DRMacIver's Notebook
Types of enjoyment
Types of enjoyment
This post is inspired by a recent conversation with Amber.
I was explaining the idea of Type 2 FunI hate the term, although it does at least have the saving grace compared to many Type 1/2 distinctions that at least “Type 1” just means “the normal thing people mean by this word”. - things that are only fun in retrospect - and in reflection from the conversation I think I’ve decided that the concept is stupid.
The problem is quite straightforward: It implicitly conflates “fun” with “something you enjoyed and want to do again”, and those are obviously different things. People enjoy all sorts of strong emotions all the time, and it doesn’t have to be fun in order for them to do so. Fun is a very specific emotional response, and is only one among many that people enjoy. I couldn’t - and don’t want to - draw a specific boundary around what is and isn’t fun, but I do think for example that “fun” has a sort of lightheartedness, perhaps an element of exhilaration, to it that is not present in most forms of enjoyment.
One of Amber’s examples was weight lifting. Weight lifting can be fun, but you can also enjoy it in other ways - it can be satisfying, it can be energising without being fun, it can calm you down when you’re angry. There are loads of other positive effects.
A similar example for me is massage. Getting a massage is certainly not fun.I mean, ahem, depends on the type of massage. But the type of massage I routinely get certainly isn’t. A massage may or may not be pleasant - there’s certainly a nice fluffy relaxing sort of massage you can get that I’m sure some people enjoy a lot.It mostly makes me grumpy. At the moment I’m very into traditional Thai massage, which is a sort of pressure-massage-meets-assisted yoga. Quoth my most recent masseuse “…why do you like this? Nobody picks this one. People normally come to us for oil massage. Doesn’t it hurt?”. Yes, of course it hurts. The trick is not to mind. And I do enjoy getting a very heavy massage - Thai or otherwise. It hurts, but it in a very satisfying way.
I don’t think this is masochism, at least not exactly. It’s not the fact that it hurts that I’m enjoying, but there’s a very no-pain-no-gain feeling associated with it.
Another example is very frustrating games. I recently played (the first two parts) of Increasingly Cursed Wordle. A huge part of the enjoyment of this game is the incredibly angry noises you make when you figure out certain colours.Purple/Green results in especially entertaining diatribes. These are noises of genuine anger, or at least irritation, and that is part and parcel of the experiences of enjoyment.
Playing Upwords with my dad is similar. I’ve got a running joke that every game of Upwords is unusually bad. Honestly I’ve never seen such an awful board. Ugh, why do we play this game? And then we play it again.
In the moment none of these experiences are “fun”. They’re not fun in retrospect either. But they are satisfying, and that is the experience that we are trying to get out of them.
There are other ways to enjoy things than that too. For example, people read incredibly depressing novels, or watch sad films. They may end up sobbing at them! There might be some degree of satisfaction in that, but if so it’s a very different sort than that you’ll get from Increasingly Cursed Wordle or Upwords, which I think is different again from the satisfaction you get from a massage.I’m not sure about lifting weights. I think that’s different again. Maybe a more similar example to lifting weights for me is breath holding, which feels more like Slay the Spire or Upwords than it does like a massage. It’s an experience of catharsis perhaps.
“Interest” is another one. I once read “Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns”, and although I’m somewhat reluctant to use the word “enjoy” for it, I think it’s the right word.Except for the radium chapter, which left me wanting to hide under my desk and cry. The book was horrifying and fascinating and I could not put it down.
I think this generalises, and there are very few emotional experiences that people don’t enjoy in a safe environment. I tried to come up with counterexamples - e.g. disgust seemed like an obvious choice, but actually there are lots of ways people enjoy disgust.Only some of them sexual. e.g. a lot of people look at things that gross them out. Although oddly I think in that case they are having fun. For example some people love sharing timezone facts.