I had this mindset when I was feeling apathetic on everything due to experiencing depression. Thinking that the social norm is just the automatic response in life. "Why compliment me when I help out? Isn't that my job?" I never wanna experience that feeling of emptyness ever again.
Bro, that was a critical hit for me. I can even trace it back to the source. When I was in grade school, my would say things like “You’re a genius, so anything below a high A is failure”. I would get grounded for getting a B on my report card. I know she meant well, but instead of incentivizing me to succeed, I just internalized that anything below perfect was unacceptable without learning what it took to achieve it because “you’re smart, figure it out”.
I bet Pat was feeling that when he was Royal Guarding Virgil in the final DMCV fight. "If i don't provide the cleanest boss fight ever i better break woolie's back."
It's worth noting the solution isn't just shame for quitting, it's also respect for trying. Playing locally with a friend and building each other up does so much more for someone's persistence than feeling like a stranger who doesn't belong. The blank void of silent online interactions swallows people whole.
My solution is to have fun in losing. Either an unexpcted death which you can find funny (not watching the screen as your character falls into a pit), or as a reminder that winning is a genuine triumph since you have to work for it a bit. It's why I enjoyed S-ranking the last level in Shadow Generations. Earning it after some trials & tribulations felt *Good* You can also embrace memery or ad-libbing to lighten the mood, but I'm not that creative.
We all had to fall on our faces when we were learning how to walk, kinda sad that so many people were more driven as babies than they are as grown ass adults
@@leithaziz2716that’s my solution too. I used to be a serious rage quitter because I took being competitive to an extreme so I just don’t take it seriously anymore. I try but I have a “it is what it is” mentality now.
What pat said is 100% right. I prided myself for always being around the 5 best grades in my class and around the 15 best of my grade without really studying. This completely ruined my university life.
Oh no, history is repeating itself for me. I honestly feel like I've relied on my friends being super supportive to help too much for Univeristy. I try to apologise to them every time but they seem chill with it (allthough I feel like maybe they shouldn't).
Hey, it's me: skated through school with zero effort until AP Calculus in grade 11, didn't know how to study, nearly didn't graduate high school because I stopped going to avoid the situation, bombed out of first semester of college. 20 years later I still don't know how to study, but learning a trade helped me get over my bullshit.
@@kricku I mean, in my highschool every class had like 30 people and around 5 classes per grade. Don't know how big that is in comparison to other schools. I'm genuinely not tooting my own horn by saying this, but my class always had 2 to 3 people that averaged 95% and I got similar grades grades to them in most exams
"If im not good at it right away im terrible and stupid" JEEZUS man that mentality has f*cked me up to this day. Especially when it came academics. I didnt expect pat to say something that would shake me to my very core.
I wanna applaud too this guy for taking the courage to expose his vulnerabilities like this to countless people, if you read this. You are awesome for that and I wish you the best, man.
Standard undiagnosed/unsupported ADHD-Aspie childhood; "obviously capable, but needs to apply himself". I had something to that effect on my report cards year after year.
05:20 Pat nails it on the head. When I was employed, I was so gripped by stress of "fuck this up and you lose your job" that I was unable to function. Now I'm disabled because of repeated instances of analysis paralysis/fight-or-flight/anxiety issues. I have been a ragequitter before, but worst off as now I just don't play or participate in win-or-lose activities like videogames or DnD at all.
It's not on the same pendulum, but my parents ride all their pride for me on my studies and want me to score high for the sake of getting a special Visa. I can tell they love me, but I genuinely wish our relationship could be weighed by our individual love more (and something less traditional) so that I can judge satisfaction of my work for myself. Otherwise, I won't feel happy for scoring anything that doesn't get me that result, and that's a very shallow way to live.
I mean, they would have watched/listen to a whole video of two people they hold in high regard tearing apart their ideal knowing full well the two people are taking about them in particular. That takes courage in my book.
Holy fuck Pat, you didn't have to punch me in the chest like that. I internalized that same message when I was young b/c my parents repeated "anything that's not an A isn't acceptable/good enough". I only ever got a 2 year degree from college (when I had wanted to get a doctorate eventually) b/c of this type of thinking. The "if you need to study then you aren't smart" is so real too. Not projected externally, per se, but internally. "I'm crushing it without studying, why would I need to now?"
This discussion led to a lot of deep personal revelations about my own anxieties and traumas and made me genuinely cry, fucking top 10 podcast clip of all time.
17:34 i have something similar. I resent people thanking me for doing nice things because i think to myself "im SUPPOSED to do good things, youre not supposed to thank people for that" Except that i have no issue thanking other people, so i know its my brain skirting around the fact that i dont think i deserve appreciation *Working on it, dont worry*
Pat really took me out for a second when he suddenly brought up and explained "family annihilation" what a terrifying concept that people can do something as heinous as that as a fear response.
It just sounds sad in a depressing manner. Seems the person puts too much importance in thinking his family has to look up for him that he'd rather they never live to experience that dissapointment. It's a somewhat selfless manner handled in the most selfish and immature way possible.
The legal term is pater familicide. There's about 30 cases a year in the US, about 80 a year in India. Don't remember the other stats from my forensic psychology class, though.
I like how Pat being empathetic, gives it a good analisys and props the guy for introspection and self-awarnes, while giving good explanations on how it can manifest in easy to understand fashion for wider audience, while Woolie always come in with "Cuz they are bitch made, right?" angle.
This person’s life sounds miserable. It sounds like heart-attack levels of anxiety on every activity to the level of just leaving social activities. My condolences.
It is a feeling of intense powerlessness that you cannot overcome. Nothing makes you feel more impotent than the inability to just get over yourself despite decades of trying. Speaking from experience.
That would have me cracking me up inside, because when I GM the numbers don't matter 80% of the time, so someone ragequitting a combat situation against a creature I didn't even bother giving an actual HP value is hilarious (worried laughter)
I don’t even get that, because that was literally RNG to its purest, it’s straight up not even their fault unless they mean they made a bad call and not a bad roll
I can't speak for any other country, but here in the US, I feel like there's an overwhelming mentality with many competitive areas of "If you're not an undefeated champ on your very first try, then you never should have showed up in the first place".
That also comes hand and hand with legacy too like how there is that old quote where it's like "no matter what year you were born there is already people born before you who are already better then you and you will never catch up"
Yeah, exceptionalism is a plague that rotted our education and work pipelines, and now we're paying dearly for it because now there's no way to get jobs without being, well, exceptional in most regards
The one thing I relate on here is the feeling I get when I get into a puzzle game, and I get the puzzle *wrong*. I can deal with any amount of mechanical complexity, even some that requires some degree of intelligence if it's obstructed enough, but the moment in my mind it becomes "this challenge is about being smart: you will get it if you're smart enough", whenever I get it wrong, right away my brain kicks into "Either something is wrong with you, or the game. Pick one, now."
One angle of this I sorta have felt is playing an Adventure point & click game as a kid and reaching a point where I don't know how to progress. It bothered me because this was before I know what guides were, so there were some games I never finished in the past. Then there's the opposite with Souls games, where I pull out the wiki nearly every 30 minutes, and it's such a pace-breaker for me.
Man, talk about the gifted child program reminded me of the biggest disservice my school ever did for me: I was failing grade 11 english class bexause for reasons that looking back were obvious signs of ADHD, except nobody ever considered that because I was a smart kid. So I start realizing that this attitude is untenable and went to go ask if there were any remedial programs or extra credit I could take because TV taught me that's what people did when they were failing. And do you know what the school told me? They told me not to worry about it because I had passed some big state exam and that's literally all that matters for graduating so I could go back to not putting in any effort. I never recovered academically from that, fucking wild how such a terrible outlook gets justified in the texas educational system.
