gaming

This is ultimately a story about control. Burnout, particularly when interwoven with depression, makes it difficult to actually choose to do the things that you really do want to do — socializing, getting outside, reading the book on your bedside table, not canceling an appointment, showing up for someone, fixing something, just doing something that you choose. You often find yourself on the path of least resistance, whether that means binging a television show you don’t even really like or scrolling Instagram until you get a recharged life on Candy Crush. You revenge bedtime procrastinate. You feel passive in the flow of your own damn life — and frustrated that you can’t muster the strength to redirect it. [ . . .]

I don’t blame anyone who’s found themselves in that swirling eddy of exhaustion, and I don’t blame myself. So many of our online experiences are engineered to keep us in that passive position.

Anne Helen Petersen on . . . Candy Crush.