(Note: Try not to read this post listening to Disturbed- Darkness. Take it from me man, super Anti-climatic)
As I dig through what posts I had stock-piled in my blog, I decided to do the unthinkable. Delete them. In reality, I just hand-wrote them in my journal so I can reflect on whether the content was valuable to anyone else other than myself. I’ve always been intrigued by my own social habits and those of people around me.
I’m very selfish in what I pen down and feel that sometimes I only engage in conversation online if there’s something to discuss that I really care about. For those unfortunate enough to witness my twitter timeline, the splurge of OG mini-clips from the Frankfurt Major may have more than subtly suggested what happens when I enter single-track mode.
You know, that thing that compels you to keep playing the same song over and over again as if the track’s going to disappear if you don’t. Guilty.
For the many blessed social connections I’m grateful to have, I also realize that the digital often isolated work mode that most in esports live by is a pretty worthwhile issue to think on. I’ve met many people in the space who often, soon after getting to know me, confess their loneliness. All along I would think, these people are so incredibly social.. how does that work?
Really got me thinking.. Lonely, esports, huge growing fan bases, high-stress environments where young people need to succeed on stage to be recognized. What’s up here?
In reviewing my own social habits, I took the time over the last 2 months to dig deep into the burrows of the internet and learn more about what smart-sciencey (word?) people have to say about social interactions. I stumbled across some truly insightful academic research:
At Franklin and Marshall College, Psychologist Megan Knowles and others actually found that people who are lonely are actually better at detecting social cues, reading expressions and being generally plugged into the social world than people who aren’t lonely.
The research paper’s abstract summarizes their findings by saying “lonely individuals may not need to acquire social skills to escape loneliness; instead, they must learn to cope with performance anxiety in interpersonal interactions.”
So the paper was actually called “Choking under Social Pressure” and compared Lonely people’s inability to perform in social environments to an athlete’s inability to perform on stage, which they say is actually a result of someone with high skill over-thinking something they’re very good at instead of just allowing yourself to perform.
I wanted to really focus on that bit of the study so no one would miss it. This quickly explained to me why self-confessed lonely people were excelling in social situations and with the extra nugget of wisdom that explained why big players were sometimes choking on stage. I didn’t like you in school but.. nice one, Science.
So, what am I drawing from this?
Twitch, Hitbox, Azubu, YouTube chat, Twitter, Facebook.. this is really the world esports lives in. And I’m somehow closer to now realizing why our community is so valued by those outside the gates. It’s the social connectivity that has bound those playing games for so long; the cycle of such rich shared experience. Winning or Losing, every one who’s played a game for long knows how that feels but it’s often so distinct to them. Esports has changed that a lot. We can now watch others win and lose at the highest level of competition. Then we can talk about it with others, anonymously and without any social anxiety.
Implications on Esports?
Esports may be one of the most social sporting experiences we’ve seen in a long time. It’s fuelled by the uninhibited conversations that are facilitated by online competition. Don’t forget this. You may think there are a lot of lonely people out there playing games but just remember how social they really are. Respect that, talk to people, value them. Any communication exchange that happens outside a medium that allows for social anonymity makes it all that harder to engage with lonely people who are actually socially incredible.
A lot of sports haven’t figured that out yet. Esports has naturally grown up this way.
The Take-away
To people out there: You might think you’re lonely for a multitude of reasons but let this research be some valuable insight for you: You have the most prized social skills out there. Don’t ever forget it.
To brand owners: Talk to some of the most social people out there more often and listen to what they have to say. So many esport social interactions are one-sided. Don’t be that dude.
Listen to the lonely but incredibly social.