Not even in the US and I got that a lot because I didn't know how to put my foot down. Surely, it's just bullying making me horrid at math starting high school, and not that I never studied previously and had nearly no treatment for ADHD; i'm good at all humanities and biology so it can't be a Me problem still got through (humanities) university because I got back to therapy thankfully, but I still feel anxiety creep up like a vine if I so much as open a math textbook
Holy shit that's a mirror to mine, Texan system, had been getting medicated in high school but got pulled off of it when I started undergrad and having to relearn things without a support system fuckin tanked my ass. Made it out of college with a 2.89 GPA. It's possible but goddamn you gotta grit some teeth
This part of the podcast was so fascinating to listen to because I can 100% understand those feelings but also not relate because my crippling ADHD life experience will let me fail repeatedly at anything as long as I find it engaging but instead I'll give up as soon as something becomes even slightly tedious. I was the kid that failed out of classes where I aced every test because homework is boring and I hate it and I shouldn't have to bother with it, but if I died on the same spot 100 times or more in a game I'm sitting like a Bodhissattva because the dopamine is yummy yummy. EDIT: That's definitely not to say that your brain automatically yeeting out anything it doesn't find stimulating doesn't screw over your life and self-image in its own way, but that's a whole 'nother matter lmao
I resonate so incredibly strongly with this email. I used to have a bad problem with rage quitting, and the way the emailer describes it is EXACTLY how i would feel. I always heard people talk about rage quitting from the perspective of someone who can't accept that they lost, and acts almost vengeful, blaming the other guy, but it was very rarely like that for me. It was always a self-loathing, "i cant deal with this negative emotion and i need it to stop literally this second" kind of feeling. I could lose 100 games happily if I felt like i was making a good personal effort, but if I wasn't up to my own standards I would almost immediately snap. I also agree with the shame thing. Once i started getting actually okay at fighting games is when i finally stopped, because i started seeing the same faces in ranked as the pool thinned slightly, and the shame of realizing i RQ'd them, and they probably recognized me, immediately knocked me out of it.
Woolie's mentioning of being gassed up as a child only to hit a brick wall as you get older and grow frustrated when you can't overcome it with the same level of effort all the previous brick walls did really struck a nerve for me lol we really need to do away with instilling that mentality in children, it just prevents them from forming good habits in regards to learning
what pat was saying about not being able to take a compliment because of expecting perfection for myself as the bare minimum has made me get into arguments with people close to me because it does just feel like they are telling me it's good I didn't fuck up everything horribly because I'm a loser piece of shit, it is not fun and I don't know how to deal with that
I sometimes don’t take compliments because people always insist you just accept it, and at that point it doesn’t even feel sincere. That and I just don’t want to hear it, no perfection expected, I just sincerely don’t want to hear it, it becomes wildly annoying when you know it’s because they like you and not because it’s accurate Idk, insisting you just accept the claim and ignoring your actual wishes (if they reflect what I describe) feels kinda shit, but In a way nobody really cares to listen to, so I just shrug and let them imagine whatever
Therapy. Talking to a professional that can help you understand the why & how of those feelings, and also the tools to handle them in a healthy way. There are self-guided things for certain types of therapy, but the external prospective of a professional is not replaceable.
Normalize failure. You never get it right at first. Failure isnt the end. it's part of the process, but quitting *is* the end it is a testament to your failure.
The example of XCOM is such a good one. I've only ever ended a play of that game by rage quitting, because something about it just hits that exact nerve
XCOM's problem is that you can see the percentages and math them together to see that 0.0001% chance for a sequence of events to occur in that specific order that got your squad wiped out. Rationally, you know that it's possible and in fact probable over the course of a campaign, but your brain still thinks that there's no way that a fourth +90% chance is going to miss in the row.
XCOM is one of those games where you can be pretty far in the story but so weak on resources that the war is in an unwinnable state. But it is obviously easier when you do a new campaign with a better idea of what you’re doing Losing an XCOM campaign is okay
@@TheJadedJames that's definitely a good way to look at it if I get back into it. I think I went in expecting a more modern linear progression, where finishing a campaign is more of a "when", not an "if"
"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame." Shame isn't the solution to feeling like you should be able to get everything perfect first try. Realizing your best is good enough *is*.
woolie: this is a moment of rare introspection [that provides a glimpse] into a world you could never know because they don't think this hard *proceeded by two and a half minutes of an impressively introspective letter describing a very relatable issue the person struggles with and clearly thinks about a lot* this man will have the lab filed as his primary residence and never learn to not go with the most bad faith expectation as his opening move no matter how many times it misses lmao never change dude. also watching pat's face progress from "oh no wtf is their problem" to "oh no i know exactly what their problem is" over the course of the letter being read was great!!
11:35: The actual "tragedy of the gifted child" is that the urge is to sequester them together in GT courses and they skip the parts of grade school where you learn to handle other people and interpersonal conflict.
I've straight up told my wife that I don't want any acknowledgement or celebration about school related stuff until I'm holding a college degree in my hand. Anything else before that is the expected standard and there's no sense of achievement until it's completed. I'm aware that's absolutely insane.
Man Woolies thing about art school and realizing how under prepared you are compared to your classmates really hits home with me. I got into to a programing major at a college that was known for it being hard to get into and realizing how under prepared I was for the programming classes because it was only me and one other student who had no previous experience programming and how I struggled to get the basics while the other kids were able to quickly do what took me hours. But I'm still glad I stopped being a programming major because programming sucks
Oh my god, this conversation made me realize something. I think the exact reason I love video games so much, specifically challenging ones, is because I was plagued with the whole 'gifted child' thing too. I seek out things to kick my ass without remorse because I never had to worry about anything in school and was told how smart I was constantly. I crave the pushback of "No you're actually not good enough yet, do better" and being able to actually grow instead of being put on a pedestal constantly for just being me. Fuck.
listening to this made me realize that i could very well be a rage quitter if i didn’t feel shame in doing that but instead i tend to drop things for weeks if not indefinitely. when i first played dark souls back in 2011 i straight up dropped the game at sens fortress because I thought “yeah i suck at this and I’ll never be good at this”, but years later i picked it back up and spent the time to learn what i was doing wrong or just learned to step away from the game for a bit to come back with a clear head. I have now beaten almost all the souls games and they’re now some of my favorite games ever.
As a hormonal teenager, I tended to ragequit. Hell, even to borderline tantrum levels. A thrown controller. Punching my friend in the arm "playfully" who just 3-0'd me in Smash. I mightve even punched a door once or twice....to destructive results. I think the ultimate version of that was when I snapped a clamshell phone after being told on halloween, in full costume, that my friends were cancelling our evening plans together. .... At some point however, it clicked how pointless and stupid the idea of "expressing" oneself like this is. Punching or yelling into a pillow can accomplish the same outlet without...destruction.... And after a couple more crazy hormonal teenager years, even that feels like too much... I'd like to just tell people "you outgrow it", but that experience can differ wildly from person to person over the course of decades.... Reflection is the best first step. How you figure your best way to deal from it from there going forward is up to you. Email sender, you have my respect for putting yourself out there like this while reflecting on yourself.
Oh god this segment is only getting more painful. I was a "smart" kid too. Reading ahead of my level, getting top percentile scores on statewide tests, and doing well on general class tests too despite almost never doing homework, never studying, or just rushing assignments the period prior. By junior and senior years of high school I was skipping classes and cutting out of school all the time. But because I scored high on tests I could almost maintain a passing average. By senior year, after being held back on 11th grade math required to graduate, and skipping so many days of school that I couldn't legally graduate if I missed another day after april or may, despite being a "smart" kid my ability to graduate on time was literally down to not missing a single day of school, and getting and 96 or higher on my math final. I pulled it off, and celebrated by showing up an hour late to graduation ceremonies with some gas station coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Life has been a little rough since😎
Came into this discussion expecting nonstop dunking on ragequitters, ended up with some of the realest stuff this podcast has produced so far. That "got to get this perfect on the first go" especially shook me to the core. I've tried to get into programming/game development as a side thing and bounced off of it countless times because of this exact mentality.
