Does EA bring out the best in me?

I used to be very involved in the EA community. Over the last couple of years I’ve taken a step back, and now I spend a lot less time with EAs and doing things like reading the EA Forum.

Sometimes people ask me about why this is. I have many different answers to this, ranging from I burnt out, or there are too many onion rings, to something something my worldview changed. 

Anyway, I’ve settled on a spiel which I particularly like recently, and this is basically that I don’t think EA brings out the best in me. 

What I mean by ‘brings out the best in me’

When I stay with my parents I regress back to being a teenager. I become irritable, messy and spend most of my time eating cheese toasties and watching The Simpsons. There’s something about this social environment which brings out qualities in me that I don’t like, and behaviours which I don’t want (though I do in fact think The Simpsons is great and highly educational). 

Another example - there’s a friend of mine who is quite a curious, laid-back type. And often when I’m with said friend, I somehow magically become more curious and laid-back. In this case, the social environment is bringing out qualities in me that I do like. 

What does EA bring out in me? 

The good

I had a conversation with an EA friend recently where I was complaining that I was single and that no one loves me and was going to die alone. 

And he was like ‘give me your phone’ and then had a look at my Hinge profile, told me that I needed to change four of my five photos and basically everything I said about myself. And then we spent the rest of the time discussing whether dating apps are rent-seeking or actually provide value to the people that use them. 

This was… refreshing. Firstly, the action orientedness of the conversation - ok here’s a problem, how do we fix it. And secondly, trying to understand the world - ok here’s an interesting social/ economic thing, what’s going on there. 

I like being action oriented, and I like figuring out what’s going on with the world. Engaging with EA and EA people brings these things out of me and I do them less these days. 

The bad and ugly

There are other things which EA brings out in me which I don’t like. One particular cluster is one around insecurity, eg. 

• Envy: A friend gets a cool impacty job. Instead of feeling happy for them or happy for the world, I feel bad about myself. 

• Sycophancy: I’m talking to someone who seems impressive, and I end up being very agreeable and/ or try to puff myself up in front of them. 

• Dismissiveness: Not paying attention to people that don’t seem ‘important’. 

• Self-centredness: Being very concerned about my impact instead of the state of the world. 

I’m still sometimes like this outside of the EA scene, but less so. And I don’t like being this way.

On balance I think being around EA pushes me more away from the person I want to be like than towards it, and so I try and keep it at a bit of a distance.

Is EA bad?

Yes. Sorry, I mean no. Or I don’t know. 

Basically, I’ve spoken to a bunch of people that are doing something like ‘trying to figure out their relationship with EA’. And often it seems like people end up trying to do something like ‘work out whether EA is good or bad’. 

This is a hard question to answer. I think an easier one, and a more action-relevant one is ‘Does EA bring out the best in you?’ or even ‘What does EA bring out of you?’. 

More Thoughts

• An overall theme here is that people are different depending on the social environment that they are in. This will be more true of some people than others. Some people will change a lot, like a chameleon, and other people will change only a little, like a cow, or a… wardrobe, or whatever the opposite of a chameleon is. 

• Social environments can bring things out of me when I’m not even in the social environment. 

  • For example, I was once on a very long hike where I was continuously being savaged by mosquitos and it was horrible. Whilst on the hike I found myself mentally narrating the experience to one of my friends from home, describing how horrible it was in a kind of exaggerated yet hilarious way. This made the hike more bearable. Having this person as a friend brought out the side of me which can see the funny side of adversity. 

  • Another example - recently I was umming and aaing about whether to apply to a job. At some point I realised that a big part of what was going on is imagining telling other people about this, and feeling ashamed of it, like they’d look down on me for applying to the job. On reflection I thought that applying to the job was actually a good idea. 

• I don’t think social environments wholly determine people’s actions. Like, I think it’s possible to not act like a teenager when I’m staying with my parents, and instead act like an adult. However, I have tried this and it’s hard - it feels like swimming upstream.