Quit Video Games: A Second Childhood that Never Ends.

and I would straight up and look you in
the face and tell you that binge drinking probably has less of an impact in playing video games my name is well and I'm an ex gamer with 30 years of gaming experience and now I will tell you exactly what will happen if you follow the path of gaming the reason why video games are going to stop you from being successful is not the games itself because for the longest time I've thought to myself hey you know I can just play video games in the weekend or I can play it when the two hours when I get done with work no that's not how it works you can't play them at all at first you will not notice that anything is wrong because you're being provided for by your family you have plenty of free time and furious possibilities and your interest concern mainly fun and entertainment and probably you think that this carefree life will last forever now you young gamers eight years old 12 years old 16 years old listen time will go by and it will go by fast I'm sure you've seen a person play World of Warcraft for 12 14 hours straight but then they can't sit down and learn something new that will improve their lives immensely and they'll keep playing World of Warcraft even when they know it's hurting their lives and actually making their lives worse how your brains works as it's always going to be trying to figure out problems that it believes are going to give it dopamine releases and it's gonna sit there and work on those problems when you're in the shower it's gonna sit there and work on those problems when you're going to bed it's gonna work on those problems when you're not even thinking about your problems and your subconscious have you ever done something for a hard time worked really really hard on it then you stop for two days and then you had a brilliant more creative strategy just come to you naturally your brain is always working and gnaw on the problems you present to it so if you're playing video games your brain doesn't have context doesn't realize you're sitting in front of a computer screen playing World of Warcraft it says ah the thing you're doing right here this is the most satisfying thing you could ever do in your life this is the best place we can get ones so we're gonna optimize for this how can we optimize to be better at this and maximize one and so what's gonna do if you've ever played World of Warcraft do you've ever played anybody game you're addicted to you know that when you put the controller down you're still thinking about it for about two to three hours and then throughout the week if you're at work it's still thinking about the back your head when you're in the shower you're thinking about mom how can I get that next epic item in uh molten core I can tell you this I tried to play Wow classic I'm sitting around constantly in the shower thinking about how to get my warlock shoulders from molten core to increase my base stats you see how the stur being that is because first off my brain is completely focused on problem-solving around a problem will bring nothing to my life when you set a specific time when you plan to stop playing video game and start doing something important for you and very often you can decide well I'll just finish this moment I just I will just complete this process this specific time passes by and at this moment you break your promise I'm sure you've probably beaten the video game which you invested months into and then it gives you nothing I remember when I beat breath of the wild I was riding around in the motorcycle to end after I don't know like 150 hours 200 hours invested and I'm like this is this is it and I turned off my switch and had nothing to show for it and so that's why you can't play video games it hijacks your subconscious it hijacks your thinking discipline is not a constant William it can grow when you keep your promises made to yourself or it becomes weaker every time you break your promises if you're going out and partying all time at least during the week you're only thinking about business you're not gonna be thinking about partying 24/7 if you like to eat cake all the time you'll eat cake and you're done with it if you like watching tons of TV at least when you turn the TV off you're probably not sitting around thinking about Family Guy 24/7 video games is one of the few things you could ever do that will be more engaging than anything you can do in life and simulates accomplishment simulates growth in a way that gives your brain massive ones and your brain can't see the context and it makes you think about it all the time initially I see myself being a kid who was full of bright dreams hopes and expectations who wanted to make good world but was not aware of the consequences and chose their own path the path of game don't make my mistakes don't let this virtual world deceive you don't waste your time on illusions and if for some reason you chose the wrong path get back on the right track with video games aside and get back on your way to freedom once upon a time I lived and worked in China i sat there and I had a conversation with a complete stranger a white Canadian who had himself been living and working in China for many years the experience of going from poverty in Canada to success and relative affluence in China effects the male ego in a peculiar way the effect of going from being small in Canada to being tall in China could affect the male ego in a peculiar way and a lot of these guys it's very difficult for them to find a girlfriend when they were in Canada and their sex lives changed a great deal once they arrived in China along with the success and all these other