i’m thinking specifically from the perspective of competitive gaming and esports but i think this should be applicable to any competition.

i think there is a general belief that competition is zero-sum: winners feel good for winning, losers feel bad for losing. on the face of it, it makes sense – everyone wants to win, right? why else would they compete against one another? and if everyone wants to win but not everyone can, then the joy of victory must inherently come at the cost of the loser’s pain.

i think in practice this can often be true, especially when playing in ranked matchmaking: valorant, counter strike, overwatch, etc, it’s easy to see this type of relationship between winning and losing. often the losers become very upset and winners gloat. but i don’t think that’s all there is to it, especially when you start playing a lot. often, the winners of a game can be every bit as angry, bitter, and toxic as the losers.

before getting into why losing isn’t an inherently bad thing, i want to look at the flipside of that dynamic: why doesn’t winning always make the winner feel good? surely winning – allegedly the sole purpose of playing – should provide some satisfaction, enough to alleviate most toxicity and negativity that comes with the tension of play, right? there’s a lot of nuance to competition but from my own experience, but i find that people who have a tenuous relationship with their own abilities tend to wrap their self-worth into their ability to play. winning doesn’t feel good because it’s the expected outcome if they’re good at the game. it’s hard to experience the euphoria of victory when it’s the expected outcome of every single game you play. afterall, if you’re good at the game you should be winning right? it’s not an exceptional case, it’s just a confirmation.

from the same perspective, what does this mean about losing? if winning is a confirmation of your ability to play the game, that means losing must mean that you’re not able to play the game. not only did you lose the game, your ability to play is not where it should be.

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why did the 1 hour smooth flight affect my pots worse than the three hour turbulent one