Life has no inherent meaning. It doesn’t need one. That doesn’t make it pointless either. These judgments are human constructs, not qualities of life itself.

But if someone needs a meaning in life:
The meaning of life is to give your life meaning.

Find it yourself. What feels important to you? What makes you unhappy? What makes you happy?

I tend to be on the empathetic side. I feel a lot of pain and desperation about the state of the world, and the way we humans treat one another so cruelly. That’s why I am trying to find my own way to contribute, so that life, for us and those who follow, becomes permanently better.

That’s the beauty. Given that there is no goal, you are able to define your own.

TBH, yeah, that’s what I consider the point of my life - amusing myself until death. Whatever I do will not matter in 100, 1000 or 1000000 years which is all just a blip in the scale of the universe. So basically, I’m just trying to have fun and help other people have fun. Of course I realize that I’m incredibly privileged to live a life where I don’t have to worry about too much and I can think about fun and not surviving. I experienced difficult periods in my life and the answer to this question was much, much harder back then.

Literally? There is no reason for life. Which scares people, so they develop superstition (theology) or ascribe it to emotions (happiness, suffering, etc). There is no reason, for life. The reason for life existing or how it came to be is certainly up for debate, but there is no why. We are alive, we are conscious. Eventually our bodies give out on us, and our life ends.

The answer is that there’s no one answer. Since people find it, since people make it, and some people don’t think it exists. I’m that last one, just killing time until sweet oblivion finally claims me.

Maybe the point is to find your own meaning of life.
Like my reason to continue may be different than yours (once found)

There’s so much to explore. Not just physical locations, but our own minds and each other’s too. Learning about the laws of the universe, history, and seeing what’s to come. Even pain is a thing to be experienced that the dead don’t get to.

Is all that meaningless? All of us contain our own universe within us. Sure, it would be nice to care about all the other people (if there are other people) and what impact I have on them. But if in the long run nothing I do matters to them, fuck it. I’m mainly concerned with what’s going on in here.

Happiness.

There is no point, no purpose, self replicating cells appeared and evolution led to where we are now.

you are the worst splinter cell agent i have ever seen OP

Optimistic Nihilism baby. Basically, if nothing we do matters in the long run, then live each day to be happy while helping to make others around you as comfortable as you can while we all take the ride.

https://youtu.be/MBRqu0YOH14

To explore this existence.

Being alive is the only time when you can influence something, and as such, when your actions mean something.

When you’re dead, it’s over. There could be an opportunity for you to make something better for others or for your own enjoyment - but now all chances are gone.

So, why letting go of this amazing ability?

Why live? What’s the meaning of life? What’s the purpose of life? I hope I don’t have to explain that people have been asking this question since we first were able to form words and start thinking. You’re going to get as many different opinions to answer this question as there are people to write a response. You could spend a lifetime studying philosophy and not find a definitive answer. And in the end you just have to decide for yourself which answer most speaks to you. Are you atheist, materialist, spiritual, philosophical? Take your pick.

Personally, I like Buddhist philosophy for these kinds of questions. And I suspect the Buddha would say that we are here because of craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and ignorance of our true nature and the true nature of reality. We live because we want to exist, we want to have experiences and feel the things that are available to us as living beings. Whether it’s food or sex or money or adventure or admiration or love we feel like getting the things we want will make us happy. The flip side of craving is aversion, where we feel like achieving separation from those things that are unpleasant will make us happy.

Volumes have been written about this and it’s impossible to summarize well in a single post. But if it speaks to you there’s a lot more to say about it.

Essentially I think you’re right, we are amusing ourselves. The point is that we seem to be built to do that - we come with a nice set of compulsions that give us happy feelings when we do certain things, and if those feelings are an illusion so what? They feel real.