p.s. i don’t believe in lists. i’m always surprised when people make lists and actually get through them. but, it does work for some. anyway, if it drops out of mind, don’t worry ;)

suppose it’s a person... i mean, look at our conversation here. it’s only going on because there is more to discover in the crevices. once i understand the full parameters of what we’re talking about, the conversation is over, it’s dead. right?

in the case of something i’m seeking to understand, i look for more nuance that is already there. something i’m missing. if there’s nothing more there, then i sort of ready myself to mourn its passing. there’s nothing else to dig into. our relationship is done.

in the case of something i’m making, i think i used to try to add nuance. think of designing a game and finding an always-win strategy. that’s an obvious signal to design a countering force, this makes the dynamic more ‘alive’ again

specifically i believe i was talking about “getting better at not being too reactive to fitting in”; there are situations where it might be beneficial, healthy, or comfortable to fit in... i don’t want to be blind to those situations when they arise.

because it means i have a stronger more deep relationship to it; i am not drawn (only) to the surface of the art, how it presents, but to the deeper part of the pond, how it feels to participate...

i am strongly drawn to pixel art, and sketchy line art. and these are the kinds of art that i like to do, as well... i wonder how related this is. it feels correct to me to be most drawn to an art form i am familiar with doing.

so i guess by this definition i mean a thing that literally wastes time. it has no value except that you don’t want to be right now, you want to be a few hours from now.

oh, now, see this is a line of thinking of mine that i can get behind! maybe farmville can come back after all. by pure entertainment i mean something that has no value except to pass the time in a manner that is not unpleasant.

then you can talk about whether you logically ‘should’ act against these feelings? but normally i am an advocate for just doing what feels good and correct. saves a lot of time haha

yeah, this makes sense. i believe it’s very valuable to state these impulse-feelings right away. they don’t have to come from anywhere. i think people get in the habit of coming up w/ justification out of defensiveness.

i don’t have any specific thoughts here but it was interesting to read these examples! i’ve been writing a bunch of poetry for this new game i’m making and i feel like these examples, and your analyses, have me thinking about the nature of my writing. i wonder what i’ll think next time i play it...

Farmville is some kind of product, not art, and that’s fine... i dislike this type of product in general. but i also understand what leads to the existence of the motivation to create.

i treat people as close quite easily. i do it by default. this has a weird effect -- as a result of this i do carry some doubts around that i perhaps lack “depth” with my close friends, who i feel i should treat differently, or better, but i just treat everyone with openness 😅 so, no extra to give.

i guess it depends what you mean by “an engagement farming game”! it’s a good question, but i guess i don’t... hm.m.m.m. i think balatro is kind of an engagement farming game. and i hate it! it’s gross.

-> “i relate to it more” ? or perhaps “others relate to it more” is the note behind the note here // can you describe a specific example of someone (you or others) relating to it?

if you are having a conversation with someone with whom you can say “X is a bad game” and it proceeds with them asking questions about your position and you get into a nice discourse then i think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say

“We are born with the capacity to learn how to dream, and the humans who live before us teach us how to dream the way society dreams.”

(though from what you’ve said i don’t think your ultimate goal is just to ‘waste time’ in useless conversation, it really feels to me like you, too, want to get somewhere with your talk)

or possibly you don’t dislike this type of conversation as much as i do, although i do sort of think of these conversations as a “waste of time” -- but i recognize some people are motivated simply by having an engaging thing to talk about

i understand that in conversation both people are responsible to some degree for communication and i’m not saying that your conversations will go this way -->

this might be a bit dry if i’m not really interested in the topic (i’m not personally) but it is certainly a statement i could respond to and be certain that i’m responding to you about something real and not imagined

Can you imagine an engagement farming ‘game’ so egregiously harmful that it could be considered a ‘waste of time’ for any and all given humans? Could it then be appropriate to make ‘waste of time’ a statement of the objective worth of that ‘game’

Lady Gaga uses abstract sentences so the meaning of the song is more ambiguous [which makes me feel clever] [and offers a new perspective to me on how a particular relationship dynamic feels]

And if I find a song that I like that breaks the ‘rules,’ that’s a good one to share with friends that share my value structure, and it will be a good time trying to figure out what makes this new song ‘fit’ in our preferences

I believe it’s wrong to call this ‘realness’ subjective. It (value structure, social norms) can’t be viewed in it’s entirety, and it is changing, but nevertheless I believe it exists

I’m not strongly wedded to ‘art has objective value.’ I’m more against ‘everything is subjective and the only thing that matters is your relationship with the art’ (I don’t believe you’re trying to argue that necessarily - just clarifying this inconsistency)

If pressed: “We are responsible for giving art value and in the process we create a hierarchy of art; collective interpretation makes this hierarchy ‘real’ in a sense’

In general I agree that “waste of time” - if we are trying to be very specific with our wording - should be qualified as a judgement or prediction about you or someone else’s time spent

More ‘actionable’ (I might want to play a ‘bad game’). But otherwise the same; not precise; only value judgement. But it perhaps is more an expression of my distaste and for that reason I’d probably say it to friends about a game I hated and suspected that they weren’t particularly attached to

I would say any of these things depending on the context. Do you have any objections to any of them? Is there more information not contained that you have a (moral) obligation to talk about?

