Societal rules

As somebody who has published cybersecurity research AND a good number of youtube videos about niche video games, I can promise you making a YouTube series on an obscure video game does not get in the way of doing scientific research. With the magic of unrestrained autism, both are possible.

In 1820s Germany, the only guys documenting every beetle were basically the idle rich. The average person was working 12 hour days on a farm, or weaving cloth, or sorting through sewage for something useful.

Well would you rather have the idle rich making gaming youtube videos or documenting beetles?
- I'd rather have them taxed so other people can have idle to document beetles or make gaming YouTube videos.
- I don't really care about the idle rich. It's good when society is rich enough that the non-rich can spend their time making YouTube videos.
- ...good point
This here. I've thought about going the way of old school naturalists, but I just don't have the resources, chiefly in time.
- This is also why the modern trend is making YouTube videos. The people who do that are frequently hoping the channel takes off and they can get paid. It's not just public service or documenting an interest. The scientists of the early 1800s were frequently people who didn't have to work. They had estates that generated money for them, allowing them to pursue science as a hobby.

I assure you there's too many beetles to effectively do that.

Creative boredom died with smartphones, mine as well. I hate it! But I hate being bored and having to come up with shit to do more. :(

I deleted Facebook and Xitter from my phone, I got a lot of my time back. Neither social media I still actively use are addictive as much, and I became much more productive. That reminds me that I have a very important code documentation work to do, including documenting version changes.

Someone already listed all the beetles in 1820 what are we supposed to do??

We remake the list with modern enhancements such as lens glare.
- Maybe Photoshop in a thigh gap
- And ray tracing
Someone just found a new species of legless skink in Australia. Could have been us but you playing.
- ...I read that as skank.
  
  I need to be caffeinated.
Check they're all still there and note any changes, which ones are no longer around, which new ones have joined them etc.

Loads to be getting on with there :)
Overthrow oligarchy
- Right? Let's get more of these people interested in left wing politics instead of insects or trains or whatever
Get into genetics, make new beetles.
- Thr last thing we need is more beetles. There are so many of them as is!
- We've been through this, there's a scale problem. Also I'm not sure the parts are compatible.

Personally, I find the insinuation that I can't make a 26 part YouTube series about how collect all the rings in every sonic game, AND document every kind of beetle in my local province, belittling and insulting.

Beetling, if you will.
Alright, I'm waiting on the youtube playlist

Most of the comments seem rather defensive. Is the post calling someone out?

I dont think so. I think theyre just trying to be accurate about whats its like to be the sort of person that gets very into their interests.
- It seems overly nitpicky, like the larger point is being ignored because of technicalities

The same guy would have very likely have died before he was even 10. And if he wasn't dead very likely to work in a meaningless job to even survive unable to spend time on things on bugs.

It takes resources to do "useless" things.

So what's the issue about that again?

Controversial take: advancing science is better than spending weeks optimising how to play video games for children.
- Controversal take: humans don't have maximize productivity in every moment of their lives. It's perfectly acceptable for someone to spend their spare time making in depth videos if that is something they enjoy doing.
  
  Every moment of every day does not need to be spent maximizing productivity, otherwise what are doing on Lemmy instead of cataloging beetles?
- NOOOOO MY HOBBY OF STARING AT A SCREEN FOR 4 HOURS IN A ROW IS GOOD
- Science has already done as much beetle documentation as one can do without a bunch of resources, though. You wouldn't be advancing it, just redoing it for fun. There's nothing wrong with that, but there's also nothing wrong with playing video games for fun.
- Why?
I also don't think it follows. A person who does nothing but play video games isn't going to magically go and advance science.

Shoutout to the oldschool runescape wiki people. One of the best and most thorough video game wikis I've ever used. If they never got hooked on medieval cookie clicker a decade or two ago who knows what else they would've achieved.

Any Austin embodies this AND he's a talented musician, that guy is awesome