Quit Video Games. #QuitEverything
17 September 2017 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
I got a question on patreon about video
games why would people want my opinion on video games I'm pretty sure if you go to Google right now and type in opinion about video games I think they're at least five or six guys in the Internet already working in that Lane think on YouTube if you speak reporter opinions about video games I think you're gonna find a few people volunteering to fill this this void this niche in your life but I understand the question on patreon it was an intelligent question was asking for intelligent reasons and I have had a question from no less a voice on YouTube than vegan gains himself vegan gains wrote to me and couple months ago I think saying that I should re-evaluate my stance on video games he said look video games are not just Sonic the Hedgehog anymore whatever that means he said they're now an in-depth you know plot driven narrative lee complex art form like cinema and that therefore I should change what I've said with them and I wrote back you know without giving any particularly deep thought to it and said you know if I knew someone who spent 40 hours a month watching cinema I'd say you have a you of a serious problem I said I don't you know I don't have a different bar for cinema than I do for video games and you know 40 hours a month that's not that much time to spend plenty of them sorry in terms of what's what's normal today a lot of the the so-called waiting by the high-priced release titles you know not cheap idioms they'll say on the box how many hours of playtime they have and sometimes it's 40 hours and 50 hours and 80 hours and people on the internet will commonly boast they played the game through twice so you know it was a forty hour game that they played it for 80 hours I've seen to some of the union's actually have a clock maybe when you start up and quit for how many hours you spent playing the game in total so you know you know you've wasted a hundred hours of your life or something playing this game but no I wouldn't I wouldn't let a cinephile off easily I wouldn't let us in a stuff easily if okay this was actually comes back to the particular question I was asked on on page I mentioned it in one of my dating advice videos in passing I was like look unless you're someone who works inside the video game industry yourself blah blah blah and the patreon supporter was interested in challenging than saying hey wait how is it really different if you're an industry so if you make video games instead of just if you produce them instead of just consuming them right now and I would say the same about cinema if I knew someone who was watching a hundred and twenty hours of movies a week well if that's your profession if that's your career for 30 hours a month anyway if someone's really devoting a lot of time to just watching cinema back-to-back you know what I mean watching one film after another well if that is your career if that's the meaning of life you if that's how you make the world a better place is by making your own films or playing some role in the film is for me or a film editor or something okay you know maybe it's so problematic maybe it's still a problem if you know someone who spends all their time doing tax returns maybe that's a bomb - you know I mean I'm not like saying oh just because it's your job now it's not ethical issue it's nothing we have to think about or even a strategic issue you know even a intellectual issue quality of life issue you know but for me yes there is a difference between being somewhat employed in the video game industry working in a creative capacity creating video games again maybe your way of making the world a better place however small or over large you may be an artist in the beauty ministry or a programmer or someone or a musician I know they they employ all those people sure to me that is different in exactly the same way that being a filmmaker is different from merely being a film a film viewer sure and I think this links to something else was discussed in patreon it comes up all the time the conclusion to my 30 minute video about Chiang Mai Thailand which is just posted or reposted a couple days ago in just the last couple of minutes I say look these young people in Chiang Mai Thailand who think they're young and hip and on permanent vacation some of them not all of them but many of them look down their noses at the old people who are there who are retired and I say at the end of that video I challenge them I say well look if you're in your 20s and you're already retired why do you think you're then are better than someone who maybe worked for 40 years of their life and is now retired me you're both there on permanent vacation worth wasting your lives if it mean this old person who's retired there maybe they at least had one stage of their lives where they were really motivated to make the world a better place where they were really motivated to accomplish something when they had some ambition deep or shallow great or small you know what I mean why don't you have that ambition now when you're in your 20s why are you on vacation and you know you can ask that about people who are you know wasting their time in Chiang Mai Thailand but you can also ask it about young men who are sitting on the couch playing video games for hundreds of hours per year I think that's an important question worth asking and yes apropos vegan gains this question I would ask exactly the same question of a young man who's spending hundreds of hours watching movies instead of video games there's no difference for me there or hundreds of hours playing billiards playing pool playing snooker it's the same problem and I'd mentioned as a civilization before video games were ever invented we did have the same problems with addiction to a stack of playing cards you know I did that research on the massacre mass murder out on the eastern part of the border between Russia and China and Japan fascinating essay by the way Nicolay Visconti murder massacre you know in the age of that book it mentions that the man in the village during winter because well during which would they be snowed in and they would they be snowed in and they'd gamble for three days straight you know with who late put logs on the fire and they'd play poker until you know