Ragequitting stems from the quitter never learning or accepting the mentality that failure is okay. Getting second place despite doing everything perfectly is inevitable, and could be a great opportunity to learn and do better later. But those initial negative emotions can be avoided if failure never happens. As Pat said, if these people behave this drastically to something as inconsequential as losing a video game, they might do something they can't undo if they fail at something that actually matters.
that’s how I moved on to non-plussed quitting, once I realize I wasn’t having fun to begin with and just put on the game to pass time. When I do actually want to play and end up losing though, as long as I wasn’t shot through the environment or some obviously cheesy bullshit, I’ll usually just go “yeah, that was alright despite losing. Gave em hell”
I grew up under the "if you don't get all A's you're not trying hard enough" rule, which mostly wasn't an issue because I crushed most assignments. Had a rough patch in fifth grade where the rule was upgraded to "Nothing below an A on every piece of math homework because you can check your work, nothing below 100 on every reading assignment because you can just read again." All that taught me to do was remove graded homework that didn't fit the standard from the "take this folder home and show your parents your grades" folder. Fast forward to high school and I'm having a hard time with algebra, mother finally hits the "I couldn't pass algebra so I can't harp on you any more" stage and I'm in the clear. Ride out of high school on a scholarship that gives me a free two years at community college, transfer in an honor club that covers half my tuition costs for the remaining two years of university. I'm slamming out A's and B's, all while sitting on my laptop and playing Binding of Isaac while idly taking notes during lectures. End up making a couple C's in more advanced classes, but whatever, I'm good. Oops, I was on auto pilot, didn't take enough of the right courses, scholarship doesnt cover any more, gotta split up classes between semesters. Then I get my four year degree in five years time and its time to apply for grad school...a highly competitive process that I can't break through because those C's really dragged me down, and because I only did classes, no lab work, no attempts at getting involved with research despite a plethora of opportunities. In the end I played myself and ended up with debt and a four year degree I couldn't get a job with. Its easy to bring upbringing or the people around you, but the fact of the matter is, at some point you stop being a gifted kid and become a gifted adult. Choosing to make your mistakes at that point is just as much your fault as anyone else's. Its also not the end, I would use Woolie and Pat as an example but most people aren't going to pivot into video games as a career. For me, I had a buddy who worked at the post office and convinced me to apply. Since then I got my own house, and I'm getting married. Even if you fuck up, there's always a chance to come back.
what makes games really weird for the "95% is amazing/bare minimum" discussion is that people around me will correctly notice that I'm pretty fuckin good at games, because I spend LITERALLY ALL MY FREE TIME PLAYING THEM so they see me blast through a game and go "wow that's amazing, you're really good at this!" and I need to internalize that we're operating on different scales where I'm actually pretty good, it's just that I'm at the point of the dunning kruger curve where I know there's people out there that are hitting 5000%, and if I scale that down then it'd put me at just under 2%, which is just not a reasonable comparison. I just gotta take the compliment
I feel so attacked. I irrationally agree with the first part about "expecting perfection right off rip" in the situation and MYSELF. The second part, though, is where I differ. I let the initial stage beat me down, THEN, thru shear spite, force myself to not just be better than where I started, but hold myself continously to an impossible standard to not just be good, but try to be great. I know this comment is long but it's a bit of catharsis for me
bit of a tangential topic, I hate when people report on the Olympics and treat anyone who placed below 3rd, or even 1st, as losers. If you rank 50th in the entire world, that is still great.
If you even get to the olympics, you’re already *wildly* above average Now stop using those Olympic condoms and make super soldiers, we wanna see the dark Olympics
The worst type of perfectionism is when you also care about the perception of having not tried, having not put any effort into your perfectionism. In the moment or when you're young, it might seem impressive to put in the minimum amount of effort and still reap the greatest level of reward or acclaim. But I think later on in life, stuff like that feels hollow and unearned. I think maturing is realizing is that working hard and putting in effort to accomplish something (especially if it's something that didn't come easy to you at first) is one of the most impressive things you can do in your life.
Hearing woolie talk about his experience with art school did a lot for me, as someone who went into graphic design for college it was a similar feeling seeing these INSANE looking sketchbooks. While I mentally struggled to get a drawing done most days.
Man, that part about the compliments clocked the hell outta me Lmao I've always had issues with compliments. Mostly it was just confusion. But working at certain retail placed turned that confusion into full blown anger. I HATED getting compliments for the longest time. "Why are you wasting time complimenting me? I did what I was supposed to do. Don't belittle me with this fake-ass praise." I've cooled off a lot over the years but to this day, any compliments I recieve make me uncomfortable. I feel like that feeling stems from other self-image issues. But even getting to this point has been rough. Mad props to the guy who emailed, BTW. That level of introspection is definitely what we need more of in the world. Proud of him.
It was 10th grade math for me. Never had to study before then, high grades, told by my family I was really smart and good at math. Didn't understand it, got frustrated that the "dumb" people were getting it easier than me. Didn't pass the class but passed graduation exam. Got to college, one of the requirements for even a basic degree is passing a minimum level math course. (The comp degree I want requires multiple math courses) Needless to say I still don't haven't passsd that course. I've tried a couple times over the years to pass it end up, hitting a wall, get mad, and drop the course. About to try again in January. Wish me luck fellas.
Sometimes im a little bewildered by woolies surprise reaction to Pat insanity, not becuase its insane, but because he has known this guy for nearly 2 decades...how are you still suprised by this? Why do you act like this is new territory? Did he forget all the other times pat had his mind goblins exposed?
He's LITERALLY me fr fr, I do exactly the same thing. Only Pat is wrong shame can't fix this, because I can just devalue the input of the people who shame me. I'm A okay with people hating me, I'm only not okay with hating myself.
I find the idea of Perfectionist Anxiety strange. I've never had it, but I've had the opposite - I worry I'm NOT trying to be perfect. I get a 70% on a test and go 'hey that's a pass baby'. I play a game and get a C or take huge damage and I'm like "we take those". But at the back of my head I'm always like "you should have higher standards for yourself. You should care for it more. You should be like the people who strive for perfection. Why aren't you trying like them?" I think no matter what, everyone's brain is broken in some way and it's just learning to live with it. And hopefully not killing their whole family.
There are three moments in games specifically that still stick in my mind for enducing enough frustration that it caused me to ponder rage-quitting. Two happened during my childhood, and one is recent. I'm not really looking for feedback, but I thought it would be interesting to share for curiosity's sake. I used to play MK ranked very seriously as my main fighting game. I wanted the exclusive rewards because of FOMO and it scared me that I could lose content forever. This made me grind ranked hard in a short period of time. Whenever I lost a match I would be super frustrated of the progress I lost. This led to me either ragequitting or shutting off the console quickly in order to ignore the results of the match. To be frank, I think I just didn't enjoy MK11 or its community enough to tolerate the frustration of loss. As a kid, I put a lot of time into the greek God of War games. With GOW2 still being of my favorite games. However, I got stuck in the last gauntlet of the game before you travel back in time. You fight nearly every enemy type in the game in cramped areas and get limited resources to get health and magic back. I got so desperate I tried asking my sibling for help. I ended up just bruteforcing my skills to victory. My most recent one is fighting Radhan in the Elden Ring DLC. I actually never beat him despite putting in hours of attempt and assistance from Summons online. I was generally not a fan of Elden Ring bosses, and have gotten burnt out from Souls combat in games. I think Radhan was the breaking-point for me where I just decided it wasn't worth it (especially with the reward being a 1 minute cutscene). I think that was the worst rage-quit moment for me because it was so frustrating that I experienced general burnout with gaming for a while. I'm happy to say I've found the fun in the medium again after some time.
I hate that this clip is the most I've related to Pat in like 10+ years of listening to him talk on the internet. Although my wall didn't hit until third year of uni. I hit that and washed the **** out. At least Pat got a degree. Being a perfectionist sucks. It gets in the way of SO much.
