• 16 Dec, 2025 *

I define entertainment as external stimulus consumed for pleasure, i.e., for the purpose of generating desirable emotions. Obvious examples include watching TV, scrolling on social media, and playing video games. These sources of entertainment are similar in nature. They offer near instantaneous emotions with little to no investment.

News is less obviously classified as entertainment but probably should be. Most convince themselves that they consume news to learn and stay informed. They forget that news outlets make their money from advertisers, not subscribers. The business of an advertisement-based news outlet is not and cannot be the production and distribution of knowledge. Rather, it is marketing on behalf of its sponsors. News is just the means to attracting people’s attention, for which the most effective strategy is, of course, the provision of entertainment. Thus, news is an especially insidious source of entertainment because it presents itself as something else.

Literature is another source of entertainment and one that has gone somewhat out of fashion. It separates itself from the shallower sources of entertainment by demanding a larger investment on the part of the consumer. To derive pleasure from literature requires immersion and immersion takes time. Emotions are not evoked the instant one opens the book. They unfold slowly, gradually as one submerges into the world of the story. While the book ultimately is the source of the pleasure that comes from reading it, the conduit is an active and generative mind that translates words on a page into mental motion pictures. Thus, while it is still entertainment, it does not reduce the consumer to a passive receiver of stimulus. Instead, it provides the raw material that allows one to create and imagine. Surely, this is different.

Games, especially video games, are a curious source of entertainment. Some of them require a significant investment from the consumer to generate any amount of pleasure because the pleasure comes, ultimately, from a feeling of progress and mastery. Winning a game and getting better at it offers a concrete and highly distilled experience of capability and skill. To enjoy a video game - or a sport for that matter - one must first apply oneself to deliberate practice. Only in the context of a feeling of steady progress can one continue to derive pleasure from participating in the game.

E-sports differ from sports primarily by requiring no physical exertion and, thus, having a much weaker natural limit to how long one can enjoy it at a time. Sports tend to naturally offer a few hours of immersion at a time with the need for adequate rest between sessions. E-sports, on the other hand, you can play for effectively every waking hour of every day. This, I believe, is its danger.

I wonder, then, whether the mind needs any of this. Does entertainment offer any long-term value, or is it merely a momentary escape? Is the conclusion the same for all sources of entertainment or do they differ fundamentally in the value they have to offer?

To answer this in-depth would require an extensive analysis. For now, I will merely sketch an argument that could hold. My tentative conclusion is this: Entertainment has long-term value as fuel for the soul in proportion to the investment it requires. My contention, in other words, is that entertainment that requires active participation is distinct from the passive consumption of stimuli.

That your mind must itself generate the images that give you pleasure when reading a book means that it practices a transferrable skill - that of imagination. Any purposeful action presupposes the ability to imagine something that could be but is not. Reading literature offers a training ground for this ability. At the same time, it is a delightful experience. A win/win, it seems.

That you must develop skill to enjoy games or sports acts as a reminder of a fundamental condition of life: Capability is built and earned through deliberate effort. Most other endeavours follow the same principle on longer time scales. To build a productive career you must also develop skills. But a career, unlike a game, takes years or decades to unfold. You do not experience the benefits of your growth until far into the future. When playing a game, the feedback loop is compressed, and you get to experience almost immediately how deliberate practice generates skill and how skill is attractive. In the game, you get immediate pleasure from experiencing this skill. In a career, you get progression and long-term fulfilment.

Such benefits are hard to find in the realm of passive entertainment. Scrolling or watching TV or reading news do not add much to your life because they require very little of you. To the contrary, experiencing that pleasure can be obtained on demand, without effort short-circuits your perceived connection between effort and pleasure. The more pleasure you obtain passively, the less you are inclined to pursue it in an effortful way. But all sources of long-term fulfilment do require effort. By hampering your inclination towards effortful activity, you limit the scope of the goals you will set for yourself and achieve.

I conclude that the mind does indeed benefit from pleasure but only when it is earned. In such a case, it can be a source of motivation - a kind of fuel. It can be a concrete reminder of the abstract idea that effort is necessary and good. But the opposite happens when pleasure is obtained too easily. Then, it does little other than promote laziness - the idea that life can be easy and that desirable things can be obtained without working hard for them. A truly dangerous belief.