You can learn by wasting your time!

_{Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash}

I often say learning is everywhere. Or rather, that the opportunity to learn exists everywhere, in anything you come in contact with, there is the potential lesson, but what is truly important is whether you see it or not. The choice is entirely yours. For example, I told you that I spent most of last month on a sort of writing hiatus, which was a lot of fun and gave me time to recharge my batteries and come back fresh to the blank page. I did a lot of “time-wasting” in that month, binging YouTube videos, re-watching old TV shows and all that. But here's the thing. It wasn't time wasted, not to me, at least. Again, you can find new things even in apparent time wasters, it's just a question of how you look at things.
My younger brother is a big YouTube fan. He watches a lot of online gamers, playthroughs, fan-videos, theories and all that. And I, as any good, cultured adult used to think 'what a waste of time'. Humans, by definition, are terribly dual, you know? Terribly unfair. Because really, it's not fair to judge someone else for wasting their time when you yourself are doing things they might find questionable. But we do and I did.
Did.
One of the things I enjoy as I watch him grow up is that he occasionally wants to share such videos with me and I always agree, out of principle. And as I sat watching one such video, I realized all the potential that there is in these seemingly wasteful YouTube vids. Lately, we've been alternating a lot between two sister channels, Game Theorists and Film Theorists, both created and led by the same individual, MatPat.

Now, they are pretty much what they sound like. He makes videos where he exposes different theories about movies, TV series and games. And you might think how dull. A game is for playing, not for wasting hours to theorize about some imaginary character. And you would be wrong.

Because see, it's not wasted time. As I listened to MatPat expose his theories, I realized just how much effort the guy puts in them and how much valuable information is packed into just one such video. There is a lot of science involved, he studies all sorts of interesting things, anatomy. For example, there's this one video about a malnourished game character in which he theorizes how she might grow into a muscle-monster. I know, sounds absurd and might not hold your interest. But in that video, he explains how muscles grow, how bodybuilders get in shape and how the body works. He talks about different chemical substances and a lot of interesting details that stick with you. My brother explained something to me that he'd learned in this one video. A piece of information he wouldn't otherwise know. Information that could come in handy when he least expects it.
And there is so much more in this guy's videos. There's loads of history to be heard. He studies law extensively to put together unbreakable theories. It's amazing.

Now, we've gone through quite a few of his videos and I've seen most of the ones that interested me (in the sense that I knew the film or game in question), and guess what? There are still a lot of interesting videos to watch because it's not so much the subject itself that appeals, but the way in which he presents the information. You learn. Just by being exposed to information, you learn.

See, Ray Bradbury once encouraged young writers to stuff their heads – to read essays, fiction as well as non-fiction, reviews, newspapers, to watch documentaries. Anything.

"At the end of a thousand nights," so he sums it up, "Jesus God, you'll be full of stuff!"

And this is part of that, if you think about it. It's information and information is priceless. And what's particularly interesting to me is that we tend to view these activities of children today as a waste of time. Them kids with their technology...But that technology is teaching them stuff. There's a lot of harm in technology, I'm not saying, but there's a lot of potential too.