Fun little thought experiement, but I believe every single person runs into this very immediately in their lives so everyone interfaces with this emotion at different levels. So for me, I continue to struggle with an extreme opposite problem. I pick up and intuit things extremely quickly even to this day. But uh, but, ya know. For a kid. That means you don't practice. That means I *still* dont practice, cause why would I need to. And every time that happens again as an adult it Just reinforces this... what did Pat call it? Maladaptive reasoning? I dont know, I'm not playing back the video to check. :) This has ironically still made me much dumber than my peers, but thankfully I surround myself with people willing to shame me at the drop of a hat. The homies always keep ya honest.
0:43: Pat sees you. He wants you to know that you are seen. And you are heard. He understands that you have feelings, and those feelings are real and val- "Just call me a ragequitter!"
Really happy this got uploaded. There's some really good advice here i can always go back to now. this is really going to help me alot on my art journey in the long run. Thanks Woolie.
This is one of the better clips out there, to show to people with zero context to get people to watch the Podcast. Some real accessible, real fascinating discourse going on!
I always feel sad when Woolie talks about art like that. Obviously it was his choice and his thoughts etc but you should never let the work of your peers dictate how you look at your own output, unless its just in a "I'm gonna work to make something as good as them." Envy and jealousy are natural feelings, but it sounds like he just decided his own stuff would be trash based off what some of the people around him were making.
Me when I have an idea about a story regarding ants, but then I see someone do something wildly similar and now will just be the one who had the idea second and did it worse. Actually not even second, “sand kings” has already blown my idea out of the water
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeatThe Iseakai genre thrives on this. Millions of people will consume similar stories and find a favorite among them. Your version will be just the right mix for someone
Single player rage quit I don't care about. If you're not having it, bail. If there is no other person that you are effecting with it move on to something you'll enjoy
Alternatively when the team has absolutely no chance, and your presence is literally changing nothing due to how the match is playing out, seen many of those
The feeling to compare yourself to excellence, especially if it coming from someone who is much younger than you, is one of the most detrimental forces in your many attempts for self-improvement. It's not bad to be competitive at all, but going for something that's leagues above you isn't doing you much good. Instead what you should be competing with is yourself, to see if who you today is better than who you were last.
Well, I can't relate to any of these problems. Never had them to begin with, probably because got hugged too much as a baby, but I have a mindset that might help some people with the problem, which is this: I always immediately play all games at the highest possible difficulty setting, no matter how insane that is, because I want the highest possible challenge to overcome and get the steepest possible learning curve. Even if it is that is impossible, I at least want to feel the mountain to be challenged later. Because of that failure is fully expected as part of trying things out and learning. I don't even think of it as failure, nor does it feel that way. It's simply testing the field to figure things out to then adapt and try again.
Lol reminds me of the time I quit Undertale after accidentally killing that Cow Mom at the beginning. My friend was watching and I disappointed him by not continuing. I couldn't explain it at the time but this mail writer explains it pretty good.
One thing that really helped me was TTRPGs sessions. I've also experienced with the mailer says, where I've ragequit a session because everything went wrong. What helped me was realizing that I'm not there to win. None of us are there to win. We are there to tell a story. We are there to develop interesting characters, and nothing does that better than suffering. Every fall, every failure, every punch in the gut, is an opportunity to develop your character, to add depth to them, to make them a REAL PERSON. Do not be afraid to say your character pukes their guts out after entering a room full of rotten corpses. Do not be afraid to say they cry out in pain if they get stabbed. That does not make them weak, it makes them human.
I had something like this in high school where I couldn't write an essay at all and failed every exam staring at a blank page. I thought that writing an essay meant I had to visualize the entire text and make sure it was perfect before committing anything to the page, which seemed like a superhuman feat since I could only do that for one or two paragraphs at a time. I wondered how other people were capable of doing this, turns out they just had experience writing because they did their homework, there was no magic trick. Meanwhile at the time I thought the only reason people had to do their homework was because they weren't paying attention, because just listening in class was enough to score perfectly on tests.
"Why would you compliment me for doing the bare minimum?" unlocked so many memories holy shit
Yeah I didn’t expect to be called out like this. “80 on a test is too stupid” was too real.
I had this mindset when I was feeling apathetic on everything due to experiencing depression. Thinking that the social norm is just the automatic response in life. "Why compliment me when I help out? Isn't that my job?"
I never wanna experience that feeling of emptyness ever again.
Bro, that was a critical hit for me. I can even trace it back to the source. When I was in grade school, my would say things like “You’re a genius, so anything below a high A is failure”. I would get grounded for getting a B on my report card. I know she meant well, but instead of incentivizing me to succeed, I just internalized that anything below perfect was unacceptable without learning what it took to achieve it because “you’re smart, figure it out”.
shit, I said that twice to my boss this month
I’m extremely used to that feeling, and most of the time for me it’s justified
I bet Pat was feeling that when he was Royal Guarding Virgil in the final DMCV fight.
"If i don't provide the cleanest boss fight ever i better break woolie's back."
Playing DMC is such a, like, performance, I have to imagine it's the most stressful thing to stream for a perfectionist
@@opossum_elysium “Man, DMC3 feels clunky. Why am I not zooming all over the place like those videos? I must be TRASH!”
*beats the game*
Impressive self reflection
The impressive part is trying to better themselves.
A lot of people would just say f*** it
The best email content in a good minute, hot damn.
Honestly, the BIG GREEN email barely ecplises this one. BARELY
@@rikimaru700link? I've never heard of that one.
It leading to the Millennial/Zoomer mashup of "Baseball is cringe and gay" is my favorite thing to happen ever.
@@rikimaru700 Is that one the final Katalyka update? That one is great
@@rikimaru700 *BLACK PEOPLE!*
It's worth noting the solution isn't just shame for quitting, it's also respect for trying. Playing locally with a friend and building each other up does so much more for someone's persistence than feeling like a stranger who doesn't belong. The blank void of silent online interactions swallows people whole.
My solution is to have fun in losing. Either an unexpcted death which you can find funny (not watching the screen as your character falls into a pit), or as a reminder that winning is a genuine triumph since you have to work for it a bit. It's why I enjoyed S-ranking the last level in Shadow Generations. Earning it after some trials & tribulations felt *Good*
You can also embrace memery or ad-libbing to lighten the mood, but I'm not that creative.
That last sentence is a bar
We all had to fall on our faces when we were learning how to walk, kinda sad that so many people were more driven as babies than they are as grown ass adults
@@leithaziz2716that’s my solution too. I used to be a serious rage quitter because I took being competitive to an extreme so I just don’t take it seriously anymore. I try but I have a “it is what it is” mentality now.
@@mediumshane You poked holes in the metaphor so hard you read the exact opposite intent out of it, what are you talking about
15:43 Patrick "If you need to lab, are you even good at that game" Boivin
"He's out of line but he's right"
Pats Degree activating like Big O
Cast in the name of Slop. Ye not crazy
STUDENT DEBT!! IT'S...
SHOWTIIIIIIIME!!!!!!
Big O. What a reference lol
What pat said is 100% right.
I prided myself for always being around the 5 best grades in my class and around the 15 best of my grade without really studying.
This completely ruined my university life.
Oh no, history is repeating itself for me.
I honestly feel like I've relied on my friends being super supportive to help too much for Univeristy. I try to apologise to them every time but they seem chill with it (allthough I feel like maybe they shouldn't).
Hey, it's me: skated through school with zero effort until AP Calculus in grade 11, didn't know how to study, nearly didn't graduate high school because I stopped going to avoid the situation, bombed out of first semester of college.
20 years later I still don't know how to study, but learning a trade helped me get over my bullshit.
