Why do you read fiction rather than watch tv or play vidya? what makes reading fun...

why do you read fiction rather than watch tv or play vidya? what makes reading fun? what about reading enriches your life?

i used to watch an insane amount of kino, but while i’m glad that i have watched a lot of good films (and i still do when i have the time), it’s a medium that just doesn’t satisfy me anymore like it used to. with films and tv, it’s much easier for me to get distracted and look at my phone and shit - which i know is my fault, but it still worsens the overall experience. when i read books this isn’t a problem since they require my full attention.

another thing i’ve noticed is that bingewatching tv/films gets depressing and empty after a while, and you feel like you’re wasting your time. when i read for 4 hours straight, though, i feel like i’ve done something productive. maybe this is tied to the perception that society has of reading as opposed to playing vidya and watching netflix, i don’t know.

Minus seeing art in a museum (which is another hobby I'm fond of), it offers a broader range of history than any other hobby

I actually find video games a better version of storytelling as it turns you from an observer to a participant if done correctly

for me, its the quality of the creators. literature can created by a single genius, and for hundreds of years competed only with painting for the world's top talent. someone like shakespeare was a once every five hundred year human and he was a dramatist. james joyce was smarter and better than anyone who has ever or might ever try to make a movie. what these 'geniuses' shake off is invaluable

Apart from what has already been mentioned, I like the privacy of reading. It’s quiet communication between me and, usually, a single author. No movie or game has ever felt as intimate as a lot of books do to me.

i have a habit of skipping all the dialogue and just caring about gameplay

>rather than
Yeah OP, i only limit myself to one kind of media so i can partecipate in online debates about "US" vs "THEM" and feel somehow smarter and part of a etiquetted group

To me video games seems like such a waste of time, to the extent that one values self-improvement.
I just don't see what... or any positive effects from it, though I guess you could make a case that it stretches your cognitive abilities for a bit, as it involves a lot of coordination, but that's about it.

Mostly I prefer reading nowadays because people can take more risks in books. Movies and shows take up insane amounts of starting capital to make and are hefty investments. As a result people making movies tend to play it safe and write for mass appeal. I know there are a lot of authors that do the same, make money off of a deluge of cookie cutter blandness, but there are more risk takers than there are in the film world. I recently decided that I was going to stop keeping track of new movies and shows. I harbor a decent dislike of cheap manufactured drama, and nothing will turn me off of a series faster than a love triangle. Unfortunately this makes me a little weird because it seems like all the rest of everybody just eats it up. Long, rambling story short, I read more than I watch because there's more books than shows which cater to my tastes.

how about entertainment? you don't value entertainment, you sad fuck?

Most games that are praised for their storytelling or writing in no way make use of the medium itself.

The Last of Us is the epitome of this, universally lauded for it's story but it tells virtually none of it through gameplay. If it were a movie, nothing would've been lost.

The need for gameplay to be 'fun', 'intuitive' and 'engaging' precludes the exploration of many themes without getting ludonarrative dissonance.

OP here, i was not trying to imply they are mutually exclusive. i do all three of those activities mentioned in my OP. but when you pick up a book to read in your leisure time, you are most likely choosing to do that RATHER THAN watching the next episode of that series of netflix or saying hi to your animal friends in animal crossing.

im asking why Veeky Forums anons choose to spend SOME of their time reading fiction, not limit themselves to only reading.

and while im here

good thread so far anons. some interesting posts, thanks for sharing.

Personal growth.
Books are the best way to share an idea. It's acomplete, clear, one on one dialogue. Also, books have been a thing for almost 3000 years, so you can read ideas of the greatest minds humanity ever witnessed.
If you pay attention to what you're reading you can absorb all of that knowledge formed over centuries, and be a better human.
Movies are best for fiction and visuals, it's a way of telling a story to entertain, maybe to point to an issue, but it's limited, and less personal.
Games are fun

You get to access viewpoints and perspectives that span all of human history, rather than viewpoints and perspectives limited to a tiny subset of a very privileged nation in a narrow time band.

They're not that entertaining, more of a time waster.

That’s why I like the concept of dark souls
The deaths you experience are meta story telling as it might make you want to quit and that would make your character hollow

Speak for yourself. I’ve spent 100+ hours on Monster Hunter World since it was released.

I'm not sure I know what that word means

Playing video games is an entirely separate type of enjoyment from books. A few games have decent stories I guess, but the main point is to overcome challenging level design, or build and grow your character, or exercise long-term strategy etc. Even the games where I enjoy the lore tend to suffer in gameplay (Morrowind), so it's a hard balance to strike.

Video games are a simulacrum of real achievement. They're a simulation, a poor one, where you can live in a safe space and fire all of those neurons in your brain that lie to you and say, "you're accomplishing something", when really it's just a massive waste of your time. It's empty and you'll always feel empty with games.