The game uses similar techniques to slot machines and those susceptible to gambling are at risk of becoming addicted without any return other than the dopamine hits that you get with gambling

I suppose, that it is actively harmful. Have thought the most about games, and I think a lot of the space occupied by games consume a person’s time and effort by primarily focusing on engagement over meaning

Suppose you can compare two works and say that one is better than the other in X, Y, Z ways and be absolutely certain that you are right. What comes after this interaction? What do you like about the idea of being more capable of arriving at the making of a statement like this?

Separately, I make a judgement call (because of my value structure - which I’m happy to call subjective or my opinion, here) that Gaga’s song is better because the metaphors are more abstract. Fact as basis for opinion

And I think it is interesting to say I prefer Gaga’s song to Taylor Swifts because it offers me a perspective on relationships that I haven’t heard articulated that way before

Here I’m specifically not trying to make a statement that contains a value judgement “this is better than that.” Perhaps the word “Higher” is triggering that perception.

In general I could concede I did not phrase these well - I wrote them quickly. But certainly there is something lost in communication. Let’s focus on “higher level of metaphor”

I examine the aspects which were key in delivering the experience, often these are simple obvious but new things. There may be more complex things at play but I can’t learn from those, so I just enjoy the feeling and leave it unevaluated, preferring to think about its impact & my growth.

“Waste of time” as subjective statement is fine, and subjective statements can be rendered as objective statements which include a claim about their subjectivity -- but I think you are not interested in these types of statements, they are the same as “i like it”

‘Seriously’ is a substitute for any motivation that I’m searching for. If the artist had a specific vibe they wanted to share; I view that as serious (and it’s just a fact that they made the art to share the vibe). Even if the artist follows an urge they don’t understand, that’s still ‘serious’

Motivations can change, and can be obscured from yourself, and certainly are obscured if you’re a viewer... so what I’m talking about here is just my search / desire / filter / x to connect with a person (I can enjoy art from a non-serious artist, but I’m not connecting with them through their art)

Desire: I don’t want to hurt people who closely relate to a piece of art I don’t like. I hardly ever actually say statements like this... and therefore I hardly ever debate why stuff is good with people these days

I don’t think there’s anything that compares to the depth of this feeling which I hold; were a similar thought to occur to me about a film, I would mostly dismiss it according to my distance from that medium.

You’ve made a subjective claim that authorial intent is valuable, which I can interrogate: why do you hold hidden authorial intent in higher regard than other hidden information?

This one specifically is about authorial intent. There is always more than you can see; if there is authorial intent that I cannot see, that raises my interest in the art. We cannot know always if there is authorial intent, so I base this on past history, gut feeling etc to guess if it’s there

IF we can agree about this, then I propose that it reasonably follows that simply because a hierarchy happens to be produced it does not mean the hierarchy is relevant to what we might care about, about art.

[For me] this art is [most likely] a waste of time [unless I treat it as an experiment to see what I might like outside of my normal frame of reference] [because the person who made it has a totally different idea of what is good to me]

a lot of games are proportionally referential, rather than unique -- reproducing other games (genre), other aesthetics “but now they’re moving/interactive!” (iconic works from other art forms)

I don’t have enough musical language - there are probably better words - but I’m pretty sure these are genuinely bona fide facts (even the ‘catchy’ part, but I could think of less strong ways to phrase it necessary)

although the artist has some privileged information (e.g. what were they thinking when they made it, what was their process, what motivated them), ultimately this is still a subjective judgement:

I can also not engage with art because I’m not in the mood, or because I’m just not personally connecting with it... But ’it’s a waste of time″ is a definite slice of the pie chart.

* (This one is our disagreement?) If I don’t trust an author or get enough signals that they did not treat their art seriously or whatever, I’ll only give a piece so much time, or not engage in the first place, because I believe to do so would be ‘wasting my time’.

* If I believe I’m seeing something an author didn’t put in there, I’m very pleased to do so (this is a fucking niche example but I interpret ′ i will never let you down’ by Rita Ora as deeply sad and i cannot explain why but I really feel it)

* If I trust an author I can believe there is something in their art that I don’t see, and I might engage further than I would normally in that case (I don’t personally rate Gene Wolfe’s novels other than recognising their influence, but I’ve reread them multiple times to try to extract more stuff f

You are struggling with your own emotions e.g. “why can’t I see anything in this art, I’m such a dumb pos”. “The author didn’t put anything into this” is one defense mechanism. (Another is the optimistic - I’m going to try to find value anyway).

I don’t believe the author is dead, but I do believe he’s got one foot in the grave. In other words, just because someone is creating art cynically, it doesn’t mean their art has no value. We have responsibility for giving it value too.

* How to personally handle encountering art you don’t connect with (which almost doesn’t make sense as a statement if your only metric is do I connect with it; it only really makes sense if there is some objective value behind the art, if that makes sense)

(And <@192641190322110464> ok interested in your perspective too because initially I responded because I identified with your position but I’m not sure if I even got your position right lol)

I think broadly speaking we agree, I’m aspirationally interested in your ( <@148879006526210048> ) perspective as a top 1% open person (do you agree with that label btw?)

The value free version of the cynical take, I think, is that “some people who make art for galleries are not motivated by trying to say something; they just want to make money” (or be popular or whatever)