I mean, in a way I guess it's reassuring to know other people went through the same shit I did
How big was your class where top 5 was impressive? We were 5 😋
@@kricku I mean, in my highschool every class had like 30 people and around 5 classes per grade. Don't know how big that is in comparison to other schools. I'm genuinely not tooting my own horn by saying this, but my class always had 2 to 3 people that averaged 95% and I got similar grades grades to them in most exams
"If im not good at it right away im terrible and stupid"
JEEZUS man that mentality has f*cked me up to this day. Especially when it came academics. I didnt expect pat to say something that would shake me to my very core.
As it was coming out his mouth I was like "F*ck that is how I think and have never been able to put into words"
I wanna applaud too this guy for taking the courage to expose his vulnerabilities like this to countless people, if you read this. You are awesome for that and I wish you the best, man.
Pat's gifted child thing struck home really hard.
Standard undiagnosed/unsupported ADHD-Aspie childhood; "obviously capable, but needs to apply himself". I had something to that effect on my report cards year after year.
@@GaijinEncarmine currently stuck on the applying myself to anything
@@rat8294 The butter knife isn't working.
05:20 Pat nails it on the head. When I was employed, I was so gripped by stress of "fuck this up and you lose your job" that I was unable to function. Now I'm disabled because of repeated instances of analysis paralysis/fight-or-flight/anxiety issues. I have been a ragequitter before, but worst off as now I just don't play or participate in win-or-lose activities like videogames or DnD at all.
It's not on the same pendulum, but my parents ride all their pride for me on my studies and want me to score high for the sake of getting a special Visa. I can tell they love me, but I genuinely wish our relationship could be weighed by our individual love more (and something less traditional) so that I can judge satisfaction of my work for myself. Otherwise, I won't feel happy for scoring anything that doesn't get me that result, and that's a very shallow way to live.
I fucking love that light that ignites in Pats eyes when it comes to a matter of Psychology lol.
It's the same zenkai boost woolie gets from racism
HUUMONGOUS props to the guy who sent that email...that must have taken a LOT of courage.
They didn't put their name on it...
They remain anonymous though... They're 100% safe and risked nothing by sending this cause regardless of anyone's reaction, we don't know the "who".
I mean, they would have watched/listen to a whole video of two people they hold in high regard tearing apart their ideal knowing full well the two people are taking about them in particular.
That takes courage in my book.
Holy fuck Pat, you didn't have to punch me in the chest like that.
I internalized that same message when I was young b/c my parents repeated "anything that's not an A isn't acceptable/good enough". I only ever got a 2 year degree from college (when I had wanted to get a doctorate eventually) b/c of this type of thinking.
The "if you need to study then you aren't smart" is so real too. Not projected externally, per se, but internally. "I'm crushing it without studying, why would I need to now?"
This discussion led to a lot of deep personal revelations about my own anxieties and traumas and made me genuinely cry, fucking top 10 podcast clip of all time.
As someone who has dropped projects multiple times because of perfectionism, this talk resonates with me a lot.
17:34 i have something similar. I resent people thanking me for doing nice things because i think to myself "im SUPPOSED to do good things, youre not supposed to thank people for that"
Except that i have no issue thanking other people, so i know its my brain skirting around the fact that i dont think i deserve appreciation
*Working on it, dont worry*
Yeah, I'm a hypocrite on that so I can relate.
Don't forget to pat yourself on the back when doing a good deed.
I usually thank people as a reflex, like blinking when something goes past your eyes unexpectedly
Pat really took me out for a second when he suddenly brought up and explained "family annihilation" what a terrifying concept that people can do something as heinous as that as a fear response.
It just sounds sad in a depressing manner. Seems the person puts too much importance in thinking his family has to look up for him that he'd rather they never live to experience that dissapointment. It's a somewhat selfless manner handled in the most selfish and immature way possible.
An act of love, horribly misguided. “I had to save them, don’t you see?”
Look up the Alex Murdaugh case. Killed his wife and son because he was found out as a financial fraudster and didn't want them to know about it.
The legal term is pater familicide. There's about 30 cases a year in the US, about 80 a year in India. Don't remember the other stats from my forensic psychology class, though.
@@morganqorishchi8181Holy shit.
I always wondered why people do this. Never ever expected to learn it from here.
I like how Pat being empathetic, gives it a good analisys and props the guy for introspection and self-awarnes, while giving good explanations on how it can manifest in easy to understand fashion for wider audience, while Woolie always come in with "Cuz they are bitch made, right?" angle.
And they are both correct.
It's a real reversal of their usual dynamic, for sure.
"I paid for the whole degree I'm gonna use the damn thing for once!"
Dr Patrick Boivan, Quebec's greatest and shortest psychologist
@@Kaarl_Millsnow BC's second shortest!
This was great. I love when they get a genuinely engaging question and you can tell they're both excited.
"I AM A RAGEQUITTER DR HAN"
Han: [Hits them with the "joy in improving" stare]
This person’s life sounds miserable. It sounds like heart-attack levels of anxiety on every activity to the level of just leaving social activities. My condolences.
It is a feeling of intense powerlessness that you cannot overcome. Nothing makes you feel more impotent than the inability to just get over yourself despite decades of trying. Speaking from experience.
leaving a DnD session during combat that isn't going how you want is some omega-tier insecurity
That would have me cracking me up inside, because when I GM the numbers don't matter 80% of the time, so someone ragequitting a combat situation against a creature I didn't even bother giving an actual HP value is hilarious (worried laughter)
Does the character go catatonic, disappears or do you auto play that character as a DM.
the only way the DM can treat is is to say the dude who rage quit's character just runs away like a coward
I don’t even get that, because that was literally RNG to its purest, it’s straight up not even their fault unless they mean they made a bad call and not a bad roll
It’s extra insane because the possibility of failure is the whole point of rolling the dice in the first place.
This video doesn't hit close to home, it broke down the front door.
I can't speak for any other country, but here in the US, I feel like there's an overwhelming mentality with many competitive areas of "If you're not an undefeated champ on your very first try, then you never should have showed up in the first place".
That also comes hand and hand with legacy too like how there is that old quote where it's like
"no matter what year you were born there is already people born before you who are already better then you and you will never catch up"
If you're not a multimillionaire, you might as well be a pile of shit on the boot of a multimillionaire. There is no in between lol.
Yeah, exceptionalism is a plague that rotted our education and work pipelines, and now we're paying dearly for it because now there's no way to get jobs without being, well, exceptional in most regards
@@phantomgoblin5540 it's vicious
The one thing I relate on here is the feeling I get when I get into a puzzle game, and I get the puzzle *wrong*. I can deal with any amount of mechanical complexity, even some that requires some degree of intelligence if it's obstructed enough, but the moment in my mind it becomes "this challenge is about being smart: you will get it if you're smart enough", whenever I get it wrong, right away my brain kicks into "Either something is wrong with you, or the game. Pick one, now."
I don't rage quit but boy oh boy does ranked content bring out the worst.
One angle of this I sorta have felt is playing an Adventure point & click game as a kid and reaching a point where I don't know how to progress. It bothered me because this was before I know what guides were, so there were some games I never finished in the past.
Then there's the opposite with Souls games, where I pull out the wiki nearly every 30 minutes, and it's such a pace-breaker for me.
Bigger shame, and bigger fear isn't always the answer. It can also create a sort of decision paralysis for some people
This is the one, the highlight of the podcast, what an incredible letter discussion
Man, talk about the gifted child program reminded me of the biggest disservice my school ever did for me: I was failing grade 11 english class bexause for reasons that looking back were obvious signs of ADHD, except nobody ever considered that because I was a smart kid. So I start realizing that this attitude is untenable and went to go ask if there were any remedial programs or extra credit I could take because TV taught me that's what people did when they were failing.
And do you know what the school told me? They told me not to worry about it because I had passed some big state exam and that's literally all that matters for graduating so I could go back to not putting in any effort.
I never recovered academically from that, fucking wild how such a terrible outlook gets justified in the texas educational system.