You will eventually become 2 smart 4 TV and video gayms.

What about games like The Witcher?

I think Witcher does a grat job of immersing the player into its world, its characters and its political landscape, forcing you to make choices in the story and making you an active part of it. Geralt is the epitome of a "vessel", the sort of vehicle that takes the spectator through a story.

>you can live in a safe space and fire all of those neurons in your brain that lie to you and say, "you're accomplishing something", when really it's just a massive waste of your time

What would you say to someone who suggested this is also what you get out of reading a book?

Why does it matter if something is real or not?

I mean that the medium won't be entertaining anymore, as in you'll quickly realise what it's about and think "It's another one of these". It becomes predictable, and then what do you do? You will end up leaving the medium or liking video games with a good story (These are very limited, in a month you're done with all of them), or appreciating autistic things like film aesthetics.

Of course all media does that, but video games have a much exaggerated effect.

>Books are a simulacrum of real achievement. They're a simulation, a poor one, where you can think you're having a dialogue and fire all of those neurons in your brain that lie to you and say, "you're accomplishing something", when really it's just a massive waste of your time. It's empty and you'll always feel empty with books.

Why does it matter if the food you eat actually exists or you just dream it does?

Play food eating simulators instead of eating, if you think they're comparable.

This is very obvious fallacious reasoning. Books have multiple teleological existences, you can learn, develop, and expand through books.

Any game which does the same is an inferior vessel for the same thing.

>Books have multiple teleological existences
Some books. You can't argue that pic related is more than a time waster, or a jerk material.

Chess, Go, even Poker, are considered to be intellectual activities, about anticipating your opponent moves, playing your own strategy, bluffing. You can learn new techniques, read your opponent better, develop as a player and get better.
Being good at those games is considered being smart.
Video games are like regular games but played on a electronic device. See chess online. See puzzle games.
Being able to overcome challenges that the game creator put in front of you, or able to outwit your opponent online is still a challenge and a growth, at least those game that challenge your brain somehow.

So i think we proved that some games are better than some books, and shitting on a whole category while putting the other on a pedistal is fallacious reasoning.

A complex grand strategy game is a better experience than most books.

OFF is the only one that comes to mind that did it right.

I unironically think that vidya gave me some pretty good reflexes. Still a worthless hobby though

When the sublime reaches down to your spine, when your mind opens up to another, that bliss of immersing yourself in another world - another's world. Experiencing the singular vision of someone who tore down his walls so you could share in each others loneliness. You draw meaning from a work of art and labour that someone breathed meaning into. Stories not only help us understand ourselves and the world. They create meaning where there is none. This is the unique role of the human mind and it's this whole process of sharing and partaking in the human condition that sometimes deeply affects me.

t. neil degrasse tyson

Because reading books, even fiction, exposes you to new ideas and deepens your appreciation of art and life. Videogames on the other hand are creatively bankrupt (though there are a few exceptions), marketed to children and reviewed by artistically illiterate "critics." Gaming culture is just way too cancerous.

Video games aren't inherently bad, but they're all made by uneducated hacks who are unable to create something as sublime as the best literature. TV is mostly the same.

Reading fantasy fiction is about the same level as playing popular games and keeping up with the trends. And you know there are people who only read genre fiction. I would agree that the heights of literature are far greater than the best videogames have to offer, but a selective player can have great experiences, if he doesn't limit himself to any specific decade or genre of games.

Think of text adventures for instance. They have no market presence, but that doesn't mean anything if they have an active community that appreciates them, which they clearly do. The Internet has enabled us to create mediums entirely non-profit oriented, this is a major overlooked aspect for videogames as well as anything else.

I've played EU4 and it doesn't have shit on a Tolstoy novel.

>duh book an duh bideo bame shud haff duh same effect!
you grow in different ways through different mediums you DYEL faggot

Why read non-fiction and why live life at all rather than kill yourself?
If you really wanna know, I'm a slow thinker and I have ADD so it's easier to read books than press pause after every subtitle line on movies/series. As for the story-based games, I don't consider them games, but a hybrid movie. Only multiplayer ones, but I always lose and don't enjoy because of ADD.

Nice bait tho.

Also, why read non-fiction when you can watch documentaries, university lesson streams etc.?

i can predict film scripts and actor’s emotional states dont convinve me of anything at all. vidya is too simplistic, relies on either autistic min-maxing or twitch reflexes, which makes me feel like a test subject in a psyche experiment, i hate the subculture around it too, including the /v/ niggers not just reddit subhumans. Books hav much higher barrier to entry and improve litany of skills, help me empathize with others etc. There’s no comparison. The Last of Us upset me because i was victimized by little girl screaming but the acting was terrible and plot meaningless, Elementary Particles through me into a week long melancholy

>implying someone who calls other people "you sad fuck" can find anything entertaining