The Gamers are Right: Why Middle Aged People Fail at "Forcing" them to Quit Video Games.

the purpose of this video is not to
criticize the teenagers and young men who are addicted to video games it's not i want to criticize the middle-aged adults who give them encouragement to do something more meaningful with their lives all right because I think we suck at it I think middle aged authority figures have so totally discredited themselves that I have to almost give credit to the video game addicts that they've made a sort of logically sound self-interested decision and just giving up on all this [ __ ] middle-aged people encourage them to do and going to live in isolation playing video games right the mentality of middle-aged adults is the same when they encourage young people to play video games and when they encourage them to you know go isolate themselves and do some other activity that they say is more meaningful right they the mentality of a typical parent in the 21st century not all parents but a typical parent really if you think about this with attachment it's likely to be most your parents most the time will have this mentality typical parent mentality is sit the kid down in front of the TV let him play video games because as long as the kids playing TV video games on in front of the TV the kid is occupied the kid is pacified the kid is not getting injured kids not getting into trouble the parents don't have to make a bunch of phone calls the parents don't have to drive you somewhere and pick you up afterwards in their car the parents don't have to pay for lessons the parents don't have to pay for tutors think think about it from a lazy parents perspective what's better that your kid sits on the floor playing video games or your kid wants to learn how to play the saxophone alright if your kid's gonna learn to play the saxophone cost the parents money and it also cost the parents time and energy and involvement right parent at least has to make some phone calls to some saxophone teacher you have to kind of meet the teacher to side which one's a good teacher maybe the kid take some saxophone lessons but then the kid doesn't like this teacher and the teachers on this kid find a different teacher you know get them set up this way encouraging your kid and being a with your kid if they're gonna learn saxophone is infinitely more work than just having your kid sit on the couch and play and here's the other more fundamental problem for these middle-aged people the way in which they discredit themselves the things they encourage children and young adults to do are just as meaningless as playing video games or they are even worse like oh okay so what's the problem with video games promo video games is johnny is sitting in isolation just doing kind of a repetitive manual skill you know for three hours here's what you should do Johnny you should quit playing video games and go sit in your room and practice playing the violin practice playing the piano practice playing the the saxophone you know will be more meaningful would be you sitting alone in your room in a state of total isolation practicing a repetitive manual skill right it's the same problem but it's even worse why well for one thing video games have a tiny amount of social interaction right I mean we know about this whether it's through YouTube or through discs or through voice chat or just by them going and talking to their friends at school okay playing a musical instrument is more isolating and play musical instrument requires hundreds of hours of repetitious practice okay but also the problem we were trying to solve here middle aged people the promo turn solved was trying to connect these video game addicts with a meaningful engagement with reality and the abstract world of memorizing different notes from sheet music and then performing them accurately and timing them accurately right the world of introducing a young person to the musical compositions of JS Bach or you know Beethoven or something that has no meaningful connection with reality it's just as artificial it's just as phony and just as fake as playing video games right playing football playing soccer middle-aged people do this with no humor they're not joking like oh gee playing video games is a waste of your time and it's meaningless and so on you should try football or soccer or baseball these are also games these also do not have a meaningful connection to reality these also are not about like taking responsibility to make the world a better place and they also involve hundreds of hours of practicing a manual skill in isolation my grandmother took me once ma'am I'm so glad I didn't get into this my grandmother took me once to learn to play tennis mind blowing this ever happened English did so she drove me was a long drive and she puts me in front of a concrete wall she gives me a tennis racket and she's okay so stand here and practice hitting the ball back and forth against this concrete wall but that that particular grandmother she was she was not a poor woman in case you guys are like imagining like some poverty-stricken I don't know urban ghetto with like this concrete wall tool but that that grandmother of my other grandmother worked in a factory but that grandmother she was a dentist she played tennis wow this is this is what you think raising a child is like this is how do you think you encourage a child have a more meaningful life and that was I was a little kid that I was still playing video games whoa gee standing here alone beating up a ball against the wall like this is worse than playing video games that you got to give the video game addicts credit they're kind of making a rational logical decision we're like everything they're being presented with all the options and opportunities to be presented with are even worse than video games and they're making this rational choice to isolate themselves in a simulated world that yes I would readily say it's better than watching football on TV it's better than playing football and whatever pathetic you know capacity you may be able to do so in your neighborhood it doesn't require the huge waste of time and money that's involved in trying to get yourself involved in a football or basketball or tennis league or something wherever you are I've known people who do all that stuff at their time whatever may yell like given a set of complete meaningless isolating anti-social options none of which have a meaningful connection to reality they're making the right choice by playing video games all right and the middle-aged people who are having interventions normally these middle-aged people themselves don't lead any kind of meaningful life they don't really have any moral