till the snow had cleared or whatever bestowed in gambling seminars so I mean this element of human nature has always existed it doesn't just rely on technology but again from my perspective yeah I'm gonna judge I'm gonna judge you whether you're my own son or my own daughter or my own brother or whatever yes if you're spending hundreds of hours whether it's playing video games or playing card games playing snooker or billiards or watching movies watching sports sure absolutely watching sports if you watch two football games in one day it's most of your day it eats up most of it and that's and it's most of your human potential it's most of your potentials being whether you want to assess the potential through curiosity through learning something new or through ambition trying to make the world a better place trying to do something anything you know I think that's a question you know the seriousness of which you may fightin some people we're just talking about this a lot of people at our generation in our culture they don't want to have any friends around who judge them they don't want to have a friend who's gonna tell them man you're really slipping up you're playing video games for hundreds of hours or if it's not video games you're watching sports demands dude you have to really think about what you're doing with your life short term long term oh that's another aspect of it I think of a lot of people are in generation on some level they are ashamed even if it's just that they're ashamed that they're squandering their own potential like they don't regard video games as inherently shameful and I would agree with that that I don't regard a deck of cards as inherently shameful if you owned a deck of cards I don't like you know the devil the deck of cards is not shameful it's spending hundreds of hours playing cards or losing hundreds of dollars you know wasting thousands of dollars can't sure that's another another issue but just talking about time energy but I think a lot of people in our generation they have a sense of squandering their human potential what they could be accomplishing in so many fields and again including just curiosity just you know I say this is my girlfriend you know we're out walking and I'm thinking you know there's this book I was meaning to read a couple years ago and haven't gotten around to reading it I should look up and go just stuff and you know that kind of curiosity can lead to an inform and enrich your other ambitions like and it can enrich your relation with your girlfriend and it could make you a better person or maybe you get that book and you decided as a piece of crap you throw out the garbage in some other books some other interest some other language something else you you do with your time but yeah I think part of the fragility of people our age you only stay with a click of friends they made in high school and they really stay closed off it's because a lot of what they're doing with their time loke they're they're ashamed of and they're ashamed on and it does cut deep it's all the way deep because you're not just changeable you with your time you're ashamed of you know who you are who you're going to become who you are in the future and some residual sense of who you could have been
games why would people want my opinion on video games I'm pretty sure if you go to Google right now and type in opinion about video games I think they're at least five or six guys in the Internet already working in that Lane think on YouTube if you speak reporter opinions about video games I think you're gonna find a few people volunteering to fill this this void this niche in your life but I understand the question on patreon it was an intelligent question was asking for intelligent reasons and I have had a question from no less a voice on YouTube than vegan gains himself vegan gains wrote to me and couple months ago I think saying that I should re-evaluate my stance on video games he said look video games are not just Sonic the Hedgehog anymore whatever that means he said they're now an in-depth you know plot driven narrative lee complex art form like cinema and that therefore I should change what I've said with them and I wrote back you know without giving any particularly deep thought to it and said you know if I knew someone who spent 40 hours a month watching cinema I'd say you have a you of a serious problem I said I don't you know I don't have a different bar for cinema than I do for video games and you know 40 hours a month that's not that much time to spend plenty of them sorry in terms of what's what's normal today a lot of the the so-called waiting by the high-priced release titles you know not cheap idioms they'll say on the box how many hours of playtime they have and sometimes it's 40 hours and 50 hours and 80 hours and people on the internet will commonly boast they played the game through twice so you know it was a forty hour game that they played it for 80 hours I've seen to some of the union's actually have a clock maybe when you start up and quit for how many hours you spent playing the game in total so you know you know you've wasted a hundred hours of your life or something playing this game but no I wouldn't I wouldn't let a cinephile off easily I wouldn't let us in a stuff easily if okay this was actually comes back to the particular question I was asked on on page I mentioned it in one of my dating advice videos in passing I was like look unless you're someone who works inside the video game industry yourself blah blah blah and the patreon supporter was interested in challenging than saying hey wait how is it really different if you're an industry so if you make video games instead of just if you produce them instead of just consuming them right now and I would say the same about cinema if I knew someone who was watching a hundred and twenty hours of movies a week well if that's your profession if that's your career for 30 hours a month anyway if someone's really devoting a lot of time to just watching cinema back-to-back you know what I mean watching one film after another well if that is your career if that's the meaning of life you if that's how you make the world a better place is by making your own films or playing some role in the film is for me or a film editor or something okay you know maybe it's so problematic maybe it's still a problem if you