The completist mindset is an interesting one. On one hand, I have to certainly been there - have wanted to consume every last iota of content from a specific artists/writer/etc.
I find it much harder to do with books than my music though. Literature is so time consuming, and while there are indeed authors whose ouevres I've voraciously consumed, I often hit a point where I get burnt out. Or, maybe, my book conscience starts to ping me, reminding me that there are so many other books/Authors out there as well.
You're missing an important Completist: The one who wants to understand the artist better. My reading/listening to/watching everything produced by the artist, they think that they can have a better sense of the what, how, & why of the artist, even when he swings and misses, bunts, or hits a foul.
It's not an act of Love (unless you equate Love with knowledge), but of Groq.
I've been playing through Jonathan Blow's puzzle game The Witness, recommended to me by Brendan de Kenessey.
--minor spoiler alert--
This is a game where finding every last puzzle is almost infuriatingly hard and time-consuming, to the point where you have to wonder if it's trying to teach completists a lesson. The most notorious puzzle, which I can't bring myself to do, requires you to watch an hour-long video in its entirety in-game. There is no reward for doing this other than the sheer achievement of completion. And people still do it...
(Much of the game seems to have a similarly barbed message about screentime. You're alone in a beautiful island, and the core mechanic of the game is to look at little panels strewn about the world and solve little puzzles on them, during which process your character focuses on the panel and shuts out the rest of the world. As the game goes on, it starts to reward you for taking the *opposite* mindset, and ultimately you wonder if the game is trying to get you to approach it as an atelic meditative activity.)
The completist mindset is an interesting one. On one hand, I have to certainly been there - have wanted to consume every last iota of content from a specific artists/writer/etc.
I find it much harder to do with books than my music though. Literature is so time consuming, and while there are indeed authors whose ouevres I've voraciously consumed, I often hit a point where I get burnt out. Or, maybe, my book conscience starts to ping me, reminding me that there are so many other books/Authors out there as well.
Often I burn out because the other stuff never recreates the magic of the book I first fell in love with.
You're missing an important Completist: The one who wants to understand the artist better. My reading/listening to/watching everything produced by the artist, they think that they can have a better sense of the what, how, & why of the artist, even when he swings and misses, bunts, or hits a foul.
It's not an act of Love (unless you equate Love with knowledge), but of Groq.
That's a good point. Sometimes the desire to know or understand the artist comes from love, but I grant that that is not always true.
I've been playing through Jonathan Blow's puzzle game The Witness, recommended to me by Brendan de Kenessey.
--minor spoiler alert--
This is a game where finding every last puzzle is almost infuriatingly hard and time-consuming, to the point where you have to wonder if it's trying to teach completists a lesson. The most notorious puzzle, which I can't bring myself to do, requires you to watch an hour-long video in its entirety in-game. There is no reward for doing this other than the sheer achievement of completion. And people still do it...
(Much of the game seems to have a similarly barbed message about screentime. You're alone in a beautiful island, and the core mechanic of the game is to look at little panels strewn about the world and solve little puzzles on them, during which process your character focuses on the panel and shuts out the rest of the world. As the game goes on, it starts to reward you for taking the *opposite* mindset, and ultimately you wonder if the game is trying to get you to approach it as an atelic meditative activity.)