Do YOU know what Hyperfocus means?

CONTENT WARNING: Discussion about mental disabilities

So, I never thought I’d live to see the day when I would dedicate a TON of time to one thing, and only one thing, but the one thing I focused on in the first few weeks of December has proven to me that this was more than just a mere obsession.

But I have to preface this by saying that this sensation brewed because of an intersection between my mental state, my special interests, and some spare time to kill. To be clear, I am a person with autism who LOVES video games. That’s not uncommon, right? However, I particularly like video games with some true punk vibes. So somewhere along the lines of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk or Hi-Fi Rush. ESPECIALLY if said punk games are about tearing down an oppressive system, whether it’s made-up or is straight-up modeled after capitalist systems. Bonus points if said game has a killer rock soundtrack with a side of hip-hop.

The World Ends With You is one such game that’s about turning an oppressive system on its head. I picked up a Legally Obtained™ copy of the original DS game, and despite how its gameplay systems have aged a little, I was having a BLAST! It’s an action RPG with fast-paced combat, mostly done through touchscreen inputs. The bottom-screen character combats enemies directly with superpowers called “psychs,” while the top screen has another character attacking enemies through a card-game format. It legit felt like the developers were making the most of the gimmicks that came with the Nintendo DS. Also, the story is about a shut-in teenager who learns how to grow out of his cynical individuality. TWEWY has a REALLY coming-of-age story about changing yourself and society for the better of everyone oppressed by it. Maybe someday I can make an in-depth write-up on this game and its sequel. No guarantees, though.

Speaking of which, this leads me to the game’s sequel, NEO: The World Ends With You. I got this game immediately after playing the first game in the series, but this time around, NEO adapts the intense action RPG combat onto a modern-day controller setup. Now you’re commanding a team of four characters who can use one psych each to fight enemies in a 3D arena. I haven’t finished playing the game yet, but I was having way more fun with this game than any other action RPG I’ve played thus far. Normally, I don’t care about RPGs unless they stray far enough from the basic formula to stand in a league of their own, so NEO fits the bill.

And this is where the hyperfocus kicks in.

I wasn’t much of a believer in this sensation until I picked up NEO. All it took was a game that hits my special interests in video game themes, a week off from work, and a potent dose of autistic dedication. I found myself spending hours, days on end playing this game. I regularly lost track of the time, I neglected to take a shower, and I barely left any spare time to work on other things like drawing or taking care of chores. I still ate snacks and meals when I was hungry, and did my best to stay hydrated throughout my gameplay sessions. But man, I have never been so fixated on a video game in my entire life! I once spent a day playing NEO for 9 hours straight, and I had to stop playing it as soon as I left my home for a holiday vacation. But as soon as I got back home, I played the game again for about two more days. I spent 17 hours straight playing the game until I beat it. The hyperfocus was THAT bad, dude. I’ve been in situations where I would play a singular video game all day, but they were mostly games that you could complete in one day if you wanted to, like Portal 2 or Spec Ops: The Line. NEO: The World Ends With You took me about 70 hours to beat. I get that a lot of RPGs are like that, but that’s insane to dedicate so much time to it.

Anyway, this got me thinking about what it means to be hyperfocused or hyperfixated on a particular thing, and how the internet at large has treated these terms. Now, I’m certain I’m not the only one who has a mental disability. I’m not the only autistic person on the internet. I’m sure people are sharing funny memes to help them cope with some otherwise intense and sometimes debilitating hyperfixations.

But despite everything, I can’t help but think that the original meanings of “hyperfocus” or “hyperfixate” have been diluted.

Like, these words have been passed around as memes for so long that people will outright say stuff like “this is now my most recent hyperfixation.” What do you mean? Did you hit a flow state where you can invest some of your time in a certain interest, or are you dedicating ALL your time to it? I don’t claim to be an expert in mental disabilities because I got a taste of what it’s like to be hyperfocused on a video game, but there should be a distinction between “hyperfixation” and “obsession,” right?

Words like these were likely passed around on the Internet until their original meaning was altered or completely lost. I don't think the words I'm concerned about have been ruined as much as AAVE terms, but there must be a particular kind of social media brainrot that is capable of redefining meanings for the worst. Both “hyperfixation” and “hyperfocus” are often used as medical terms to describe people with mental disabilities like ADHD, schizophrenia, and autism. You would think that people would take these terms seriously but in my experience, I don’t have the confidence to say that they are.

So why are people throwing around these terms like it’s nothing? If it’s anything like AAVE terms being tossed around daily on the internet, then people could be conflating “hyperfocus” with “obsession” out of ignorance. Most of the time, that’s all that it boils down to. You cannot always rely on social media sites to give you a reliable definition of a certain word, you have to look it up yourself first. Do not say a word without knowing what it means & expect to be taken seriously unless you use that word with intention with a firm understanding of its meaning, especially if its meaning is as charged as “hyperfocus,” “autistic,” or a slur (god forbid!).

Do I expect you to know what a strong word means the first time you say it? No, of course not. Nobody runs on perfect information, so learn what it means and move on. Do I expect you to know what a strong word means after you say it multiple times? Absolutely, and if you don’t know what it really means then you’re making a fool of yourself.

I wanted to write this little post to say that I don’t necessarily know how often people misuse words like “hyperfocus” or “hyperfixate,” I’ve just gotten a hunch that people may not know what they’re talking about. I even ran a poll on Tumblr to see if I’m not the only one who thinks that way and about half of the pollsters said they trust that some people understand what those words mean. This was followed by pollsters who think those word’s meanings got absolutely lost in the sauce, so I’m not alone in this at least.

On the bright side, those two words have not been utilized in advertising or from corporate entities as much as AAVE terms, because when that happens, it is so freaking over. It’ll be very hard to pry those terms from corporate marketers. This means that it is up to us, as average everyday people, to know what we say and say what we mean. Being subjected to an actual hyperfixation opened my eyes to what this phenomenon can look like, and it got me thinking about what people online are saying about it.

So the moral of the story? Research the definitions of words and DO NOT play a video game for more than four hours straight.

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