Today I had a moment of pure clarity. A realization that made my heart race and my head buzz.

I deleted Minecraft. I deleted the whole game with my save in one fluid motion and regret ever having started playing it. In that moment of clarity, I realized Minecraft is a fucking cage for your mind. It tricks you into feeling this sense of accomplishment but only serves to drag you further into an endless, although beautiful, maze. If you really want to hear more about my awakening while inside a Minecraft server, here's my sad story...

I was having a relaxing day off today and I thought why not spend it relaxing and playing Minecraft? Things were going great in the game. I had built a few structures, built like 10 mines and I had recently gotten my farm up and running. I was really feeling like I got a lot done and even though I wouldn't go as far as saying I was proud of everything I accomplished, I felt pretty good and was already beginning to imagine the next few months of work I would put in.

I had slowly started spending more and more time playing. I went from playing the game perhaps once or twice a week to playing it every evening, even if only for a few hours. Yet every time I started the game up and waited for it to load, I'd feel guilt. I could be using this time to do something that could get me closer to my life goals. I know I can't spend all my free time working on myself, I have to relax sometimes. There was something different with Minecraft when compared with other games. I was spending more and more time on it and it put me in a state I remembered from other games I played obsessively. It's the dull terror of being in a loop, going over and over. There's enough novelty to keep entertained enough to not question what's happening. Over and over, the same sad ritual continued. But a lot of people do mindless things to relax, I mean, can you relax without being mindless? Is there such a thing?

The only thing I was sorely missing in the game was a saddle for horseback riding. Since it's a random drop and you can't craft it, I went searching for a chest that might have one. I really liked exploring the massive world in Minecraft and finding stuff is very rewarding. It really starts feeling like an alternate reality at some point. From bare wilderness I had already built a pretty large compound, a mad science lab from out of my childhood daydreams. Since my normal life now is so repetitive due to the quarantine, it was a welcome release to go to the virtual world of the Minecraft server for a few hours at the end of the day. Just writing that makes me upset, it sound like it came out of a bad dystopian short story.

So I went exploring with a map I made in the game. I've been working on that map for days and it was massive. Minecraft is the only game I ever played that gave me the actual, physical sensation of being lost. I think everyone has at least once had that moment where you notice you are completely lost. To me it feels almost like vertigo, not knowing what direction you came from and knowing you can't retrace your steps. The maps in Minecraft are so massive that happened to me often. I always had to carry a map and given how much time you have to spend filling them in and creating them, they become very valuable.

In the course of exploring I found a pirate ship underwater and went down to explore it. I've played the game quite a bit and I had gotten pretty confident in my skills. There seems to have been a bug or some hidden feature but for whatever reason I drowned exploring the ship. Lost all my loot, but most importantly the map. I literally held my head in my hands by the computer in utter shock and dismay.

I respawned way over to the other side of the map. I started thinking, maybe my stuff would still be there where I had died? I went and hurried back, maybe the map I worked so hard on would still be floating on the water. It felt like I was moving in slow motion as I clawed my way through the wilderness without a map, my heart beating hard.

I made it and my map was there! I was missing some of my enchanted stuff and swam down again to see if it was nearer to were I died. I got stuck and drowned. Again. Suffice to say, I made the trip ye another time and this time my map was gone. All that work vanished.

Then like some mystical messenger a bloated sea zombie started attacking me in the water.

It was then when I had the realization, the spell I was under the last two months broke and I felt awake again. Why was I even playing this game at all? Every time I started it up I felt guilty, the vague feeling that I could be doing something way more useful. Feeling myself getting more and more invested, more and more trapped. I knew I had to act quickly before the game had a chance to get me again.

I deleted the game. The world files, everything. I couldn't let anything remain on my computer. As my heart slowed I knew I made the right decision. Then the guilt hit me, the shame. How can a game playing on a flashing screen do this to me? How could I project all this meaning and importance to a virtual world only I ever saw?

Let's be honest here, this always happens. All meaning is projected. If someone feels like they are experiencing something amazing in Minecraft, that is completely fine and valid. Just because it's in a computer doesn't mean that building houses there is any less rewarding on a psychological level. And why are they any less valuable than the things we build in the "real" world? We build all kinds of things in our lives despite knowing that, in the long run, we all die, nothing we make lasts forever and everyone will be forgotten in the end. In that sense, building anything here is about as pointless as building it in a virtual world.

I guess what I'm getting at is that despite not having anything against spending time in Minecraft, the experience of being so rapped up and emotionally invested in something that is so obviously virtual creeped me out. Pure and simple. I woke up and left the virtual dream. Fuck Minecraft.

If you made it to the end of this rambling post, I am amazed. This was my TED talk. Thank you.