Nobody is Born Special, Quit Video Games, Be Special.

i think my hours in the game are up to
like i don't know 140. i've played 50 hours since the last video what are you at [Laughter] 265 for kim 265 hours 265 hours between march 20th and april 27th 265 hours in 38 days people don't take this problem seriously because they're not willing to admit to themselves that there really is something more meaningful that they could be doing with their time and that that really matters it matters for who they are as an individual and it matters for who we are as a society and yeah there is a strange element of gender here gender and kind of ageism like oh she's a young conventionally good-looking woman and therefore there's nothing more meaningful there's no higher level of responsibility she could be trying to live up to there's nothing more important she could be doing with her time nobody is born special nobody we're all born lazy and self-indulgent and dumb and if we keep on living a life that's lazy and self-indulgent we will remain dumb we're all born the type of person who would enjoy playing video games and video games are created to be children's entertainment to cater to that side of human nature you're looking at an image of a young woman who obviously as a child or as a teenager wanted to be a singer to some extent guess guess what she did with her life she's standing for election right now around age 20 she got involved with activism in flint michigan 23 started standing for election for state representative got involved in politics trying to make a positive difference in the world not everybody plays video games not everybody makes excuses for wasting their life playing video games and in case you think that carly hammond is some kind of unimpeachable exemplar of virtue no she's not no she's not if you put her name into youtube you're going to find that the main thing she's known for is a sex scandal that led to jordan sheridan being fired i completely despised jordan sheridan by the way i i think he should have been fired for many reasons but whatever carly hammond is not somebody i particularly sympathize with politically she's not somebody i regard as particularly intelligent or talented that's that's not my point nobody is born special we all grew up playing video games and if you didn't because you were raised in some kind of strange religious context or poverty-stricken context where you didn't have video games you grew up doing something equally dumb we all grew up with dreams of like being a singer or being a famous actor or being a model and if you didn't you grew up with dreams of being or doing something equally dumb and childish some of us grow up some of us put away childish things stop playing video games stop trying to be a rock star or stop trying to be a singer or a model and what we start doing is pursuing a more meaningful life for ourselves and others some of us i'm a big fan of the game like i said i played the wii one however long ago that was that was the the first one i played and it is one of two games that i can say i legitimately became obsessed with to the point where i was like shirking responsibilities to the point where i had to actually stop myself playing the game because it was just not it was not uh it was not a good habit to have you know it wasn't good for me i hope you are enjoying animal crossing if you do play and how many hours have i put into this that's a good question 210 hours or more i think it all boils down to this ways video games might be bad for you you could be doing other things instead with your money with your time with your relationships thoughts energy and your body that's pretty much it what you can do you can overdo everything in moderation i think one of the reasons why i got so good at mario so fast was because i was in a time of my life when i was actually uh had nothing else to do and i never went out and i didn't really have any friends anymore i didn't want to go out i didn't like where i was living so all i did all day every day for like a year was play mario nothing else is video game addiction nothing i have never once heard someone say that they've ruined their university education because they were spending too much time watching the news video game addiction exists on epidemic levels in our society and part of the problem is precisely that people are trained to be video game addicts by their own parents from early childhood forward nobody like encouraged me to watch the news and watching the news or listening to the news is something i can do while i'm washing dishes or while i'm lifting weights of the gym or while i'm walking to the grocery store and grocery shopping stop pretending that you can compare watching television to playing video games yes potentially people could waste as much time watching the news on tv as they spend playing video games but even so the news could not possibly be as meaningless as much of a sucking void in their lives as playing video games factually is saying you could have done something better with your time denies the actual possible benefits of video games which i'll talk about later also if you do anything read a book learn some crap build something draw something listen to music you will always could have done something else instead these excuses are never going to work qualitatively and they're never going to work quantitatively nothing else is comparable to playing video games you might think you have spent a hundred hours reading a book it might feel like you spent 100 hours reading a book your perception of time subjectively when you're engaged in hard work or even just the focused state of mind it takes to read in your native language it may feel like a lot of time is passing but challenge yourself to record how much time you actually spend reading a book how many hours it takes you'd be surprised this guy reports that he takes about 12 hours to read a 300 page book for you it may be more it may be less i guarantee you are not spending 100 hours per book this guy with the beard admits that he played the whole of legend of zelda breath of the wild that probably took him about 100 hours and you know what i doubt carly hammond has spent 265 hours on her campaign to get herself elected state representative for the 95th district if she actually tracked how many hours she put into it it may well be less time than this other chick put into playing this meaningless video game one of my main criticisms of political activism is that people tend not to take seriously how much time it wastes how liberally they're presuming to take up hours and hours of people's time so if you do anything read a book learn some crap build something draw something listen to music you will always could have done something else instead nothing else is really comparable to video games even if you were to take seriously his argument like well you could be spending the time reading a book you could be spending the time drawing a picture do you know anyone who spends 265 hours in a month drawing a picture 265 hours in a month reading a book and even if you did quantitatively know someone who was that devoted to the arts or to learning through reading books it still would not be comparable to video games qualitatively because that activity would not be this kind of meaningless black hole in your life and i can guarantee carly hammond's political career even if it ends in failure even if it's disappointing and heartbreaking in many ways it will not be the kind of meaningless hole in her life that playing video games factually objectively is for all of us right here right now [Music]