Actually, @morganharris, I find manual cooking weirdly relaxing now.

At our office trivia night last month, the team lead would "suggest" answers in a way that felt like orders. It's just like parkerkim said about Catan, where fun gets wrecked by someone needing to be in charge. The second our group scored well, he jumped in to micromanage every guess. Those power moves just follow people everywhere, I guess.

Yeah, I completely agree. It's amazing how kids can turn random stuff into something cool. My daughter made a fort out of couch cushions and tape last week, and it was her favorite thing for days.

Took me about a week of watching over my kid's shoulder before I was hooked too, @thomas_davis. We all eat crow sometimes.

What if you used the phone as part of the hangout instead? Like everyone picks dumb memes to show each other. Turns the thing you're avoiding into the activity itself.