My thumb is clicking against the glass, a rhythmic, hollow sound that echoes the 44 other times I’ve tapped it in the last minute. I’m playing a deck-builder on my phone during my lunch break, the kind of game where the graphics are secondary to the math, and the math is secondary to the simple, lizard-brain satisfaction of seeing a number go up. Mike, who works three desks down and smells faintly of cold brew and professional desperation, leans over the low cubicle wall. I didn’t see him coming. I was too busy calculating the synergy between a ‘Cursed Blade’ and a ‘Health Potion.’
“
You should stream it. Get a Twitch going. You could make an easy $124 a week just letting people watch you play. Why waste the skill, man?
“
I didn’t have an answer for him then, other than a vague grunt and a half-hearted shrug. But his question has been vibrating in my skull for the last 4 days. It wasn’t just a suggestion; it was an indictment. In the modern lexicon, ‘wasted skill’ is any proficiency that doesn’t have an invoice attached to it. We have reached a point in our cultural evolution where the act of enjoying something for its own sake is viewed as a form of negligence-a failure to properly manage the portfolio of the self.
