Underlying this discussion seems to be the free market/free will idea that refuses to judge decisions in a free market, because how could it? If someone spends money, they must get this objective, intangible benefit from it and who are we to judge. "You are not my mom".

Yet there is an objective difference in everything we do. You've listed a few nuances yourself; somethings are better than others. The underlying psychological circumstances are also true: There is a better, healthier way to live, feel and interact and there are many pathological, harmful ways too.

I would approach it like this and ask: "Would you rather play a game with a group of awesome friends (as hard as it may seem to find such a group, and even if that requires some effort and personality development to make such friends), or watch that streamer?"

"Would you rather have a real relationship with another person (as discouraged by the idea you might be right now) than hang out in that chatroom and pay money to a stranger?"

This discussion just cares about the extremes. Maybe there are lonely people that get milked on behalf on parasocial relationships. Maybe there are rich people that like streaming and honor it with money. There are probably a lot people with unknown financial and social status that just lurk on and off (like me). Unless we conduct research that indicates that this is massively negative to the society we should not speculate and try to make up stigmas.

But who is saying it has to be either or? When I have a roleplaying session (roll20 tabletop), I don’t watch streams. Some people like to watch TV by themselves sometimes. It’s simply not that different from any other type of entertainment.

Sure. We do all sorts of things. My point is there is an objective quality to each of it, which could (theoretically, for the point of it) be established by interviewing the individual and having them rank various forms of entertainment, while reflecting on the effect it has on their psyche.

I know very well that for me, jogging, or unwinding with a game is all right but not as good as sailing or mountaineering with a group of cool people or dancing with a skilled partner. Most things even have their place. But there is a real difference that can't be denied. We could even dissect the experience and find the rewarding or unrewarding elements: bonding with a group of people in nature and getting a varied excercise while doing it could rank very high (for many individuals).

If we agree on that, we can go on and see if some activities are bad for many/most people, and label them as such. A low-bandwith interaction with fake-emotion, a simple stimulation in a one-way relationship could then be categorized as Bad.

That's a long way to state the obvious but the sacred idea of the free will made it necessary for me to make this point :)

There is an objective difference, but there is in my opinion not an "objective" better way to live. (There are certainly healthier ways, in the sense that it optimizes the ages at which you die, which is...good ?).

It seems you value a certain psychological state, so, good for you, but this psychological state is not necessarily sought by everyone, and claiming it's better seems a bit rude.

If I'm to play the devil's advocate, I could you're seeking social ephemeral experiences to keep you distracted because you're not able to achieve the better state of being satisfied on your own through the objectively better activity of...meditation ?

I think you can see how obnoxious this is to see your own activities denigrated. And really, I don't think meditating is better than playing a game or than watching a streamer. All of these activities can lead to pathological behaviours (with varied rates I suppose ?), and when they do not they all sound great and all have a purpose.

So, I wouldn't engage in classifying activities as good or bad, but I'd rather have psychological support available to all practicioners.

I appreciate your reply but it blows my mind that the idea of better and worse is routinely rejected. I have to consider that.

This line of thought is however used elsewhere by scammers ("the person bought it at that price so they must like it"), free market absolutists ("the market - the sum of supposedly infallible decisions - made me rich and made you poor") and leads to people playing World of Warcraft 24/7 ("it is my choice, how can you argue that"). Anecdotally I have received good advice from people and when I followed it, it changed things to the better.

I don't deny that there are unhealthy habits (playing WoW 24/7 is most definitely unhealthy for the mind and body). My thought is that at the same time : - No hobby is immune to leading to addictive patterns, (some are definitely more prone than others). - No hobby always lead to addictive patterns

So in my opinion, if you don't engage unhealthily in your hobby, there's really none that is better than an other. So, WoW, climbing, dancing, reading, commenting on HN, whatever is good for you, I don't think one is inherently better.

> I appreciate your reply but it blows my mind that the idea of better and worse is routinely rejected. I have to consider that.

> free market absolutists ("the market - the sum of supposedly infallible decisions - made me rich and made you poor")

Whoa, hey... The market is supposed to be the infallible sum of individual decisions, not the other way around. :-D

Of course, this still ignores truisms like "the market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent", or the existing exploitation of reliably-bad decision makers such as "whales" in Las Vegas casinos or Zynga games, marketing's "Harbingers of Failure" segment, etc.

Sometimes I would like to play games with my friends, and sometimes I would MUCH prefer just lurking on a stream brain dead. It only harms the discussion to frame it one-dimensionally