superior they don't have any moral superiority to draw on right these middle-aged people themselves may spend their time drinking alcohol watching football going gambling in Las Vegas but you can't do even worse than video games if you if you play video games I'm glad you're not a gambling addict you know then your life will be completely ruined right these middle-aged people they have may have no ground to stand on in terms of Oscar but they presume moral superiority because playing video games is so despicable and all these alternatives they're actually even worse than playing video games and you know encouragement it's so easy to encourage people that will really waste their time and ruin their opportunities in life short term and long term and presented as the greatest thing just because it's convenient for you if you're the middle-aged authority figure giving them this encouragement right like oh yeah yeah you should you should totally um you should totally volunteer to help drug addicts oh like oh yeah you should go you should go you know help drug addicts give them free clothing and food down with this charity Oh what would you do that also would we go together no no I mean okay so now we're getting into something where there's some kind of meaningful connection to reality right so this is different now we're not talking about tennis we're not talking about watching football we're not talking about playing the harp you know playing the piano okay okay so this is a little bit different but now we get into a different set of problems also all right yeah for one thing if this was so meaningful you'd be willing to deal with me you'd have some experience doing it so and so forth but what do you think the impact is really gonna be on this younger person if they go and start handing out food to homeless people right like don't you think the impact is gonna be like wow the world outside my door is really hopeless really messed up I'm totally disempowered in relation to it there's no way I can help these drug addicts live a better life you know this is this you know you see the bleak stinking fetid hopelessness of what this is right a large percentage of them are gonna have this experience briefly and say hey you know what I'm gonna go back to my room and close the door and play video games right and again you know all these things bring within the question of whether it's the parent or whoever it is this middle aged authority figure you know are you gonna drive them there you're gonna pick them up afterwards there's a certain level of commitment engagement you know moving beyond encouragement with mere words where you know are you actually gonna enable them to do this pause supposedly positive thing in their lives and are you even gonna do some kind of research to question you know to what extent is this positive to what extent is this meaningful so I had someone write in to me this guy says he is himself a part of the speedrunning subculture of video games he's also part of the video game collecting and game history preservation subculture and he says that he spends a lot of time trying to talk to these guys these guys who are either videogame addicts or just spending a lot of time playing video games when we're trying to encourage them to lead a more meaningful life what do we mean by a moment in for life a life where they're interested in taking responsibility for the consequence their actions or life or they're trying to make the world a better place a life where they have some kind of compassionate engagement with reality I guess and you know he's asking me what would I do what would you do what could any of us do if you're if you're in this way if you're close to someone who's playing video games to learn at their time you know what I think the truth is what we need here is not compassion but detachment I always find it's very easy to broach these problems with people and he talks about also the difficulty of trying to raise this issue with someone where you don't just get a combative and defense response okay well what if you were the parent and you have a child would you want your own child playing video games for 40 hours per week and this is the this is the speedrunning subculture so some of these people are playing video games for 40 hours continuously like you know for two day is doing nothing this is a particular subculture then well let's just say it's 40 hours a week I mean if you have a child and you're trying to prepare that child to lead a meaningful life or to have a good job or what have you if you want to make the world a better place would you recommend that your own child do this for 40 hours a week that may work with some people where they take a step back and now that it now that it's suddenly not them justifying their own habit and their own enjoyment it's them justifying someone else's use their time there's a little bit of detachment there you know and you could also use this technique with reference to other historical figures whether they're alive now or or deceased you know let's say the person is complaining about Donald Trump you know I say you know you know what would make Donald Trump a lot better at these decisions would be if he played video games he was speed running mario 64 every week for 40 hours a week you know just imagine what a better place the world would be if our leaders were playing video games were speedrunning video games if that was their top forward that was it now again this is obviously joking around a bit that can be a way to get past it but so you know you know really think about it really think about whether or not the people who have real power real ability to change the world whether or not their time would be better spent playing video games than doing whatever is they do it again may not be a political leader it may be a research scientist new whatever and then try to invite people to consider themselves in that context okay well what do you think is the difference between you and Donald you probably think you're more intelligent than Donald Trump and you're probably correct we've all gotten to see just how limited the cognitive capacity of Donald Trump was over the last several years even if you support him politically it's gonna be very hard to judge who was more mentally limited george w bush or donald trump when this chapter of history is is over with okay doesn't matter if it's donald trump or some other political favor okay so I mean okay so look you're more gifted than Donald Trump let's just start from that assumption so you're someone whatever age you are doesn't matter if they're young or teenager or fully grown man whoever you speak to okay so you know you know you've