being bad at things we enjoy is existentially invalidating despite the lack of ‘real stakes’. it’s like having receding hairline, like obviously it’s toxic AF to judge someone in a moral/ethical sense for balding, but as someone who is losing their hair it makes you feel like something is fundamentally ‘inferior’ about you compared to those who are not. you see people that have what you always wanted to have with no effort, they seem like they are just intuitively, instinctually, effortlessly ‘better than you’. one of my best friends has always been effortlessly good at FPS games like that, constantly getting ridiculous scores like 100 kills to 17 deaths in short fast paced multiplayer games like call of duty, and its like they don’t even play more than me, they haven’t been doing it as long as me, i put in at least as much effort if not more so to win, but i can never even approach that level of skill. my K:D ratio is constantly negative, i can hardly ever break even let alone go 3:2 with 100 kills in less than 7 minutes. my thumbs are simply not that dextrous on the controller joysticks and never will be. it makes me feel like my existence is invalidated, that i was stupid for being interested in the things that i enjoyed doing and the games i enjoy playing, that my life is a waste of time that will only end in meaningless failure. i don’t think its even ‘irrational’ as much as it is ‘overly rational’ in the sense of nihilistic naturalistic fallacy vulgar materialism. it’s objectively better to win than to lose, ‘self improvement’ doesn’t matter if you can’t achieve it no matter how much effort an analysis you put into it. i don’t lose in FPS games due to tactical mistakes, they are simply all faster at aiming than me because i am in my mid 30’s and they are younger and have more efficiently functioning nervous systems. I am physically, objectively worse than them in a very real if limited and low stakes sense, and regardless of the fact that it is ‘not an important arena’ it is existentially invalidating in the sense that we all want to be the Effortless Beautiful Chosen Hero that succeeds inevitably and instinctually. failure reminds us that we ‘are not special’, that we have no special talent or skill that makes us unique, that the universe does not care about our success or failure any more than any other random chaotic physics event, that we are just another blank, bland NPC in the background of the rich beautiful successful people’s lives and we will never be like them no matter how hard we work or try because the deterministic chain of causality just did not work out that way for us and its too late to do anything about it.

semi-optimism edit: in terms of actually successfully dealing with these kinds of thoughts, i just honestly ask myself if i really want to live/have lived the way it would take to acquire whatever skill i lack. sure, i might be jealous of the victor’s success in the moment, but am i really jealous of the way they had to live to train hard enough to get that good? am i really jealous of the hours a day spent trying and failing over and over until improvement? would i rather have spent my time playing nothing but a single multiplayer game until i completely mastered it instead of experiencing a diverse array of different games? do i even want to have the same level of memorized map knowledge that renders a thrilling diegetic experience into a context-free standardized ‘playing field’? do i really wish i spent all of my earlier years learning how to draw better or how to do complicated maths or program computers etc. instead of chilling and playing video games and having what scant few social experiences i could manage and studying a larger set of topics and hobbies? the answer to these questions is usually: not really. i might wish to retroactively spend my time on say, pursuing meaningful romantic relationshps instead of whatever i ended up actually doing, but not on ‘more call of duty/halo/etc.’.