I occasionally play a video games. I just beat both Portal games since they were just released on the Switch and I could play them on the can or while my kids were watching Paw Patrol (they are apparently on a roll).
That being said, it’s not a point of pride or something that I that I’d dedicate the time to compete in. I enjoy it for what it is, an amusing waste of time.
The fact that his life is empty to the point that he needs to validate himself by being the best at some 2 decade old game is frankly pathetic.
Don’t get me wrong, I grew up with the NES and some friends and I will occasionally hook it up and play (and trash talk…. Because I am really good at Megaman 2). But I don’t understand why a grown ass man (or Eunuch in John’s case) would dedicate the time to be the fastest there is at it. And if you are going to dedicate the time to claiming that you are the best at this weird autistic thing, you don’t cheat or else you’re just lying to yourself and others.
It’s just pathetic.
Speedrunning in general is its own brand of autism (one that we even have a thread about
over here), but I'm not just going to dismiss it out of hand. It's not like there haven't been strange things that people have competed to be the best at before; ever since the dawn of arcades, nerds have been trying to get the absolute highest scores possible. Hell, flip the Guinness Book of World Records open to any page and you'll probably find something bizarre that someone's apparently the best at.
Thing is, for most of these, only a tiny niche of people will actually care about the record in question. Speedrunning is a niche hobby that only a particular breed of autist enjoys doing, and few outside of the community itself actually care about it. The most notability it gets is during GDQ events twice a year, which are about the only times it attracts an audience that normally doesn't pay attention. If you came up to me and told me you held the world record for, I dunno,
Booby Kids (lol Japan), I would just say "oh, okay," and that would be that. It's meaningless to me, and same for almost everyone else out there. Even if you held the record for a more famous game that's speedrun constantly like Super Mario 64, I might think it's kind of neat but wouldn't ask for your autograph or anything.
Speedrunning in particular is also a hobby that requires massive time investment for little to no gain elsewhere in life, so it's pretty much exclusive to NEETs as they're the only ones that can afford to sit around playing vidya all day every day practicing their runs. Maybe you might develop faster reflexes, but that's about the only benefit I could concede. Compare that to something like sports, where physical activity will help keep you in shape. Meanwhile, an autist playing a Mario level for the thousandth time that day has basically done nothing at all.
So yeah, John bragging about being a NEET wasting all day on vidya so he can claim records in things nobody cares about is indeed pathetic. If he had any idea about optics, he wouldn't be posting about shit like this when he supposedly has a
very important job with his scam PAC. But this is the same man of the people that also brags about his four (4) Porsches, his multiple Pelotons, his vidya and anime statue collections, his 3D printers, his tabletop games, and all the other bullshit he bought with Frank's money. I think it's safe to say that "optics" isn't in his vocabulary, like many other words.