factors and this tends to seep into their ego and their worldview in a strange way and they end up even saying things to justify the mass murder of millions of people by the Chinese Communist Party there's no simple cause-and-effect relationship there but if you have lived and worked in China you will have encountered this again and again these white guys take on strangely pro-china attitudes because of the sense in which their own masculinity their own virility their own success everything they value about life has been given to them in some sense by Chinese society or even by I guess the government of China this guy said to me well he set out for me in Bree his rationalization as to why the murder of millions of people didn't quite particularly matter in this case way that he knows it should with me toes it does in a way he wouldn't make this excuse for any other government anywhere else of the world's but this one he wouldn't even make this accuse with the Government of Canada um and he knew that in saying this to me he knew he was saying it to another sophisticated expatriate with a scholarly character who had studied the history he knew he was saying to someone who could fight back someone who could talk about someone who could argue it out on the base of the facts but that's not how I replied that's not how I responded no I looked him straight in the eye and quite self-confident I said to him yes but the thing is so what and it had a huge impact and he sat there because he already knows the facts already he already knows not even on a deeper replace repressed level he knows he's lying he knows he's lying to himself he knows he's like me this is somehow a performance he's cultivated over years and that's all I had to say to him I mean I could even act out how he reacted physically he looked at me he looked down the floor his shoulders slumped he said yes yes that's right isn't it and there was silence and there was reconsideration and you know the conversation did go on but he really took a moment just to hold up all these rationalizations and excuses he had for mass murder and history the common history of communism in general as opposed to the challenge of so what it's a challenge coming for someone who could fight um fact by fact but someone who's not even going to write and we live in an era when people think they have friends because what they have is digital and and what they have is distraction blinking lights glowing screens keyboards and what they don't have is someone in their life who can sit down with them and hear their excuses and then say to them oh yeah it's pretty good excuse you got there but but tell me so tell me one thing so what it's not an experience you can ever have by email all right I have now confronted innumerable people over the Internet both about their video game habit and about their excuses for their rationalizations of their video game habit and what's impossible to do what's no matter how hard I try whether it's by email by discord conversation however they reach out to me over I reach out to them however we communicate and you know I'll just mention a lot of these people do send me abusive insulting hateful messages some of them uh post on the internet some of them have some instructive value some of them some entertaining but but the the insulting entertaining side of it put to one side what's so hard to do is just to get them to pause and consider seriously what they themselves have said to me you know what I don't even have to refute what you're saying here I just I just need to get you to listen to so I need to get you I need to get you to think through the implications of the excuses that you're giving me one of the most common responses has been for video game addicts or video game players to write back to me and say quote if you're opposed to playing video games you must just be totally opposed to the enjoyment of life stop really think about the implications of the fact that you made that leap of inference I've had people tell me like self-confident they're convinced this oh well if you're against playing video games you must be against going to the gym and lifting weights if you're against playing video games you must be against having sex with your girlfriend no no I've had people even stretch it and say let go well if you're against sitting at a keyboard and playing video games for six hours you must be against sitting and writing a novel or writing you heart of biography at a keyboard no and it's not this isn't really about the fact that no I'm not against writing a novel but my personal view on this is trivial question can you get someone to stop and pause and reflect how is it that you at your end if you're saying this mean how is it that you came to so totally subsume any possible enjoyment of life in this category called video games to such an extent that it's inconceivable to you that I would be specifically criticized in video games how is it possible that you would conflate this search to say well oh if you don't enjoy video games how can you possibly enjoy sex how can you enjoy exercise how can you enjoy creativity or anybody do you yourself not see the unbelievable red flag here about the role videogames have taken in your life I had one guy writing to me III think he was lying about this he wrote to me at some length and with passion and he was insulting me and he wrote to me saying that he only plays video games for ten hours a week I doubt that's true he claims he only plays video games for ten hours a week and he just said that he felt so insulted that I would tell him to give this up for a joyless existence he said a lot more about how insulted he was and what