Video Games are NOT Addictive: Quit Anyway.

all right so right now we're going to talk about video game addiction [Music] and this is something that i think a lot of people my age 20 years old have struggled with i think a lot of people that are in college struggle with i have been playing games since i was a juvenile and throughout my adolescent years most of my teenage and adult life i love playing games recently i've been getting feelings of guilt and regret i'm starting to feel like i'm wasting my life and that i don't really have a purpose in life i kind of use games to escape that feeling but the more i play games the stronger those feelings get so i've decided for my own mental health and my own good that it's time to uninstall all of my games actually i've been clean for a few days now but i haven't officially removed all of my games on my computer so the temptation is still there it's time to make it official and actually do it this video was supposed to be more of a skit uh unfortunately it's actually a serious topic the reason why i quit video games uh two days ago so it's nothing to really show for itself i don't really have much documentation i've spent a total the total number of hours that i've spent since 2017 on video games was around 6 000 hours so it's a lot it's a lot of time reason number one is that it's just a waste of time right everyone knows this me personally myself i've probably got about 10 000 hours stacked up on league of legends and then about another [ __ ] probably 3 000 on every other game this isn't a problem if that time you're putting in is actually making something you know you're learning a proper life skill i know for 99 of us that is not the case all right i just two days ago i said hey i'm not really getting much out of this i'm just going to stop so ah the reason how i put this it's like i wasn't even a fan of the game that i was playing you know like with league of legends uh rocket league i'm not necessarily a fan of the game i just want to like achieve a rank so i can flex my friends which is superficial and it is not worth the time that i put into it i've reached diamond three in league i know that's pretty [ __ ] horrendous but still uh i mean it's top one percent of players and i'm pretty damn good at apex as well so yeah i don't i don't just play fun and what comes with that is that when i play with my mates and everything you know i always get angry when they do something wrong and so if it makes you angry then well obviously you shouldn't be playing because not only does that make you upset it makes the people you play with upset and influences the rest of your life so you get off angry after playing a game of league you might be angry to your family or your girlfriend or something like that you know just little things that leak into the rest of your life that could be avoided if you just quit all together ask yourself if you're playing if you're addicted to a video game and you're playing at least three hours a day would you keep playing that video game if that ranking system was not there if you answer no to that question you should probably quit gaming with esports you could be sitting here in this chair for probably like 10 hours a day just non-stop playing yeah that's really one of the reasons why i quit i'm quitting i'm i haven't quit you know what i'm saying it's been two days so that's one of the reasons why i'm quitting playing video games this is going to be hard then i thought because i'm not standing up from this chair okay okay let's just do this here we are oh this is going to be hard i fix legends on it [Music] or i actually feel bad for uninstalling all of my games because it took so much data to download [Music] stones this is much harder than i thought [Music] i was so quick no memorial no flowers just gone hours of my life a few minutes of uninstallations and self-pity later okay it's official now plus like i realized something this might sound like kind of stupid but um i don't know how to put this one sec okay so it was christmas right right now it's january 22nd my uh 23rd 24th right now is january 24th um for christmas made my girlfriend do like a gift exchange right but she was signaling to me like hey she was like i don't know what to do for you and i was like well what hobbies do i have like i thought of that in my head as i was like talking to her and i was like what hobbies i have and i was like i don't really have any hobbies besides playing video games and studying you know so there's nothing like what am i what's my girlfriend going to get me for christmas you know some game controller i don't want that it sounds lame i might take that out of the video the people i play with than barely my real friends anymore right so this is a bit personal for me but a lot of the people i play with i used to go to high school with and over time we kind of just substituted playing games instead of hanging out and whatnot right so from about 18 onwards we just kind of played games together instead of hung out i think i've only seen one of them for about an hour in the last three years i was thinking about what if i actually put those 6 000 hours into my career how much better would i be at my career you know what i'm saying so video games for me after six thousand hours of playing they don't really have a return it's not something physical that i can hold in my hand and i can show an employer and i can be like hey you know like there's nothing really i can you can really do so is it really the lifestyle you want to have is it really you know like what i feel proud of saying to my like friends that hey i like when i talk to my friends i don't really feel proud that i'm like hey i have three thousand hours in rock league [Applause] [Music] earlier today my girlfriend sent me a link about some kind of academic opportunity in taiwan it's no big deal wasn't that serious but i said to her with no hesitation right away look if this is good if there's some real opportunity to learn chinese to improve your chinese in taiwan i can pack up everything i'm doing we can move there the day after tomorrow it's not that i don't have other plans i do i have other ambitions i have other plans but i said to her look six months in taiwan one year in taiwan if you and me both really hit the books really study chinese really give it 110 a short period of time like that can change your life forever can change it for the better if you're motivated if you're really going to make the most of it there are certain things implicitly built into my willingness to move to taiwan and whatever it was 10 years ago to move to cambodia 20 years ago to move to los the crazy sudden relocations around the world i've engaged in from time to time there are certain implicit assumptions about my life should be made explicit here i do not own a dog i've never owned a car quite intentionally i have not built up any of the kind of attachments or obligations that would keep me pinned down to this place nobody thinks about walking the dog as an addiction right you're not addicted to pet ownership and yet the fact of the matter is it's inconceivable to you or it's inconceivable to most people to just pack up and go start new life in cambodia pack up and go start new life in taiwan even if there's some really positive opportunity whether it's an educational opportunity a business opportunity whatever it may be just because you own a dog or just because you own a video game console and the reality is your life revolves around walking that dog and plugging in and playing video games on that console these kinds of distractions that you never took on as a major commitment you never took on as a project you never thought of in terms of like goals and outcomes but in reality they are shaping the goals and outcomes in your life i've got a project right now that really distracts me that really consumes me frankly i stayed up till 30 minutes after midnight last night trying to finish a book chapter i'm writing two books at the same time one of them is going to be finished tomorrow or the day after tomorrow it's going to be going up on amazon lickety-split uh veganism colon the future of an illusion okay so i'm working hard against a completely self-imposed deadline there is no publisher right there is no deadline um i really thought about buying an airplane ticket to go to the ukraine in the civil war whatever you want to say the russian invasion starting to mount melissa sat here with me and i looked at the price of airplane tickets and i even got into you know looking at different books i could order from amazon teach yourself how to speak ukrainian in five days this kind of thing started to get into it you know you know why ultimately i decided right now i wouldn't make a trip to ukraine and yeah yeah yeah i don't have to get into the details you fly to poland then you travel over land you cross the land you'll be doing the same thing all the journalists are doing the journalists who work for cnn or bbc any major mainstream journals i'd be doing it but the difference being there's no paycheck in it for me right yeah i'm willing to do that but i sat here and i thought about it i looked at the price of the airplane ticket and you know what mattered more was that right now my top priority is writing that book i've got two books and i want to finish the manuscript before i move on to doing anything else i want to finish writing those books before i study chinese or before i study spanish or before i get a straight job where that job is working in a warehouse or at 7-11 or whatever it turns out to be no reason to think i've got a bright future that right now i have this priority which is finishing the composition of these two books and then self-publishing on amazon right you can criticize that decision you could say it's a stupid decision you could say it's a wrong decision you could say hey i would have been better off having a vacation in ukraine as the bombs come tumbling down but at least it's a decision i consciously made most people live lives in which their priorities are dictated by their habits not even addictions just habits whether that be a video game console or a habit as regular as walking the dog