Not even in the US and I got that a lot because I didn't know how to put my foot down. Surely, it's just bullying making me horrid at math starting high school, and not that I never studied previously and had nearly no treatment for ADHD; i'm good at all humanities and biology so it can't be a Me problem
still got through (humanities) university because I got back to therapy thankfully, but I still feel anxiety creep up like a vine if I so much as open a math textbook
Holy shit that's a mirror to mine, Texan system, had been getting medicated in high school but got pulled off of it when I started undergrad and having to relearn things without a support system fuckin tanked my ass. Made it out of college with a 2.89 GPA. It's possible but goddamn you gotta grit some teeth
This part of the podcast was so fascinating to listen to because I can 100% understand those feelings but also not relate because my crippling ADHD life experience will let me fail repeatedly at anything as long as I find it engaging but instead I'll give up as soon as something becomes even slightly tedious. I was the kid that failed out of classes where I aced every test because homework is boring and I hate it and I shouldn't have to bother with it, but if I died on the same spot 100 times or more in a game I'm sitting like a Bodhissattva because the dopamine is yummy yummy.
EDIT: That's definitely not to say that your brain automatically yeeting out anything it doesn't find stimulating doesn't screw over your life and self-image in its own way, but that's a whole 'nother matter lmao
tbf homework should be an opt-in for extra credit thing, not a mandatory 'sacrifice your personal life or now you fuck up' thing.
Ahh yes, not the rage quit, but the Yawn-quit. Got too bored.
I resonate so incredibly strongly with this email. I used to have a bad problem with rage quitting, and the way the emailer describes it is EXACTLY how i would feel. I always heard people talk about rage quitting from the perspective of someone who can't accept that they lost, and acts almost vengeful, blaming the other guy, but it was very rarely like that for me. It was always a self-loathing, "i cant deal with this negative emotion and i need it to stop literally this second" kind of feeling. I could lose 100 games happily if I felt like i was making a good personal effort, but if I wasn't up to my own standards I would almost immediately snap.
I also agree with the shame thing. Once i started getting actually okay at fighting games is when i finally stopped, because i started seeing the same faces in ranked as the pool thinned slightly, and the shame of realizing i RQ'd them, and they probably recognized me, immediately knocked me out of it.
Woolie's mentioning of being gassed up as a child only to hit a brick wall as you get older and grow frustrated when you can't overcome it with the same level of effort all the previous brick walls did really struck a nerve for me lol
we really need to do away with instilling that mentality in children, it just prevents them from forming good habits in regards to learning
what pat was saying about not being able to take a compliment because of expecting perfection for myself as the bare minimum has made me get into arguments with people close to me because it does just feel like they are telling me it's good I didn't fuck up everything horribly because I'm a loser piece of shit, it is not fun and I don't know how to deal with that
I sometimes don’t take compliments because people always insist you just accept it, and at that point it doesn’t even feel sincere. That and I just don’t want to hear it, no perfection expected, I just sincerely don’t want to hear it, it becomes wildly annoying when you know it’s because they like you and not because it’s accurate
Idk, insisting you just accept the claim and ignoring your actual wishes (if they reflect what I describe) feels kinda shit, but In a way nobody really cares to listen to, so I just shrug and let them imagine whatever
Therapy. Talking to a professional that can help you understand the why & how of those feelings, and also the tools to handle them in a healthy way.
There are self-guided things for certain types of therapy, but the external prospective of a professional is not replaceable.
Normalize failure. You never get it right at first. Failure isnt the end. it's part of the process, but quitting *is* the end it is a testament to your failure.
I saw the word 'normalize' and immediately went into a frenzy 😂 srry I'm twitterbrained
@Pachitaro da nada it's the actual legitimate way to use the word not the idiotic blue hair way.
@Pachitaro da nada, I too loath the California blue hairs
Insane to think about how much of this discussion was just Frieza's Modus Operandi up until Namek
_"Stupid monkeys and their stupid TRAINING!"_
The example of XCOM is such a good one. I've only ever ended a play of that game by rage quitting, because something about it just hits that exact nerve
XCOM's problem is that you can see the percentages and math them together to see that 0.0001% chance for a sequence of events to occur in that specific order that got your squad wiped out. Rationally, you know that it's possible and in fact probable over the course of a campaign, but your brain still thinks that there's no way that a fourth +90% chance is going to miss in the row.
XCom is the embodiment of "you can do everything right and still lose."
XCOM is one of those games where you can be pretty far in the story but so weak on resources that the war is in an unwinnable state.
But it is obviously easier when you do a new campaign with a better idea of what you’re doing
Losing an XCOM campaign is okay
@@TheJadedJames that's definitely a good way to look at it if I get back into it. I think I went in expecting a more modern linear progression, where finishing a campaign is more of a "when", not an "if"
@@TheJadedJamesI’ve never seen the XCOM game over screen because I’ll restart if the early game goes poorly. Does that make me a rage quitter?
"it's not enough for me to win, everyone else must lose!"
Boy! That went dark real fast.
"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame."
Shame isn't the solution to feeling like you should be able to get everything perfect first try. Realizing your best is good enough *is*.
woolie: this is a moment of rare introspection [that provides a glimpse] into a world you could never know because they don't think this hard
*proceeded by two and a half minutes of an impressively introspective letter describing a very relatable issue the person struggles with and clearly thinks about a lot*
this man will have the lab filed as his primary residence and never learn to not go with the most bad faith expectation as his opening move no matter how many times it misses lmao never change dude. also watching pat's face progress from "oh no wtf is their problem" to "oh no i know exactly what their problem is" over the course of the letter being read was great!!
This is more of a symptom of a larger issue. This person needs someone to speak to and probably a hug.
I spaced out for a second and it went from ragequitting to family annihilation. It was Pat so it felt like a normal escalation.
Pat's happy little dance on the first line of this email does bode very well....
11:35: The actual "tragedy of the gifted child" is that the urge is to sequester them together in GT courses and they skip the parts of grade school where you learn to handle other people and interpersonal conflict.
I feel incredibly seen by the letter-writer and Pat here and incredibly mocked and un-seen by Woolie
All is as it should be.
Woolie **sees you** ...but he's using SandbagNoJutsu
I've straight up told my wife that I don't want any acknowledgement or celebration about school related stuff until I'm holding a college degree in my hand. Anything else before that is the expected standard and there's no sense of achievement until it's completed. I'm aware that's absolutely insane.
Then it becomes a question of will your desires be respected, or will there be an attempt to “correct” sincere feelings
Pat talking about perfectionism really reasonated with me, thought the entire discussion was great
Actual Pat's Crazy Talk.
Man Woolies thing about art school and realizing how under prepared you are compared to your classmates really hits home with me. I got into to a programing major at a college that was known for it being hard to get into and realizing how under prepared I was for the programming classes because it was only me and one other student who had no previous experience programming and how I struggled to get the basics while the other kids were able to quickly do what took me hours. But I'm still glad I stopped being a programming major because programming sucks
Pat's psych degree always feels like getting hit with a steel chair when he pulls it out
What I expected: Talking about Ragequitting.
What I got: The Chris Benoit Experience
Oh shit
Oh my god, this conversation made me realize something. I think the exact reason I love video games so much, specifically challenging ones, is because I was plagued with the whole 'gifted child' thing too. I seek out things to kick my ass without remorse because I never had to worry about anything in school and was told how smart I was constantly. I crave the pushback of "No you're actually not good enough yet, do better" and being able to actually grow instead of being put on a pedestal constantly for just being me. Fuck.
I just finished my psychiatry rotation and never heard of FAMILY ANNIHILATORS. fuck
Massive, MASSIVE respect for the emailer to be super open about it, takes a lot to do that.
listening to this made me realize that i could very well be a rage quitter if i didn’t feel shame in doing that but instead i tend to drop things for weeks if not indefinitely. when i first played dark souls back in 2011 i straight up dropped the game at sens fortress because I thought “yeah i suck at this and I’ll never be good at this”, but years later i picked it back up and spent the time to learn what i was doing wrong or just learned to step away from the game for a bit to come back with a clear head. I have now beaten almost all the souls games and they’re now some of my favorite games ever.
