sure is an exchange of energy

Stop, drop, and ponder

I don't do "social" media/platforms as a general rule of thumb, but I have dabbled in one specific one for quite few years, namely Discord. Discord is a so-called "messaging social platform", and I've been using it as the replacement for IRC and Skype for hobbies and keeping up with random internet acquaintances and communities. I've used it since 2015.

Recently I took a break because I felt I spent too much time on it per day -- give or take around 2 hours on average, some days more and others less -- and wanted to reduce it to more meaningful "batches" of interaction. Instead I've ended up just checking DM's maybe once a week and still haven't gone back to interacting outside of that.

What's happened is that in its absence I am finally able to fully appreciate what I get out of it -- and also what it gets out of me. And maybe it sounds strange to frame it that way because surely I should think of it in terms of the interpersonal value from interactions with members in the various servers I'm in, but that's one of the things I've contemplated by being absent: the asymmetric nature of energy expenditure, and how reciprocity gets very strange in such an environment.

Before I started this break, someone that's been in some of the servers I'm in for years decided to primarily leave Discord -- and from what I know, most social media/platforms -- which was something they'd contemplated out loud multiple times prior and so it didn't come as much of a surprise. It's not the reason I decided to reduce my time on the platform (at least not consciously) but it's been an event that bubbles up often as I reflect on my time spent in discussions with them and others.

Asynchronous reciprocity

The nature of just "hanging out" digitally and sharing interesting info and having discussions might seem like it shouldn't require additional reciprocity -- the communication is the value. At least in theory. But the problem with an asynchronous space with members being spread across all timezones and near-infinite history to the conversation (nevermind how poor the search functionality of Discord) is that some conversation may happen at any point during the day. The "solution" is the history, so that you don't "miss out". But that solution is only in terms of the raw "data" -- the words -- while the energy in the room and in the people partaking may very well have long passed. That might seem like splitting hairs but I believe it's an important distinction.

A lot of the time I find myself replying to someone that wrote something during a conversation between them and a few others, often several hours later when I've decided to log on to check what's been going on, and they are now asleep or away from the keyboard. So I write something, in the process quoting the specific sentence I'm replying to, letting others know the context of my own entry into the conversation. And then the cycle repeats in that they return at a later point and have to renew their focus on the topic, replying while I'm away working or sleeping, and so on.

The not so obvious issue with this is a human one: we expend energy to keep interest in a topic or conversation. It's both the physical mental energy but also a currency we often forget: the emotional energy. At least speaking for myself this is rather costly, although subtly so, and it is easy to be deceived because at least in my part it tends to be subconscious. I do not "take the conversation with me" offline; very rarely do I think about it consciously, unless it's recent and of particular interest like a technical topic or an interesting philosophical one, say.

But the subconscious is rather obviously outside of my conscious control, but it's evident that it gets involved because I will suddenly and seemingly randomly get a spark of insight for a reply to a topic, which encourages me to check back in on it. At which point the whole server has more often than not long since moved on and my entry either does not fit the mood, or even if it does, the other parties aren't invested anymore.

This might sound strange to get hung up on, but emotional investment is important for good dialogue. That's not to say this is a new phenomenon -- I recall having a sense of this despite not fully grasping it all the way back in the mid to late 00's when I used IRC a lot and let my computer stay connected all day and night, allowing me to catch up with any conversation that had happened when I was away.

And while this can also happen if you've had a conversation with someone in "meatspace", the brain knows a conversation is over when you physically leave and the other people are not there anymore, at least not until the next time you meet. And so I believe I've stumbled upon one source of unease I have about a lot of modern internet communication, something I've not been able to put my finger on for nearly two decades now.

Language as an API

I've skirted around all the other challenges with text-based dialogue, a topic that has been explored by many other people for decades now. I'll briefly add a few of my own thoughts on this topic.

Language can be considered the human "API" (short for Application Programming Interface) in the sense that it allows us to convey concepts that exist in complex forms inside our own minds to others via an intermediary protocol. It lets us transform some of our internal "data" into a format we can convey to others via sound waves or shapes.

