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Sun Mar 20th, 2016
 | 08:40 pm Am always ambivalent when my addiction solitaire webpage goes down. Beside the panic at having nothing to play, there's a relief that I can't waste more time on endless unsatisfactory games. That solitaire still seems to promise me enjoyment is amazing, given how futile it makes me feel; but then, so do chocolate and wine and cake, even when I know they don't deliver either. Thus: addiction.
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First it's the feeling of accomplishment when you beat the game, but then it's the feeling when you lose that if you don't keep on playing until you've won, you'll have wasted all the time you were playing when you lost (sunk costs fallacy), so you need to keep on playing, and then you want to win a second time to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke...
Addiction is definitely the word. That's how it was to start, but now that I win half my games, it's to see if I can win it in one deal, which one can't very often, and then one just plays to keep on playing. If the story about TS Eliot calling solitaire 'The nearest thing to being dead' isn't apocryphal, than I agree with Eliot. (Oh, and look at the source. Do I trust Ackroyd as far as I can throw a fit?) Although I tell myself that part of the reason I play is downtime for me. My children won't disturb Mama if she's having her 5 or 40 minutes of solitaire. But hubby despairs at me. My *excuse* is downtime, and brainfry after work, and and and. Mostly it's avoidance of everything else. |
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