Comment by cco
2 days ago
Meh, meta is so boring and uninteresting to me personally. Knowing you're in Kenya because of the snorkel, that's just simple memorization. Pick up on geography, architecture, language, sun and street position; that's what I love.
It's clearly necessary to compete at the high level though.
I hear you, a lot of people feel the same way. You can always just play NMPZ if you want to limit the meta.
I still enjoy it because of the competitive aspect - you both have access to the same information, who put in the effort to remember and recall it better?
If it were only meta I would hate it too. But there's always a nice mix in the vast majority of rounds. And always a few rounds here and there that are so hard they'll humble even the very best!
How is stuff like geography, architecture, or language not memorization either?
It's a valid question.
My guess is the actual objection is the artificial feeling of the Google specific information. It cannot possibly be useful in any other context to know what the Street View car in Bermuda looked like when they did their coverage.
Whereas knowing about vegetation or architecture feels more generally useful. I think it's a valid point, but you're right that it is all down to memorization at some point.
Though some memorization is "vibes" where you don't specifically know how you know, but you just do. That only comes with repetition. I guess it feels more earned that way?
It's not only about usefulness. People play gg recreationally to fantasize about being in those places, so of course real world knowledge is where the fun is. Camera meta is a turn off.
I think it’s more productive to ask, “why would someone attribute a different value to learning about the geography, architecture, and language of a region vs. learning about the characteristics of the hardware and software one specific company used to take a picture of it?”
I think asking that question helps move past the surface question of how information was learned (memorization) to the core issue of which learning we value and why.