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by The Happiness Engine 07/24/2011, 1:40pm PDT |
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Tarn consumed “maybe one glass” of water in the last three months, hydrating with soft drinks instead. He took a celebratory swig of Dr. Pepper and rocked back and forth. Zach, who worked after graduation in an Amazon.com warehouse and as a stevedore, was “going through some stuff.” Zach, who alluded to past problems with alcohol (he no longer drinks), told me his marriage of two years had collapsed; neither brother wished to comment further. They watch crime procedurals at their parents’ house and follow a one-meal-a-day rule (most local restaurants are open for just a few hours after Tarn wakes up), which can mean Quiznos, a turkey sandwich from the supermarket or root-beer popsicles and handfuls of dry Crispix (Tarn is lactose intolerant).
Tarn has been single since graduate school, when he dated a Cisco systems administrator for a short time. I asked him whether he wanted children. “I don’t mind the idea of never having kids,” he said. “I want to stay focused on the game, and if I had kids, I’d wind up paying attention to them instead.”
He expressed similar ambivalence about finding a romantic partner. “If I were in the supermarket one day and someone came on really strong and it was a mutual thing, I’d probably get pushed along, but it’s not something I’m anticipating,” he said. His interest has dwindled. “It’s easier not to care about that stuff when you’re in your 30s.” Still, in the only moment I heard him speak with anything like bitterness, Tarn called Minecraft a “depressing distillation of our own stuff.” He paused, adding more magnanimously that the game “has its own things going for it.” The problem, he concluded, “isn’t with Minecraft so much as it’s with society.” |
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