So, hear me out.

I’m a 47 year old guy and I’m not ashamed to say that I enjoy video games. I always have, from playing Head over Heels on a Speccy +2 to ESO and Valorant on my self built PC.

Due to various life circumstances, I’m also on the dating scene and to most women I meet, around my age, video games are anathema. When I say that I like them it’s usually meet with an “oh dear” or a “my son would probably love to talk to you about them, I find them really boring”

I have two boys, both teenagers, both play all the time and sometimes we all play together (although they are better as they have more time to apply to games). Their friends are amazed that I will talk about games with them, that I know someone about games and that I play games. None of their parents want to talk with them about what is effectively their main hobby that they do all the time (big sad).

So the question, there must be some sort of cut off age at which video games are no longer an acceptable pastime. Is it absolute age based (nothing after 35) or is it something to do with the progression of games into popular culture and people born after, say, 1986 will not see it as unacceptable?

I don’t have an answer, I just think it’s an interesting question. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

Edit to add: I’m not planning on stopping through peer pressure, just wondering about the phenomenon!

  • ComMcNeil@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    It can be a little knife to your soul when you meet someone that you think you like and they belittle something you’re into, but, in my book, properly decent people don’t do that.

    This is still the reason I don’t really talk about my gaming hobbies with a lot of people, though I know I should not be ashamed of it, especially nowadays.

    • asread@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, but that’s not healthy for us. Getting hurt by others isn’t healthy for us either, but I think hiding is ultimately more harmful.

      At least that’s what therapy tells me.

    • Sam@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a conversation with a coworker talking about golf or sports, so I can imagine that goes both ways where gushing about video games is probably going to annoy/bore some people.