11:55 PM
Yesterday was one of my worst days in recent times. I downloaded this game called AFK Journey maybe on Saturday night, or it could have been on Sunday night. On Sunday though, I spent that day doing animal rights activism for NARD (National Animal Rights Day) with a bunch of people. That was the first time I was part of a march, and we went down the street and marched and chanted. There was a video recording of the event recorded live by Eric and uploaded to his YouTube channel, it shows us marching and also him and others going around and having street debates with people.
It was cool because it was live. I got to be the cameraman for a good amount of the video, and I was also debating people in some of the video. Afterwards we hung out at his place, and chilled at the community hot tub that his place provided. It was raining while we hung out at the hot tub. It didn't rain during the animal right march, nor did it rain while the event was going on. It rained heavily before and after though, and the clouds were dark and gray the majority of the time. I think it was serendipity that it didn't rain the whole time we marched and while the event was going on, because it rained and stormed heavily shortly after everyone already left.
My party got heavily soaked because we were still there debating people, and only on the way back to the car did it start raining heavily. Thinking back, that was serendipitous too, that it literally only started raining on our way back to the car. It rained and stormed heavily, we all got completely soaked. That was one of the most soaked times I've ever been in my life, apart from jumping into a pool of water, it literally stormed so much in just a few seconds that even a one second exposure to the rain would get you completely soaked. We were out there for a least a couple of minutes though, running our way back to the car and all of us getting wet along the way.
Anyway, Monday. So on Sunday night, my water stopped. I just came back home from hanging out with my friends at a hot tub, so I still needed to shower and get all the chlorine off, but I couldn't. I couldn't wash my hands either, nor flush the toilet, nor brush my teeth, nor have any drinking water. I actually did have maybe half a gallon of water that I distilled in the fridge, but I couldn't distill any more water without the faucet water working. I also had several gallons of water saved up in plastic containers for use in flushing or washing my hands basically. I already have these for situations like this, because it happens so frequently.
Anyway, my water was out for the entire day yesterday (Monday), except for a few minutes in the evening, enough to fill up my toilet once. When it did fill up, I thought my water was back, so I flushed it, that was a mistake because it didn't fill up again. I had to refill it with 2.5 gallons of water I saved up, I probably have maybe 30 gallons stored. I refill it up manually by removing the toilet lid, and then pouring in one gallon at a time. It can be tedious because I have to go back and forth and lift this heavy lid and put it back, just to flush it once.
I wasn't motivated to do anything the whole day on Monday, so I spent it just playing this new game I downloaded called AFK Journey. This game became very addicting. I literally spent the whole day playing it. I'm glad I only spent $0.99 on the game, to buy 10 premium invite envelopes, and that was all. Well, I did other activities too of course, but I mainly just played the game. It was so addicting. I played this game mode called Honor Duel, and I became very good at it. I didn't do well my first or second time playing honor duel, but with my third attempt, I won 9 games in a row without a single loss I think. This got me to rank 180 in my server, S567, in Honor Duel.
So basically it's like Team Fight Tactics, sort of. I'm not sure what to compare it to or how to start to describe it. Honor Duel is like a separate minigame from the actual game itself. The game itself has these heroes that you place on these tiles, and they fight the enemy team automatically during battles. You can have battles in random encounters, through quests, or through the AFK Levels. The heroes you can use in these battles, are only the ones you have acquired. To get heroes, you use invite tickets, and they can be hard to get, which is why I paid $0.99 for 10 premium invite tickets.
In Honor Duel, everyone starts from scratch, you choose an ability, and then you get a starting set of 3 heroes. Every round you get some income and have a chance to buy or upgrade your heroes. For every round, you face against people who have had the same amount of rounds as you, so on round 1 you face against other people playing their own round 1. This makes it so if you are on round 1, you don't face against someone who has already played 9 rounds, because they would have had so many chances to buy and upgrade their heroes while you're only on round 1.
You fail and have to start over again when you either reach 9 wins, or if you have 3 losses, whichever comes first. Of course it's very hard to get 9 wins, as you progressively face tougher and tougher opponents until the end. At the 9th round and later, you're basically playing against people who have survived for so long, and are close to winning too. So the competition gets really tough at the end, as only the best would have made it that far. For the early rounds, anything goes, everyone has a weak start, but with proper heroes, placement, and strategy, you can win.
I kept playing Honor Duel basically the whole day and got to rank 38 or so in my server, S567. They start a new server every few hours or so, when the previous one fills capacity. This means when you join the game, they put you in a new server playing with other new people who start at around the same time as you. Everyone has an even playing field. You can't even join earlier servers anymore where the more experienced players are. When you open the app, you can log in and choose a server, but it only basically shows your server and some newer and some older ones, but only up to a certain point, I can't scroll to say server 400 or something and choose it.
Anyway I think a server's capacity is maybe 10,000 players or so? Every time they reach it, they start up a new server. I know I'm in server 567, but when I checked the server list, there was already like server 573 or something. I've only been playing for a day. so they started many servers already in just that one day. This game came out in March or April, so it's only been a few months since the game's release, and there's already 567 servers at least. I just looked it up, it came out in March 27th 2024. So it's basically a brand new game.