Both verbally and textually, language itself is a simplification of concepts. When it comes to verbal communication, we can to an extent remedy that by the virtue of using added layers to convey additional meaning on top of the base words -- like inflection. For text, there are other tricks; italics somewhat simulate inflection or emphasis, for example. Bold text sort of sounds like the volume got a bit louder all of a sudden.

But when holding conversations online in text format, we usually have to keep it short. We have to simplify our thoughts even more -- we have to turn up the compression. Particularly if it's a live dialogue in a "room" with many participants. And so it becomes even more lossy. This does not help when it comes to asymmetric energy expenditure, and while text is an extremely efficient way of communicating overarching concepts with very little data, it is likewise very lossy in conveying the feelings behind the data layer.

If I were to write "I'm sad", that's very few letters that provide a lot of data about my mental state, comparatively speaking. But it also doesn't really tell you anything about the emotions behind it. I could be smirking, tongue in cheek. I could be bawling, in which case it's an understatement. Or maybe I'm crying but it's the happy kind? I'd be sad, but the "good" kind after a touching and happy ending to a good movie. Obviously I could add more words -- or emojis -- to add context, but I don't think anyone would disagree that it's a lot harder to convey the specifics via text than it would be if one were face to face with each other. In meatspace, it would be patently obvious whether I was smirking, bawling, or "happy" crying.

Our brains try to figure out the emotions behind words and sentences by observing the use of emojis and modifiers, but this gets harder the fewer words there are. A book can convey complex emotions by building a narrative with a lot of words. A poem can do the same but with different tricks. Both forms require a lot more thought, time, and effort put into each and every sentence.

In comparison, when we have to keep our sentences short and timely, there's effectively more "noise" in the emotional layer. And when trying to parse that layer our brains will get it wrong more often than not because it's our mind trying to simulate the state of another mind. That's a very complex operation that takes a lot of time and energy.

This does not mean I don't find any value in (mostly asynchronous) textual online communication. I think it's of great value as a supplement to real world dialogue, and it's especially useful for my programming work with others. Work where stripping the emotional layer rarely matters -- and when it does, we can do a video call. But I think for interpersonal communication outside of a strictly utilitarion context, it tricks our brains in subtle ways.

So what to do about it?

Honestly I don't know yet. I haven't formed a conclusion and I'm not sure how I want to deal with it. What I do know is that I've noticed that in the absence of spending time on Discord I've found renewed and additional energy for my offline interpersonal relationships. And that in itself has some profound implications that I don't want to ignore. So I'm taking more time to feel my way through it.

The term "parasocial relationship" describes the extreme one-sided relationship of one party expending a vast amount of energy, interest and time observing a person who doesn't even know they exist. Classically this is a term used for people obsessed with celebrities but I think there's a version of this that's much subtler that exists on a massive scale with online indirect communication.

I'm not thinking that there's no value to be had in asynchronous online communication, but I do think it has to be treated very differently from what my brain seems to consider it as -- a room of humans hanging out. It simply isn't, and there's pros and cons to that. But that asymmetric expenditure of energy between participants leads to subtle, mild parasocial behaviour -- not one where one party doesn't know the other exists, but rather where one party has no idea how much energy the other is expending in the reciprocal sharing of ideas and discussions of topics.

And while that might not seem like it matters, it should because we have limited mental and emotional capacity. It varies greatly between individuals but none of us are bottomless -- so there's some cost that has to be paid. Personally I find that a troublesome thought because I don't like the idea of attributing a cost/benefit analysis to chatting with people and hanging out, but the reality is I have to.

And now I segway inelegantly into the second (third?) part of this rambly blog entry:

The cost of amusement

It may only be tangentially related but as I contemplated the above I also one day realized something else: the amount of hours I spend working on games versus the time it takes the players to complete them -- whether that means finishing the games or getting bored of them. The common thread here is asymmetric energy expenditure.

