There's nothing wrong with video games, there's something wrong with you.

a lot of people in American culture and
even worse in a British culture are trained to imagine that if something is subjective its immaterial unimportant and unreal and on the contrary a lot of the most serious challenges we have as individuals and on a larger social scale on a political scale a lot of the most serious challenges we have have everything to do with subjective values subjective reasoning subjective problems and subjective solutions can be all the more important and more intractable than objective ones in terms of the attitude we have towards the subjective realm I note that people write in to me all the time saying well you know diet and nutrition are subjective you know I mean there's a technical level on which it's true what is healthy or unhealthy for you subjectively is going to be different than it is for someone else so that's subjective so you know if you have diabetes if you're a diabetic what's healthy for you is not the same as a healthy diet for someone else AHA right but the whole sphere of Dietetics nutrition is still a science and the personal realm of responsibility and struggling with the consequences of the choices we make in health nutrition and diet you're not dismissing the importance of that argument you're not really diminishing how ineluctable the consequences or actions are in the realm of diet and attrition by saying well it's subjective and to use much more blunt language if you say to someone this is broccoli broccoli is healthy and they say back to you oh no no what's healthy and unhealthy is subjective you are within your rights to look at the broccoli look at that person and say what the is wrong with you like if you have some health condition equivalent to diabetes that means you can't eat broccoli that there must be something really really wrong with you no offense it's subjective subjective doesn't mean what people want to imagine means subjective doesn't mean you can ignore or dismiss the problem and really briefly I've mentioned this before I knew one woman who was allergic to any kind of fruit or vegetable that contained trace amounts of rubber and that was interesting to learn about so there were there were some fruits and vegetables that would be healthy for me to eat but that she could not eat because she had that food allergy all right let's get down to the real point of this video some people wrote in to me in response to the last video I did talking about video games and not just overcoming video game addiction not becoming a moderate player of video games but quitting altogether and quite a few people rhodium and and thank me for that video instead it changed their lives that came as a surprise to me I did not think it was my best video on the topic but hey sometimes it's not that so it's not your best video it's your worst video that makes the difference for people for whatever reason so someone named Dante wrote in and asked what do you think if a game is considered a sport is that still a waste of time a game like Starcraft is many ways like chess even more elaborate even more stimulating than the game of chess and there are tournaments for this video game is chess also a waste of time yes now I gave him a very simple very blunt answer I'm writing I just said yes they're a waste of time yes adults who play Starcraft should be ashamed themselves but in this video I'm gonna give you a little bit more of a nuanced and sophisticated answer the point here is not that video games are objectively bad it's not that video games are objectively bad for you and it's not that video games are objectively a waste of your time the question is blunt language if video games are not a waste of your time as an adult what the is wrong with you now just like the person who has a dietary allergy that changes what's healthy and unhealthy for them subjectively I've got to admit there are circumstances in which playing video games would not be a waste of your time or even for me would not be a waste of mine I was once bedridden ill in hospital not gonna tell the whole story and the medical details was boring but I had a sickness that was serious enough that I experienced you know wasting like I lost the muscle in Mike like my feet and toes so when I finally got up out of that hospital bed and walked around like you know your feet feel exhausted it's weird so I was really really seriously ill and whether it was the illness or the medicine I was on I really couldn't think clearly I couldn't read a book look what I could do in the bed was really limited only lasted for a number of days let's say it was five days or seven days but I had a period of time where I was in a hospital bed and my ability to read was limited I did struggle to read truth be told and you know my mom brought me a plastic model kit you know were you assemble pieces of plastic into a model oh yeah by the way with the illness I was also just passing out and falling asleep all the time anyway so bedridden ill in hospital when there was really nothing better to do and I didn't want to watch TV you know various reasons okay so I lay there in that hospital bed and I assembled this model kit and actually said to mommy know what that was that was not so bad and you know I think she brought me a second model kit after second and a third thanks mom now you might think hey this could be the beginning of a great hobby that I could have spent the rest of my life assembling little pieces of plastic and glue into a plastic model nope as soon as I got up out of that hospital bed I had something better to do as soon as I was no longer mentally disabled or physically disabled you know that's really what it is temporarily with that illness I was mentally and physically disabled there was something better for me to do as soon as I was able to do something better than assembling that model yet that hobby was a waste of my time whether or not it's a waste of my time is relative to me it's relative to Who I am now you know you may have a friend who comes back from the war in Afghanistan and it comes back from the war in Iraq and is in a hospital bed on painkillers you know with elaborate injuries and your friend in that hospital bed it may be that really all they can do is play video games you know they may say to you you know I've got this injury and my eyes can't focus well and I can't read and I'm falling asleep and I'm on this medication that's painkiller and right now when I am awake about all I can do is is play video games okay it's very sad I feel sorry for them and I I would not dispute okay you know man this is what you're capable of right now let's say your friend recovers let's say a couple months on your friend is more mentally alert more physically vital you might be in the position of saying your friend you know what it's been three months that you've been lying down in this hospital bed playing video games and you know what I think maybe you need some motivation to recognize the extent to which nail now you're wasting your time now it's become a habit now it's become a hobby now it's become something that's not just taking your mind off the physical agony or in it's become something that's really holding you back in terms of your rehabilitation and there's no doubt some people are so disabled that they never get up out of that hospital bed so to speak whether it's from an injury or from birth I have a half-brother who is so severely mentally that he has never said a word in any language she's never spoken a sentence in English his first language presumably he is extremely severely to say he's never had a job you know he's not able to go grocery shopping that's severe mental disability as far as I know he also doesn't play video games but if he did nobody would say that was a waste of his time okay the question of whether or not this is a waste of your time is relative to you it's relative to what kind of a person you are and who you aspire to be so if you don't aspire to be better than this if you don't aspire to be better than a mental eight-year-old someone who morally and intellectually and even aesthetically has nothing better to do than sit on the couch and play video games go through this repetitive action again and again okay if that's who you are you've got to recognize that you've got to say hey this doesn't seem like a waste of time to me because I myself am a person of such such low caliber of such little potential intellectually politically ethically creatively you could be painting a picture and playing a video game but if you really think the picture you could paint or the story you could write or the positive difference you could make in the world is not worth doing compared to sitting there and playing that video game like an eight-year-old that is not a judgment on the video game that's not a judgment on the objective quality of the video game that is an objective judgment on you on your worth as a person the problem is not the video game the problem is not the deck of cards the problem is not a little piece bunch of pieces of plastic in a box that can be assembled into a model in a model kit okay the problem is you but there's good news because the solution the solution is Ewell's