I always have a lot of anxiety around wasting time. While I'm not particularly sensitive about mortality, I was mostly brought up by someone who was, and a lot of their thoughts and habits became ingrained in my own thought processes. I get particularly anxious about feeling like I'm "burning time" - which is to say, days where I'm not doing things because I want to do them, but simply because there's nothing better to do.
What I don't see as burning time, though, is having fun. I don't exactly have a lot of responsibilities - I'm agoraphobic, which means I'm not part of big social circles, I can't go out to work, I'm mostly online in Discord servers and here - which leaves me with a ton of free time to do the things I want to do, productive or not.
Those who follow me know I spend a lot of time working on anime reviews, those in my Discord server will know that (outside of a recent break) I spend a lot of time on tournament organisation & streaming, those in the OOT Randomizer community will know the time I've invested into the OOTR League, and even beyond that, there are smaller ongoing projects and occasional ideas that pop up that could be productive. But I don't think of any of that as more valuable - in terms of time spent or wasted, at least - than the times where I'm just playing games in a call, or watching anime, or playing board games with housemates.
Now, I don't think of that as anything particularly revolutionary. Maybe to some people, and it's definitely a mindset I try to get across to people who don't recognise it - not everything has to be about productivity, that's just the capitalism talking - but it's definitely becoming a more widespread idea that taking the time to relax and have fun with no end goal is just as valuable as any endeavour designed to create value.
With that said, one thing I don't think of as a widespread idea - and maybe I'm wrong on this, but at least in the circles I'm in - is that "having fun" doesn't need to be about the most valuable things either. I see and hear people talk all the time about making sure they spend their time doing the best things - playing the new game that people are talking about, watching the most highly-rated anime, watching whatever new film has been getting all the publicity - and I don't quite get it. I reference this a lot in reviews, with things like "this isn't worth the time investment" or whatever, but clearly I don't agree with that or I wouldn't keep having to say that.
One of my housemates' friends is on the other extreme of this to me. He'll play, watch, read, engage with whatever's getting the most attention at the time. He bought into the AI buzz excitedly, he's talked endlessly about Palworld and Baldur's Gate 3 while not caring about any other RPGs. He organised for a group to watch Dune 2 and otherwise mostly only watches Marvel films. For all that everyone is to some extent, I don't think I've ever known someone so susceptible to marketing as him. And honestly, I shouldn't care how someone else spends their time, but there's a part of it that frustrates me.
How many good shows would I have missed if I only listened to the reviews of others? How many games would I have never played, growing up in the 2000s at a time where RPGs were fading from the spotlight in favour of Action games or Shooters? Some of my favourite games and anime throughout the years were rated poorly or ignored by others (or both!).
Shin Megami Tensei (pre-P4), Beatless, sola, Fire Emblem (pre-Awakening), Simoun, Radiant Historia, Ghost Trick, Eternal Darkness, Princess Principal, Talentless Nana... While a few of them would get that attention later, isn't that sort of the point? Sometimes good things don't get the publicity they deserve, sometimes the budget isn't there to showcase the merits of media, sometimes the reason something is good is so personal that it won't appeal to others. I'd much rather watch a handful of mediocre shows and find one that sticks with me forever, than watch a handful of flavour-of-the-month shows that are good but mostly forgettable.
I understand that people want to enjoy things, though. Not everyone has the free time I have, and if you can only choose a few things here and there, then surely it makes sense to pick the ones you'll enjoy the most? Except I don't think I agree with that even, for a few reasons. First and foremost, everything I said previously about media that gets ignored and recognised later, or things that hit on a personal level? That applies the other way too. How many terrible movies have received amazing reviews on release? (I'm looking at you, early Marvel!) How often has some highly-rated game or film or show had one scene or one character that you just can't overlook?
There's merit in bad media too, whether that's figuring out why things failed or picking out the good aspects in-between. A group of us recently watched Hanoka in my Discord, which is the first anime fully animated using Flash - that's an incredible piece of animation history right there! The show was awful, Flash is not good software for a full length animation, but that's significant enough that I'm glad I watched it. Also, watching terrible shows in a group makes them more fun, so I got to spend an hour or two laughing with friends!
On a similar note, I decided to play bad games on stream last year - I adore bad movies, my favourite film is the live action Street Fighter, so I figured maybe the same would be true for games. (It wasn't.) The CD-i Zelda games are just bad in so many ways, even on the remasters with actual reasonable controls. But there's still some good and some potential in there that led to Arzette, a game that riffs on CD-i Zelda while being a solid game of its own merits. Even without the parody elements, this would be a decent game!
Even beyond that, even if none of that appeals... what media is good? More accurately, it's impossible for everything to be good - either good media will feel worse because it's only being compared to other good media, or something will crop up that doesn't meet expectations and feel so much worse, or it's only being watched out of some FOMO obligation and that just creates the wrong atmosphere to enjoy it. Sometimes, intentionally engaging with something bad makes those missed expectations feel a little better.
I'm not here to tell people that they should go and watch/play/do bad things (although I would absolutely tell people to do bad things π), but like... I just think there's merit in not just engaging with good media. There are ways to make bad things more enjoyable! Multi-task, bring friends along for the ride, do whatever it takes to make them suck as little as possible, but even the worst of media has a lot to offer, and often that's an experience different to anything else, entirely because it sucks.