know someone who spends all their time doing tax returns maybe that's a bomb - you know I mean I'm not like saying oh just because it's your job now it's not ethical issue it's nothing we have to think about or even a strategic issue you know even a intellectual issue quality of life issue you know but for me yes there is a difference between being somewhat employed in the video game industry working in a creative capacity creating video games again maybe your way of making the world a better place however small or over large you may be an artist in the beauty ministry or a programmer or someone or a musician I know they they employ all those people sure to me that is different in exactly the same way that being a filmmaker is different from merely being a film a film viewer sure and I think this links to something else was discussed in patreon it comes up all the time the conclusion to my 30 minute video about Chiang Mai Thailand which is just posted or reposted a couple days ago in just the last couple of minutes I say look these young people in Chiang Mai Thailand who think they're young and hip and on permanent vacation some of them not all of them but many of them look down their noses at the old people who are there who are retired and I say at the end of that video I challenge them I say well look if you're in your 20s and you're already retired why do you think you're then are better than someone who maybe worked for 40 years of their life and is now retired me you're both there on permanent vacation worth wasting your lives if it mean this old person who's retired there maybe they at least had one stage of their lives where they were really motivated to make the world a better place where they were really motivated to accomplish something when they had some ambition deep or shallow great or small you know what I mean why don't you have that ambition now when you're in your 20s why are you on vacation and you know you can ask that about people who are you know wasting their time in Chiang Mai Thailand but you can also ask it about young men who are sitting on the couch playing video games for hundreds of hours per year I think that's an important question worth asking and yes apropos vegan gains this question I would ask exactly the same question of a young man who's spending hundreds of hours watching movies instead of video games there's no difference for me there or hundreds of hours playing billiards playing pool playing snooker it's the same problem and I'd mentioned as a civilization before video games were ever invented we did have the same problems with addiction to a stack of playing cards you know I did that research on the massacre mass murder out on the eastern part of the border between Russia and China and Japan fascinating essay by the way Nicolay Visconti murder massacre you know in the age of that book it mentions that the man in the village during winter because well during which would they be snowed in and they would they be snowed in and they'd gamble for three days straight you know with who late put logs on the fire and they'd play poker until you know till the snow had cleared or whatever bestowed in gambling seminars so I mean this element of human nature has always existed it doesn't just rely on technology but again from my perspective yeah I'm gonna judge I'm gonna judge you whether you're my own son or my own daughter or my own brother or whatever yes if you're spending hundreds of hours whether it's playing video games or playing card games playing snooker or billiards or watching movies watching sports sure absolutely watching sports if you watch two football games in one day it's most of your day it eats up most of it and that's and it's most of your human potential it's most of your potentials being whether you want to assess the potential through curiosity through learning something new or through ambition trying to make the world a better place trying to do something anything you know I think that's a question you know the seriousness of which you may fightin some people we're just talking about this a lot of people at our generation in our culture they don't want to have any friends around who judge them they don't want to have a friend who's gonna tell them man you're really slipping up you're playing video games for hundreds of hours or if it's not video games you're watching sports demands dude you have to really think about what you're doing with your life short term long term oh that's another aspect of it I think of a lot of people are in generation on some level they are ashamed even if it's just that they're ashamed that they're squandering their own potential like they don't regard video games as inherently shameful and I would agree with that that I don't regard a deck of cards as inherently shameful if you owned a deck of cards I don't like you know the devil the deck of cards is not shameful it's spending hundreds of hours playing cards or losing hundreds of dollars you know wasting thousands of dollars can't sure that's another another issue but just talking about time energy but I think a lot of people in our generation they have a sense of squandering their human potential what they could be accomplishing in so many fields and again including just curiosity just you know I say this is my girlfriend you know we're out walking and I'm thinking you know there's this book I was meaning to read a couple years ago and haven't gotten around to reading it I should look up and go just stuff and you know that kind of curiosity can lead to an inform and enrich your other ambitions like and it can enrich your relation with your girlfriend and it could make you a better person or maybe you get that book and you decided as a piece of crap you throw out the garbage in some other books some other interest some other language something else you you do with your time but yeah I think part of the fragility of people our age you only stay with a click of friends they made in high school and they really stay closed off it's because a lot of what they're doing with their time loke they're they're ashamed of and they're ashamed on and it does cut deep it's all the way deep because you're not just changeable you with your time you're ashamed of you know who you are who you're going to become who you are in the future and some residual sense of who you could have been