The tricky thing is that there's less "real" stuff to be done. Take my silly passion for rocks/minerals as an example. Back in the day I would've happily made geological maps but my country has already been fully mapped in detail. Similarly the guy in OP's post can look up the bugs of his area online because they've already been documented.
Videogames can give us a sense of exploration and progress that is hard to find in real life these days.
My family would always say "why don't you do something with minerals?" And usually I say "well there's no job that is just admiring dioptase, and I really don't want to work for the enemy (oil companies)" lol