As a hormonal teenager, I tended to ragequit. Hell, even to borderline tantrum levels. A thrown controller. Punching my friend in the arm "playfully" who just 3-0'd me in Smash.
I mightve even punched a door once or twice....to destructive results.
I think the ultimate version of that was when I snapped a clamshell phone after being told on halloween, in full costume, that my friends were cancelling our evening plans together.
....
At some point however, it clicked how pointless and stupid the idea of "expressing" oneself like this is. Punching or yelling into a pillow can accomplish the same outlet without...destruction....
And after a couple more crazy hormonal teenager years, even that feels like too much...
I'd like to just tell people "you outgrow it", but that experience can differ wildly from person to person over the course of decades....
Reflection is the best first step. How you figure your best way to deal from it from there going forward is up to you.
Email sender, you have my respect for putting yourself out there like this while reflecting on yourself.
Oh god this segment is only getting more painful. I was a "smart" kid too. Reading ahead of my level, getting top percentile scores on statewide tests, and doing well on general class tests too despite almost never doing homework, never studying, or just rushing assignments the period prior. By junior and senior years of high school I was skipping classes and cutting out of school all the time. But because I scored high on tests I could almost maintain a passing average.
By senior year, after being held back on 11th grade math required to graduate, and skipping so many days of school that I couldn't legally graduate if I missed another day after april or may, despite being a "smart" kid my ability to graduate on time was literally down to not missing a single day of school, and getting and 96 or higher on my math final. I pulled it off, and celebrated by showing up an hour late to graduation ceremonies with some gas station coffee and a breakfast sandwich.
Life has been a little rough since😎
YEEEAAAH!! My favorite part of last episode isolated!
Came into this discussion expecting nonstop dunking on ragequitters, ended up with some of the realest stuff this podcast has produced so far. That "got to get this perfect on the first go" especially shook me to the core. I've tried to get into programming/game development as a side thing and bounced off of it countless times because of this exact mentality.
Ragequitting stems from the quitter never learning or accepting the mentality that failure is okay. Getting second place despite doing everything perfectly is inevitable, and could be a great opportunity to learn and do better later. But those initial negative emotions can be avoided if failure never happens. As Pat said, if these people behave this drastically to something as inconsequential as losing a video game, they might do something they can't undo if they fail at something that actually matters.
that’s how I moved on to non-plussed quitting, once I realize I wasn’t having fun to begin with and just put on the game to pass time.
When I do actually want to play and end up losing though, as long as I wasn’t shot through the environment or some obviously cheesy bullshit, I’ll usually just go “yeah, that was alright despite losing. Gave em hell”
I grew up under the "if you don't get all A's you're not trying hard enough" rule, which mostly wasn't an issue because I crushed most assignments. Had a rough patch in fifth grade where the rule was upgraded to "Nothing below an A on every piece of math homework because you can check your work, nothing below 100 on every reading assignment because you can just read again." All that taught me to do was remove graded homework that didn't fit the standard from the "take this folder home and show your parents your grades" folder.
Fast forward to high school and I'm having a hard time with algebra, mother finally hits the "I couldn't pass algebra so I can't harp on you any more" stage and I'm in the clear. Ride out of high school on a scholarship that gives me a free two years at community college, transfer in an honor club that covers half my tuition costs for the remaining two years of university. I'm slamming out A's and B's, all while sitting on my laptop and playing Binding of Isaac while idly taking notes during lectures. End up making a couple C's in more advanced classes, but whatever, I'm good. Oops, I was on auto pilot, didn't take enough of the right courses, scholarship doesnt cover any more, gotta split up classes between semesters. Then I get my four year degree in five years time and its time to apply for grad school...a highly competitive process that I can't break through because those C's really dragged me down, and because I only did classes, no lab work, no attempts at getting involved with research despite a plethora of opportunities.
In the end I played myself and ended up with debt and a four year degree I couldn't get a job with. Its easy to bring upbringing or the people around you, but the fact of the matter is, at some point you stop being a gifted kid and become a gifted adult. Choosing to make your mistakes at that point is just as much your fault as anyone else's. Its also not the end, I would use Woolie and Pat as an example but most people aren't going to pivot into video games as a career. For me, I had a buddy who worked at the post office and convinced me to apply. Since then I got my own house, and I'm getting married. Even if you fuck up, there's always a chance to come back.
2:05 Evil Dracula Flow
I am NOT him
I will NEVER be him
AAAAAHHHHHH
I DON'T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY!
I DON'T TAKE DRUGS CAUSE THEY'RE BAD FOR YOU!!!!
I HOPE THEM ALIENS AIN'T REAL JUST SO I HAVE LESS THINGS TO FUCK
Nosferatu flow
So in conclusion: shame works, gifted kids really are fucked up, and I have no enemies.
I'm very proud of everyone here for being brave and opening up, from the writer, Woolie and Pat. Even some of the comments. Incredible.
what makes games really weird for the "95% is amazing/bare minimum" discussion is that people around me will correctly notice that I'm pretty fuckin good at games, because I spend LITERALLY ALL MY FREE TIME PLAYING THEM so they see me blast through a game and go "wow that's amazing, you're really good at this!" and I need to internalize that we're operating on different scales where I'm actually pretty good, it's just that I'm at the point of the dunning kruger curve where I know there's people out there that are hitting 5000%, and if I scale that down then it'd put me at just under 2%, which is just not a reasonable comparison. I just gotta take the compliment
The tragedy of the gifted child is the subtitle to my life
I feel so attacked. I irrationally agree with the first part about "expecting perfection right off rip" in the situation and MYSELF. The second part, though, is where I differ. I let the initial stage beat me down, THEN, thru shear spite, force myself to not just be better than where I started, but hold myself continously to an impossible standard to not just be good, but try to be great. I know this comment is long but it's a bit of catharsis for me
Patpat will always judge
bit of a tangential topic, I hate when people report on the Olympics and treat anyone who placed below 3rd, or even 1st, as losers. If you rank 50th in the entire world, that is still great.
If you even get to the olympics, you’re already *wildly* above average
Now stop using those Olympic condoms and make super soldiers, we wanna see the dark Olympics
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat indeed
This was one of the best podcast segments in months at least. Possibly years.
The worst type of perfectionism is when you also care about the perception of having not tried, having not put any effort into your perfectionism. In the moment or when you're young, it might seem impressive to put in the minimum amount of effort and still reap the greatest level of reward or acclaim. But I think later on in life, stuff like that feels hollow and unearned. I think maturing is realizing is that working hard and putting in effort to accomplish something (especially if it's something that didn't come easy to you at first) is one of the most impressive things you can do in your life.
Hearing woolie talk about his experience with art school did a lot for me, as someone who went into graphic design for college it was a similar feeling seeing these INSANE looking sketchbooks. While I mentally struggled to get a drawing done most days.
Man, that part about the compliments clocked the hell outta me Lmao
I've always had issues with compliments. Mostly it was just confusion. But working at certain retail placed turned that confusion into full blown anger. I HATED getting compliments for the longest time. "Why are you wasting time complimenting me? I did what I was supposed to do. Don't belittle me with this fake-ass praise."
I've cooled off a lot over the years but to this day, any compliments I recieve make me uncomfortable. I feel like that feeling stems from other self-image issues. But even getting to this point has been rough.
Mad props to the guy who emailed, BTW. That level of introspection is definitely what we need more of in the world. Proud of him.
It was 10th grade math for me. Never had to study before then, high grades, told by my family I was really smart and good at math.
Didn't understand it, got frustrated that the "dumb" people were getting it easier than me. Didn't pass the class but passed graduation exam.
Got to college, one of the requirements for even a basic degree is passing a minimum level math course. (The comp degree I want requires multiple math courses)
Needless to say I still don't haven't passsd that course. I've tried a couple times over the years to pass it end up, hitting a wall, get mad, and drop the course.