This game is addicting. The game designers these days, when there is a major game in the app store, you know they programmed it with addiction and attention retention at its core. I got hooked on it and now I know its dangers. I will never install another game like this ever again. It's just too addicting.
I didn't have any water, so I couldn't really even cook any food, since I needed some water to boil some vegetables. I ate the last veggie patties I had, just by themselves, and I used some of the remaining water I had to make myself some PB&J using powdered peanut butter, or maybe I used it on some protein powder. Anyway, that was basically all I ate that day. I was so hooked on the game, that I didn't even eat for most of the day.
Yeah, I could have gone out to the grocery store or a vegan restaurant or something, but I hadn't showered after being in that chlorine pool, and I also didn't have that many options of clothes I could've used, since I needed to laundry them. So I just didn't feel comfortable going out. I couldn't clean the kitchen or wash the dishes without any water, so I just left the place a mess. I could have used my saved up water for it, but I didn't feel like it either. I just left the sink as is, with unwashed dishes in it.
I kept playing the game and it was so addicting. I didn't uninstall it until today. I stayed up very late last night, until around 2 AM or so, just playing the game. Even though I was sleepy and tired, I still kept playing. It was that addicting. The entire day literally went by and I was still playing it. I didn't check off anything from my dailies, except for my brain training, and I didn't even do the math ones. I was consumed by this addicting game.
I got to the top 40 in Honor Hall for my server. I know it means nothing in the overall picture of things, but I thought that was nice. So a few years ago I got to the rank 1300s or so? Maybe top 3000 or so? In the entire game of Mobile Legends for the achievements leaderboard. Out of everyone in the entire world, millions of players. That was a feat I was able to accomplish because I got 30 kills and 0 deaths in one game. I think I got more than that, but getting 30 kills and 0 deaths is an incredible feat less than 0.1% of people have done, or something like that, I'm making up this stat. I got that within my first 3 days of playing that game, since I only played that game for 3 days, and I was also fasting during that time.
I just imagine all of the "random" people in the top 800 or so for any game. Especially for a game as massive as AFK Journey or Mobile Legends, both have millions of players. Being in the top 0.1% of players is an incredible feat. But, overall, it meas nothing to anyone outside that game community. Heck, if you're rank 865, I'm just pulling out a random number, and there's someone rank 12983, another random number, would that person even respect you? Would they bow down to your rank 865ness? Or would they just not care at all? And, in a player base of millions, ranking in the top 20,000 is a pretty big deal. You are one of the best players ever, in the world, at those rankings. Yet, at the same time it's basically like you don't matter at all.
Rank 865, even though it is impressive, extremely difficult to get, you are just another random nobody to anyone not playing that game. You're also a random nobody to everyone playing that game. People really only mainly remember the top 10 or so players of a game, if that. If you are not in the top 3 ,you are basically a nobody. Being rank 16 for example, is extremely impressive. You are one of the top 0.0000001% ever, your existence is that you are supreme, and yet, you basically don't matter at all when compared to the praise and attention the top 3 get.
Getting into the NFL is extremely hard. You are one of the elite if you get in, one of the best of all time, period. Yet, you don't even matter in terms of fame unless you're in the top 10 or so best players. There's 32 teams with 53 members total, that means there's 1696 total NFL players at any given time. How many people can even name 50 players in a season? Or even 10 players? I don't even think I can name 1 person this season. So it doesn't even matter if you are in the top 0.0001%, you have to be in the top 0.00000000000000001% to really stand out.
For AFK Jouney, whoever is the best depends on your server. There's a different ranking per server. I think, obviously, the best of the best will be in server 1. But anyway, outside of your server, no other players matter. It also doesn't really even matter if you are rank 1 in your own server. Who cares? I played on server 567, but I can't name who the rank 1 player is, nor 2, nor 3. I don't even know how to check, and it's good I couldn't figure out how to check, or my competitive self may have come out. I wanted to check the overall rankings for the players in my server, and even though I tried looking for it, I couldn't find it anywhere.
So I got to rank 38 or so in the Honor Duel leader boards. I think my peak was 33. Anyway. Yeah, I was one of the top players here. Yet does it even matter? I drove to Fresh Mart today, and in the car at the stoplight, I was thinking about the hypothetical situation while I was surronded by cars, in which I thought of outlandish ideas, and one of them was "do these people even know I'm in the top rank 40 for my server in AFK Journey in the Honor Duel leader boards?" Then I imagined applying that to, say, the top 38th ranked tennis player in the world, or maybe the top 38th ranked chess player in the world, and no one would care either.
To be rank 38 in chess or tennis means you are basically a phenom, a legend, a legendary legend, one of the best of all time ever. Yet you are ignored and are basically a nobody compared to the top 3 players. No one knows who you are, despite literally being one of the best in the world of all time. Isn't that incredible?
Anyway, I spent today basically recovering from my addictions. I also took advantage of the water coming back on, and I cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen, and I swept. I did one set of my exercises.
I'm very sleepy now or I would keep going. I enjoyed this experience of being addicted to this game. I quit it now but I learned a lot from playing it. I mainly learned to just never play these games ever again, ever. Also, that ranking thought experiment with being in the top 40 and not mattering, is also quite the profound idea and thought. Imagine being rank 38, being a legend, a phenom, and no one cares. No one cares.
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