got more potential than Donald Trump you know that when Donald Trump was in high school and university he's famously he's covered up his grades we all know he got bad grades we all know he's a dumb guy in various ways and all his life is struggle with that it's sad in this way we all know Donald Trump's a fraud and he wasn't any good at business and he lost a fortune and all these all these things have been exposed now on the public record about you know really what a kind of pathetic Emil Donald Trump has been isola okay okay so you you're brighter than Donald Trump you've got more potential Donald Trump but you know what Donald Trump's got going for him that you don't have Donald Trump is not a video game at it right Donald Trump does not play video games for forty hours a week and look what he's doing with this time again I admit Donald Trump may be a somewhat surreal example but you know if there's anyone they actually do appreciate outside of the video you know if there's anyone they look to us having led a remarkable life a life that's decisively changed the world that's doing something productive to make the world a better place here now you can say yeah and you know you know what would end that person's career you know what would change them totally was if they were playing video games for forty hours a week the way you are you know now okay neither one of these are perfect examples there are some people who will reply saying yes if they have a child they're going to encourage their own child to play video games for forty hours there are some people who by the way where they will not have that detachment there are some people who will come back saying oh yeah the world would be a better place if our political leaders or our research scientists would stop wasting their time doing them so-called meaningful things they're doing and we'll just play video games instead if only Donald Trump would play video games instead of starting a war with Iran there are some people who will just double down but even if my example is my example is inadequate or flawed or poor here what I'm trying to get at is that inviting someone to consider their own situation with detachment I think that's really the first step you have to take because what you're asking these people to do is to regard their own hobby with some degree of contempt without directly shaming them the shame is the main tool in our Arsenal here right to say hey you're wasting time you should be ashamed of yourself you're devoting yourself to this hobby that's meaningless and it's only making yourself a a worse person that's not preparing you deliberately okay so you know you can you can try using shame you know but obviously people who are deeply committed to this they're gonna resist feeling shame they're gonna refuse to feel shame they're gonna try to justify themselves or you might say before they're capable of feeling ashamed they have to be able to have that detachment where they regard their own situation they regard their own hobby as pathetic as bad as a waste of time gee this is bad for me it would be bad for Donald Trump if you were doing it would be bad for my own children or my own grandchildren in the future if they were doing what I was doing Wow when I don't just think about myself and what I want when I think about any given person when I think about what would be good for anyone or for everyone now I can recognize with some detachment this isn't good for me right and once you can take that step then you can start questioning what would be a more meaningful life all right and I have nothing but contempt for the middle-aged people who will tell you to sign up to do humanitarian work or will tell you to learn a new language like Chinese without any idea of what kind of sacrifice is involved there any idea what kind of cost this entails for the person who makes that commitment all right the a meaningful life cannot just be contrary to paper this way all right you've got to start with a lot of sorrow and a lot of yearning you're gonna have to start with days weeks months or even years of just feeling there must be a better life than this and I don't know what that is there must be something better on planet earth than playing mario 64 again and again and again until you get the world record for the greatest speedrun there must be something better and maybe nobody can tell you what that is you know when you talk about democracy and an revolution you know the role of revolution and politics there are some things in politics that you can be given and there are some things that you have to take for yourself all right sometimes the people of a country have to stand up and take democracy there's no way a king can give it to them there's no way a constitution can give it to them there's no way you know an intervention from the United Nations can give it to them so you know some things can never be given they can only be taken you know and maybe maybe the meaning of life with a lowercase M and a lowercase L may be what makes life meaningful for you is of this character where you have to irrigate it you have to be the one who demands it you have to be the one who first feels that you're lacking it you know feels a yearning for it and then gets uncomfortable and goes out to make it happen all right and none of this is gonna happen if you can't take that first step of gaining some detachment over what video games are in your life right if you can't get uncomfortable if you can't get dissatisfied get dissatisfied with yourself get dissatisfied with the videogame get this ass fun with life as you know it yes but you're also going to be dissatisfied with the middle-aged authority figures who all your life have been telling you what's best for you whatever it is you do in your life that's meaningful that replaces videogames you were going to do it despite those middle-aged authority figures you're not going to do it conforming to or trying to please those middle-aged authority figures you are going to rebel against videogames at the same time as and by the same token as you rebel against your parents your high school principal your university professors because even though you yourself may be wrong in having invested hundreds of hours into videogames all of them were wrong when they told you to put hundreds of hours into the violin or hundreds of hours into prayer and singing in church and choir when they told you all these things about what a meaningful life was supposed to be you know that they were wrong that's why you rejected their advice and accepted video games now you've got to reject video games and reject them as well to find out for yourself what a meaningful life can really be