About to try again in January. Wish me luck fellas.
You've got it for sure this time
Good Luck
I am a ragequitter, and I'm probably gonna ragequit again
Lord forgive me
Lord forgive me
For the matchups I don't understand
Sometimes im a little bewildered by woolies surprise reaction to Pat insanity, not becuase its insane, but because he has known this guy for nearly 2 decades...how are you still suprised by this? Why do you act like this is new territory? Did he forget all the other times pat had his mind goblins exposed?
He's LITERALLY me fr fr, I do exactly the same thing. Only Pat is wrong shame can't fix this, because I can just devalue the input of the people who shame me. I'm A okay with people hating me, I'm only not okay with hating myself.
You can only devalue so much until it hits a point an it not. What if they put a picture of your face in theirs and talk as if they were you?
@@ColdNorth0628I’m not sure I follow, why would you be present for that?
17:27 holy hell thats me.. oof its gets bad, to the point Where I think compliments are hidden insults or sarcastic... wooo trama!!
Trauma high five!
I find the idea of Perfectionist Anxiety strange. I've never had it, but I've had the opposite - I worry I'm NOT trying to be perfect. I get a 70% on a test and go 'hey that's a pass baby'. I play a game and get a C or take huge damage and I'm like "we take those". But at the back of my head I'm always like "you should have higher standards for yourself. You should care for it more. You should be like the people who strive for perfection. Why aren't you trying like them?"
I think no matter what, everyone's brain is broken in some way and it's just learning to live with it.
And hopefully not killing their whole family.
Very meaningful email and conversation. I can't wait for next week where we get an email about buttfarts.
Pat is my go-to resource for mental health insight. With his help, this time i'm really gonna do it
There are three moments in games specifically that still stick in my mind for enducing enough frustration that it caused me to ponder rage-quitting. Two happened during my childhood, and one is recent. I'm not really looking for feedback, but I thought it would be interesting to share for curiosity's sake.
I used to play MK ranked very seriously as my main fighting game. I wanted the exclusive rewards because of FOMO and it scared me that I could lose content forever. This made me grind ranked hard in a short period of time. Whenever I lost a match I would be super frustrated of the progress I lost. This led to me either ragequitting or shutting off the console quickly in order to ignore the results of the match. To be frank, I think I just didn't enjoy MK11 or its community enough to tolerate the frustration of loss.
As a kid, I put a lot of time into the greek God of War games. With GOW2 still being of my favorite games. However, I got stuck in the last gauntlet of the game before you travel back in time. You fight nearly every enemy type in the game in cramped areas and get limited resources to get health and magic back. I got so desperate I tried asking my sibling for help. I ended up just bruteforcing my skills to victory.
My most recent one is fighting Radhan in the Elden Ring DLC. I actually never beat him despite putting in hours of attempt and assistance from Summons online. I was generally not a fan of Elden Ring bosses, and have gotten burnt out from Souls combat in games. I think Radhan was the breaking-point for me where I just decided it wasn't worth it (especially with the reward being a 1 minute cutscene). I think that was the worst rage-quit moment for me because it was so frustrating that I experienced general burnout with gaming for a while. I'm happy to say I've found the fun in the medium again after some time.
I hate that this clip is the most I've related to Pat in like 10+ years of listening to him talk on the internet.
Although my wall didn't hit until third year of uni. I hit that and washed the **** out. At least Pat got a degree.
Being a perfectionist sucks. It gets in the way of SO much.
This whole email sounds like a self-aware parallel LTG/Dale using anonimity to express his inner thoughts
Fun little thought experiement, but I believe every single person runs into this very immediately in their lives so everyone interfaces with this emotion at different levels.
So for me, I continue to struggle with an extreme opposite problem. I pick up and intuit things extremely quickly even to this day. But uh, but, ya know. For a kid. That means you don't practice.
That means I *still* dont practice, cause why would I need to.
And every time that happens again as an adult it Just reinforces this... what did Pat call it? Maladaptive reasoning? I dont know, I'm not playing back the video to check. :) This has ironically still made me much dumber than my peers, but thankfully I surround myself with people willing to shame me at the drop of a hat. The homies always keep ya honest.
Pat took this to a way darker place wtf man.
Kudos to the person who wrote that in.
"Losing means you shouldn't have tried"
For real
0:43: Pat sees you. He wants you to know that you are seen. And you are heard. He understands that you have feelings, and those feelings are real and val-
"Just call me a ragequitter!"
Really happy this got uploaded. There's some really good advice here i can always go back to now. this is really going to help me alot on my art journey in the long run. Thanks Woolie.
This is one of the better clips out there, to show to people with zero context to get people to watch the Podcast.
Some real accessible, real fascinating discourse going on!
I always feel sad when Woolie talks about art like that. Obviously it was his choice and his thoughts etc but you should never let the work of your peers dictate how you look at your own output, unless its just in a "I'm gonna work to make something as good as them." Envy and jealousy are natural feelings, but it sounds like he just decided his own stuff would be trash based off what some of the people around him were making.
Me when I have an idea about a story regarding ants, but then I see someone do something wildly similar and now will just be the one who had the idea second and did it worse.
Actually not even second, “sand kings” has already blown my idea out of the water
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeatThe Iseakai genre thrives on this. Millions of people will consume similar stories and find a favorite among them. Your version will be just the right mix for someone
@@Doople "holy shit, two cakes!"
Single player rage quit I don't care about. If you're not having it, bail. If there is no other person that you are effecting with it move on to something you'll enjoy
Alternatively when the team has absolutely no chance, and your presence is literally changing nothing due to how the match is playing out, seen many of those
The feeling to compare yourself to excellence, especially if it coming from someone who is much younger than you, is one of the most detrimental forces in your many attempts for self-improvement. It's not bad to be competitive at all, but going for something that's leagues above you isn't doing you much good. Instead what you should be competing with is yourself, to see if who you today is better than who you were last.
Well, I can't relate to any of these problems. Never had them to begin with, probably because got hugged too much as a baby, but I have a mindset that might help some people with the problem, which is this: I always immediately play all games at the highest possible difficulty setting, no matter how insane that is, because I want the highest possible challenge to overcome and get the steepest possible learning curve. Even if it is that is impossible, I at least want to feel the mountain to be challenged later. Because of that failure is fully expected as part of trying things out and learning. I don't even think of it as failure, nor does it feel that way. It's simply testing the field to figure things out to then adapt and try again.
Lol reminds me of the time I quit Undertale after accidentally killing that Cow Mom at the beginning. My friend was watching and I disappointed him by not continuing. I couldn't explain it at the time but this mail writer explains it pretty good.
One thing that really helped me was TTRPGs sessions. I've also experienced with the mailer says, where I've ragequit a session because everything went wrong.
What helped me was realizing that I'm not there to win. None of us are there to win. We are there to tell a story. We are there to develop interesting characters, and nothing does that better than suffering.
Every fall, every failure, every punch in the gut, is an opportunity to develop your character, to add depth to them, to make them a REAL PERSON.
Do not be afraid to say your character pukes their guts out after entering a room full of rotten corpses. Do not be afraid to say they cry out in pain if they get stabbed. That does not make them weak, it makes them human.
I had something like this in high school where I couldn't write an essay at all and failed every exam staring at a blank page. I thought that writing an essay meant I had to visualize the entire text and make sure it was perfect before committing anything to the page, which seemed like a superhuman feat since I could only do that for one or two paragraphs at a time. I wondered how other people were capable of doing this, turns out they just had experience writing because they did their homework, there was no magic trick. Meanwhile at the time I thought the only reason people had to do their homework was because they weren't paying attention, because just listening in class was enough to score perfectly on tests.
Pat i am the same way, when s9meone compliments me on something super basic mu response is always"duh" i still am working on that....
I've been waiting for this