more and be an online person again. Posting does actually work! My social life is good again but my attention span is bad — kinda yay.

I don’t really care to get on the analog trend, I think I’ll take the trade off with being a relatively online person. This is probably some function of growing up the internet, but if I don’t have some degree of oomfs/mutuals I feel worse? Like whatever the replacement is I desire something like a comment section or forum vibe. I want to be known in a casual and outsider way. I’m very active on Discord and it makes my life significantly better, and for me that’s where an analog life fell short.⁵ The internet most of the time is what you make it and if you’re not cultivating an internet that works for you it’s a skill issue tbh. But a complete disconnect doesn’t make much sense to me.⁶

This year I bought a smart trainer for the bike in the hopes of riding more and also combining a lot of my hobbies into one thing, specifically reading and watching movies. Most modern writing is against gamification, which is fine, but I’m leaning towards the easy dopamine especially when it comes to exercise. I want to be snatched by the summer (Send it Spring —> Snatched Summer) and that means biking more.⁷ I want to read more, so I got a page turner to read the ereader while I’m up on the bars. Here’s what the setup looks like:

I kind of stopped watching movies since I moved back to Florida from New York and I am not a cinephile. My cope for a while was that Regal was getting mogged by AMC and they don’t play anything here, most good things play for a couple days if at all so I would miss it.⁸ But this cope kind of falls apart cause I don’t watch stuff at home… sooo we’re going to watch movies on the bike on my phone screen. Like who cares.⁹

Zwift (the bike platform) is also fully a game with XP, leveling, a shop to buy different bikes and wheelsets, weekly challenges like a climb of the week, and the occasional power up like something to make you lighter, or draft better. It’s not a 1-to-1 to actual biking, but I’m trying not to let perfect be the enemy of good for any of these thing. I have internet friends I can ride with which is very motivating as well. Zwift is awesome except the character creator is way too limited. If you’re going to be a game you should let me make a good sim..

In general, especially in my analog era, I was very pure about all of these things, and ideally by gamifying them I will establish the habit which is more important than anything when the difference is not doing those things at all!!! I also want to drink more after being mostly sober last year. Am I getting worse or just trying to have more fun? This is a hard balance and I’m trying to find what works for me!

me

Are you doing anything for the Super Bowl? Where do you guys stand on the attention/analog debates? Are you trying to use the internet more or less? Does the internet enrich your life?

1. Kyler Murray for a little was being called KM1 fire emoji which was a nightmare for me personally

2. Rams kicker #92? Shaheed #22 as a receiver? Losing recipes

3. Tony Romo saying JOSH every ten seconds during the bills-jags game made me want to kms. at one point he described a Trevor Lawrence scramble as “looking a little Josh Allen-y” come on man

4. Give me Seahawks 28-17; Emerald City Route Artist 120 yards 2 TDs; Sam Darnold 21-32 232 yards 3 TDs 1 Int; Rhomondre Stevenson fumbles at least once; Drake Maye 24-36 181 yards 1 TD 1 Int

5. At least my approach to it, but I’m kind of all or nothing with this stuff

6. I also work in marketing/content production, and for whatever it’s worth if I’m fully analog I’m just worse at my job, and I want to make money (#controversial) so I would like to be good at my job

7. cardio > lifting btw

8. where tf is Ann Lee; did Is This Thing On not open wide??

9. an iPad mini would probably be ideal for this but we’re working with what we got. I think most of the debates on this make sense if you’re an elite reader or watcher, but I’ve accepted that I’m a casual so I’m just going to actually watch and read instead of thinking about the ideal way to watch and read