While other first-years were preoccupied with the Providence nightlife, accumulating DoorDash debt, and the freedom of early adulthood independence, my own freshman year obsession consisted of something much more exhilarating—the Google Snake game. Whether I was in class or merely getting ready for bed, the game would enter my mind quicker than McKenna Grace’s name in a casting studio.

It all started during my first-year seminar (apologies to my professor if she ever finds herself lost on the Internet reading this)—my first-ever class that exceeded an hour and a half (clocking in at 2.5). During lulls in conversation or administrative tasks, I eventually got tired of rampantly refreshing my email as a source of entertainment. Finally, instead of scrolling through the latest Today@Brown post while we reread the class syllabus, I started searching for browser games to fill the time.

I wanted something I could grow at, something that was mindless yet also laced with a hint of skill. I honestly can’t remember exactly how I came across the Snake game in the first place—I only remember it suddenly appearing in my life as if summoned with a purpose.

While I started off with measly single-digit scores—my snake repeatedly twisting itself into knots on my screen—I slowly gained a sixth sense of the up, down, right, and left arrow keys. My scores began to skyrocket, reaching numbers the Wuthering Heights box office could only dream of amassing. It got to the point where I was sending out my scores to friends and challenging them to beat me. When one of them ultimately did, I inevitably took it quite personally.

So, I went back to the drawing board. I honed my reflexes, developed fresh strategies, and set aside periods of time solely for the purpose of playing Snake (I found that having to simultaneously pay attention to both lecture and the game in class had been limiting my serpentine potential). After months of practice, I had become one with the game—I could immerse myself within its lime green grid and completely disregard all of my other surroundings. Towards the end of the year, I reached a high score of 176…which still seems unsatisfactory considering a score of 252 is required to fully beat the game.

Over the summer, my short attention span shifted towards Hulu shows and PopMart collectibles, and it felt as though Snake had merely become a distant mention in my spring browser history. But once I returned to campus (and long in-person lectures), it all came flooding back to me: the tension, the pride, the raging determination that the bright blue animated serpent could invoke. During the first couple weeks of the fall semester, I would return to the game every now and then for a brief respite in the middle of a particularly monotonous class. To those who have ever found themselves sitting behind me in a lecture hall while the game was full-screen on my computer, I hope you found it at least somewhat entertaining (or, at the very least, worthy of a Sidechat post).

My consistent run-ins with Snake ultimately got me thinking about the other mindless computer games that had caught my attention throughout the years. I thought back to my elementary school computer class and the days of rushing to open seats in the hopes of playing Fireboy and Watergirl with one of your classmates. While we would often go over various online safety modules or Google Drive tutorials during the first half of class, the latter half was taken up by our imaginations alone (that, and the confines of the computer’s content filters). 

A standout memory from this iconic digital era includes the expansive digital playground that was PrimaryGames. There was truly something there for everyone, and the site hosted enough Papa’s (food)eria games to be considered a food court. Kids would flock to games like Papa’s Pizzeria, Papa’s Sushiria, Papa’s Burgeria, Papa’s Cupcakeria, etc. (you get the pattern at this point), all for the exhilarating chance to role-play as a fast food chain employee. After making the meals in an assembly-line style process, players could witness an even more genuine glimpse into the industry—unsatisfied customers and their subsequently scathing reviews. It was an introductory course to late-stage capitalism for prepubescents, and the long working hours, understaffed environment, and often dilapidated restaurant setting were ironically the perfect online haven for me and my single-digit-aged peers. Other games, like MonkeyGoHappy and slither.io, also dominated the computer lab—and rightfully so. 

In middle school, a new mindless game made its infamous debut. In Among Us, players try to survive on a spaceship with a killer on the loose (a role randomly assigned to one of the players), making guesses at the murderer’s identity during the brief intermissions between rounds. While some would make educated guesses based on facts and data, others (much in the fashion of many U.S. politicians) would simply make claims to fuel their own agendas. 

The deception was infuriating, and the back-and-forth accusations were baffling. Yet for some reason, after a particularly frustrating in-school PSAT, I mistakenly decided to redownload the game as a means of de-stressing on the bus ride home. I don’t exactly remember the specifics, but I do remember crying after a strangely heated debate in the game’s chat room. As if the day couldn’t get any better, I also ended up missing the bus.

Yet besides this one-off experience with Among Us, my exploration of various browser games has been overall enjoyable. I think back on my time in the elementary school computer lab as a completely stress-free period of my life, one where my only worry was securing a seat next to one of my friends. 

Even now, I don’t see these games as a “waste of time” (even though a large amount of people do). In a world where our minds are constantly ravaged by anxieties and internal debates, sometimes doing something mindless isn't all that bad—sometimes a game with bright colors and zero stakes is all it takes to meet your daily serotonin quota. There’s often this pressure (especially at school) to always be doing something “worthwhile” or “productive,” and as a result, we tend to view any activity outside of these guidelines as somehow lesser. Typically, when we view something as mindless, we automatically view it as worthless. 

But that’s far from the truth. Mindless isn’t synonymous with pointless, and after years of packing my schedule to the brim with the hope of making my time “worthwhile,” I forgot that you don’t have to be productive all the time to be a productive person. The world has a weird way of hierarchically categorizing different leisure activities as better or worse, and mindless activities—like the aforementioned browser games—are typically placed at the bottom of that list. But in a world of nonstop activity, it’s important to allow ourselves the pleasure of mindless activities. Our brains and bodies need breaks and, whether that’s taking a walk or climbing to a new high score in Google’s Snake, that’s certainly a worthwhile use of time to me.