Take Paint It RED, a short 23-level puzzle-platformer I made for a gamejam in about 15 days. I spent on average about 10 hours a day making it, and thus a total of at least 150 hours. And it was great fun. Most people playing it finish it in one sitting spending between 20-30 minutes. I've seen one complete it in 15 and another spent around an hour, but those are outliers.

Now don't get me wrong -- I consider that an amazing win. Being able to entertain the average player for around 30 minutes and have them see it through to the end is fantastic. I've watched people play through it and enjoying it live on streams. It's a great feeling.

And I certainly don't think games need to be very long to be good, far from it. Portal 1 is about 3 hours on average but is an incredible experience the first time. But here's the but: if we consider time an expenditure of energy, it cost me 300 times the amount of energy to create this simple game compared to the energy it required of the average player to play through it. In other words, I spent 300 times the time required to amuse someone for half an hour. And if you want to make slightly more complex games the time required increases exponentially, at least based on my 20 years of experience making small to medium indie games -- most of which I never shipped anyway, because I felt the time to bring the projects over the finish line wasn't worth the effort.

Just to be clear: the enjoyment I get from making games is primarily in the act of creating them -- solving new problems and coming up with interesting game design concepts. However most of the time the most interesting part of a game project is within the first ~10% of the development time. The remainder tends to primarily be spent on polish, like fixing bugs; improving the UI; making it all feel as good as it can, and play testing and refactoring a lot. And of course creating content, which varies a lot in how interesting it is to do.

To offset the reality that I drop most of my projects without completing them, I tend to ship very functional betas of my games early so that even if I don't manage to push myself to fully finish them there's still some fun and inspiration to be had for others. And it lets me get feedback for ideas that I might improve in other projects further down the line.

But lets bring it back to the topic of energy expenditure: I have so many things I want to do, and I have limited time and energy alotted to me in my life. My life is finite. I really want to get decent at the piano, for instance. There's a lot of music I want to be able to play on it. I don't want to be professional, I just really want to be good enough to play more music on it than I am able to now.

I want to read more books than I do currently. I want to research so many topics. I want to have more meaningful discussions about fascinating topics with people that are fully present. I want to spend more time with family and offline friends despite being someone that needs a lot of alone-time. I want to walk even more in nature than I currently do. These may seem like minor things but they all require a lot of time in total.

For every hour I spend on making games with the purpose of amusing others -- while often amusing myself in the process, at least for a while -- I spend one less hour on the other things I value. The same goes for every hour I spend on asynchronous asymmetrical discussions on Discord, with an added variable toll on emotional interpersonal energy.

If I were to live to be 90 years old I have 4,680 weeks available to me. I've spent 1,924 of them already. And the thing with age is, as you get older, doors keep closing due to failing physical and -- eventually -- mental health. You can't take that hike up the mountain anymore when your legs don't work that good. You can't learn the piano very well when your hearing is reduced and your fingers are stiff. This isn't a mid-life crisis mind you, as I'm still the kind of person that finds meaning in spending the best part of a week replaying Skyrim for the nth time. But I want to make sure I spend as much of my time on things that really do feel meaningful to me.

In conclusion

Right now I'm not sure how much time is meaningfully spent interacting on Discord nor on making games. There might very well be a sweet spot like with so many activities. I certainly can't see myself completely stopping the act of making games -- I even have a few ongoing projects I still enjoy working on.

But part of the drive behind those projects isn't from me finding it meaningful but rather a feeling of responsibility to ship the project. And I realize that's unfair towards myself: I make these at my own cost for others to enjoy free of charge. I am only beholden to myself. So I need to evaluate how much of that time is truly meaningful to me.

Only I can figure out that balance for myself, and right now I have benefitted from taking a few steps back and trying something else with my time and energy. Perhaps absence will make the heart grow fonder, or perhaps I'll find greener pastures.

At the very least I really do enjoy playing the piano more.

Written in June 2023