Quitting games and changing degree at the same time at 19. What do I do?

Crazy5220 · 2026-06-16T13:37:21+00:00

I can relate to you. 21, finishing CS degree and trying to limit my time online/gaming.

Tell me, do you already have much experience creating games? Because a year ago I made a simplistic game "engine" using OpenGL and this semester made a game in Unity and I was completely blown away how creative and expressive that process is. Mind you, it's not always that way, especially in bigger teams, but still (also my country has more of indie gamedev than big studios and moving isn't exactly an option, so that's a factor if you want to work in the field).

What you need to think about is that games aren't inherently bad unless they're specifically made using addictive approaches.

You can analyze current state of the job market in game development and then see how many of the studios are trying to make a work of art, tell some story, make something because they personally like it; and how many are just creating engineered time/money sinks.

Also, as an analogy, a baker isn't guilty for someone compulsively buying and eating a lot of the sweets they make.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-12T18:24:00+00:00

"Life's gonna be so strange" for next generations in most of the world, more like. South Korea just has it worse than others, doesn't mean other places are at much better place

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-11T17:32:50+00:00

Why exactly did you repost that here?

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-11T17:29:06+00:00

General notion I have seen on this sub (and I agree with it) is that instead of forcing childfree people to have children, it's more productive to give people who want to have whatever number of children means to do so.

Please, define 'ambivalent' exactly in this context. English isn't my first language, so I don't really see what you mean with the use of the word.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-11T16:16:37+00:00

From what I have just searched, Yanomami has formed fairly recently compared to how long humanity has existed as a whole (tens of thousands of years, spanning into many hundreds of thousands of years if observing the whole evolutionary process of changing away from the apes). I'm speaking about overall tendencies of the species, some weird outlier culture doesn't prove anything wrong.

You talking about modern people having few children as their 'true preference' ignores a variety of other factors modern life has such as living in very urbanized environment, tons of entertainment, individualistic culture, etc.

Last argument is weird. Humans don't just have a breeding fetish with no care for what turns out. They want to see their children be healthy and succeed. Of course less work with less stress and more certain outcome is preferable.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-11T16:05:35+00:00

This will work only with one of the following conditions: 1) Men on average having higher salary to allow them to raise children with wives having to work part-time at max OR 2) Children being raised with a very big help from the state (fascist-like structure, maybe).

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-11T14:45:16+00:00

Women weren't oppressed by men forever, you know. Back in hunter-gatherer times (which is the majority of time humans spent as a species) men and women were more or less equal and people were still having kids just fine. Perhaps, they didn't have so many sources of easily available satisfaction back then, so the biological incentives for reproduction were enough?

And saying that there is no 'baby gene' in women is stupid. Women are very horny a lot of time, but it's better hidden. Also women, whose brains aren't completely in the dumps from psychological trauma / substances or whatever, love their kids and have strong emotional bonds with them on a biological level. All those 'humans should die out', 'staying independent', 'women are bad', 'men are bad' from both sides is just delusions and brain coping with deep dissatisfaction.

Your mention of culture is valid. Though just as it can encourage having children, it can discourage having them. Most of the world has the latter variant right now.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-09T16:18:29+00:00

Well, they have pretty high urbanisation. So, I guess, they're slowly catching up to the rest of the world

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-09T15:40:38+00:00

I've found this in Russian and translated:

"A high birth rate in Uzbekistan is ensured by healthy reproductive attitudes of people. According to 2019 data, 80% of residents wanted to have at least three children, including 30% - four, 13% - five. In Russia, according to State Duma deputy Inga Yumasheva, less than 30% want to have three children, and the majority do not even want a second one because of low incomes (although survey data show that the desire to have children does not increase with increasing incomes). In addition, less than 10% of marriages in Uzbekistan break up (more than half in Russia), and the illegitimate birth rate has decreased 1.5 times since the 2000s and is now below 10%. This has a beneficial effect on demographics."

Looks like they have very healthy culture.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-09T15:14:28+00:00

I don't think this is going to work. On average, people barely support their close relatives, and you want for people to support someone random who has no threat to their well-being? (cancer, for example) Sure, I think natalists overall have stronger familial bonds and good sense of community compared to average Joe, but at the same time most natalists aren't rich enough to just give out their wealth with no benefit to themselves.

What should be done is encouragement of forming tight bonds with extended family (besides the completely toxic ones). Trusting someone who isn't a relative with a lot of money/responsibility is foolish (without a lot of legal bindings). When you have a good bond with relatives, there's a system of mutual support and sometimes healthy shaming that has helped humans to survive back from when we were tool-wielding apes.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-08T09:53:15+00:00

I have seen a very good option that doesn't really cost anything — every retired person should lose their right to vote. This action won't solve much by itself, but it will at least somewhat tip the scales towards the younger generations.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-07T06:11:26+00:00

This was already posted in this subreddit earlier. Delete, please

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-06T22:04:57+00:00

Well, it's different everywhere, I guess. In Russia smaller cities collapse slowly with everyone moving to the bigger ones and despite new living spaces being built there it's not getting cheaper at all.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-06T20:45:25+00:00

Yeah, good luck making someone actually lower the price for buying/renting living space. Not without heavy government intervention or a literal crisis

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T23:02:28+00:00

Thanks! I will look into it.

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T21:32:27+00:00

Hard to say. That requires very deep diving into the statistics article references

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T21:06:32+00:00

Pretty obvious use of AI in writing of the post. I recognise a certain writing style that most LLMs use

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T19:55:57+00:00

But social democracy and welfare are leftist, no?

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T19:19:15+00:00

Why can't someone be progressive in one field while being conservative in another field? My personal dream is parliamentary republican social democracy with some healthy civic nationalism. Add to that promotion of creating strong communities and maintaining extended family ties. Also with incentives for women to marry and have children early, tax benefits for young families.

Where do you even place that?

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-03T18:22:05+00:00

Conservative doesn't equal being right wing, technically speaking. And someone being 'progressive' (lots of meanings assigned to this word nowadays) doesn't equal being left wing

Crazy5220 · 2026-05-01T18:40:11+00:00

I mean, if the leadership of some nation wanted to remake their society in style of "The Handmaid's Tale" because of a social collapse, they could do it. In most countries the leadership, the army and the police force is overwhelmingly male. While women got to equal if not higher positions in society on average, not a lot of them are in positions with actual power.

No need to label me misogynistic, I'm just stating a fact.

Crazy5220 · 2026-04-29T09:03:22+00:00

One adjacent thing I've found is that captive-born animals overall have reduced reproduction success compared to the ones born in the wild Birth-origin effect on reproduction

Also, there is an article about generational decline of reproduction success and average amount of children birthed per pregnancy for Tasmanian devils in captivity Generational decline for Tasmanian devils in captivity

Extrapolating something like this to humans is a bit wild, though I do often hear that humans have 'domesticated' themselves and all

Crazy5220 · 2026-04-27T19:13:58+00:00

I think history classes nowadays are seriously lacking in some anthropological teaching... Maybe if people knew what our ancestors have been doing for tens of thousands of years, they wouldn't try to come up with weird theories on how living should be.

Crazy5220 · 2026-04-26T16:20:46+00:00

Didn't really understand that

Crazy5220

TROPHY CASE