Does anyone else find it weird that we spend all this time making runs in order to run a game in the shortest time possible? It's kinda weird when you think about it, but then again, you're kinda weird too.
Does anyone else find it weird that athletes train for dozens of hours a week in order to compete in the Olympics for the gold medal?
(I know comparing speedrunning to an Olympic athlete is an "LOL" comparison, but the spirit of competition is the same).
This is the nature of competitive hobbies - you train and practice and invest time all to achieve your end goal. I don't find anything weird about doing something I love while striving towards an end goal and competing with others, especially since that's how any competitive hobby goes. It always strikes me weird that people flag speedrunning as a waste of time or strange in that regard, but don't bat an eye at competitive sports. Yes, there is a difference between playing a video game and doing a sport, but both are done in the spirit of competition and with the intention of achieving an end goal.
I see nothing weird or ironic about that.
The irony is that you spend tens to hundreds to thousands of hours playing a game to, in essense, play it as little as possible and still win.
I guess that's not ironic to me since that's the point of competition.
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