a terrible person I am today or to come out here and put forward this argument that you really should as an adult quicklime James but it's like what I try to she's asking can you just stop and hear the words that you have can you just stop and question if you only do this for ten hours a week but maybe it's 40 hours it could how is it that on this really deep level in your mind you think that this is the only joy in your life that if you quit this you would have a joyless existence can't you see how profoundly disturbing that is the assumptions you're working from and then your your total refusal to see the conclusion I'm driving at where you'll you'll imagine any possible argument to replace the very clear very argument very obvious argument that I really am presenting you'd rather believe that I'm against sex that I'm against any kind of enjoyment you'd rather generalize this an abstract on the point and invade the point you'd rather do anything then face up to the reality of what video games already are for you in your life and how in fact the arguments that you're presenting to me they only make it more clear that yes it is going to have a profound impact on you it is gonna have an impact on you in a way that breaking up with your girlfriend wouldn't if you have a girlfriend that quitting your job would it you know because you don't think of the ten hours a week you spend with your girlfriend that's both beat you in your life you don't think of the forty hours a week you spend at your job as the only joy in your life you actually think of these so-called ten hours a week you spend playing video games as the meaning the purpose the joy in your life and this same guy wrote to me at length he was so hurt he's so offended did I tell him with good intentions I want him to live a better life and want to live a more meaningful if he's so hurt by this argument against video games that he says I and anyone like me who would encourage you to instead do research and humanitarian that I'm an elitist that I'm arguing on behalf of an elitist agenda again like there's there's no way to have this meaningful interaction through a keyboard or through a screen just like that guy I met in China and challenging him on his excuses for mass murder genocide whatever II want to say that that challenge had to be face to face it had to be man-to-man if you like okay there's no way across the keyboard I can get someone to recognize just how deeply absurd it is that you're calling me an elitist because I'm saying to you hey if you're positively motivated if you do the work you can become a better person through learning through research and you can make the world a better place through humanitarian work through vaulting through all kinds of positive things you can do this you can aspire to do something better to be someone better alright and the fact that you conceive of that as elitist whereas you for your part supposedly represent the people the masses the poor are you are you putting me in the circle you're putting me in the role of opressing the poor like it's really really deeply perverse but the most perverse of our beliefs without exception are arguments and excuses that we adopted so early in life that we became committed to in our childhood such that there are neither irrational nor irrational they are pretty rational in any confrontation with them as adults any questioning of it is obviously going to bring on a kind of unbelief psychological anguish all my life I've been surrounded by people who made excuses for male circumcision for cutting off part of the skin of the penis that deprives you of about 60% of the nerve endings they would never make these excuses for cutting off part of your hand that deprives you of 60% of the turf endings in your hand they'd never make these excuses for removing 60% of the nerve endings in your eye or your ear no it's this one operation it's this one organ and of course it's linked to religion and history and it's 16 all these things and you know if there's this deep deep deep commitment it's deeper than the distinction between rational and irrational it's pretty rational don't want to question they don't want to believe there's any possibility that this is something bad that this is something that means they're broken that's exactly what it is there's good news about video games you can stop being broken today you can start being a better person tomorrow you can never get back the time that you've lost but at least I can say you haven't suffered any brain damage you haven't suffered a concussion you haven't lost the nerve endings in your hand or your ear or your eye or anywhere else but what you're gonna have to do is challenge yourself to reexamine these really deep assumptions about the meaning of your life and the motivation that leads you to choose reality over fantasy not just once not just when you wake up in the morning but moment to moment day after day after day to take responsibility instead of shirking responsibility to engage with and learn things even if they're painful and harrowing and disturbing you even if they're inconvenient for your ego to embrace those challenges and yes yes you all in plain English to be a real man which sometimes is humiliating and sometimes is disappointing and you can't just hit the reset button and there are no extra lives and right it's one thing to learn that you're no good at a particular video game because you can try another one and you can buy another one and it's another thing to learn that you're really just not very good at being an adult and it's the hardest thing of all to have the discipline not to allow yourself to retreat into a second childhood [Music]