In Defense of Video Games: Joe Rogan & Keemstar.

joe rogan's statement on video games
it's caused some controversy [Music] if this is what your living room looks like i want you to know not a problem perfectly normal nothing to worry about it's just a hobby it's not taking over your life if this is what your childhood was like if this is what the inside of your brain looks like as no not a problem just not to worry no no promo in fact you know this guy who built this um museum to his own video game habit he's cool guy cool this is this is this isn't just normal it's cool in fact i hope that when i grow up um i can be like him oh oh no wait i'm already over 40 years old so uh i guess i'll just have to fall back on plan b and become like a kung fu master like joe rogan more people just need to be like uh joe rogan's wrong because he's wrong he is dead wrong right to say that you're gonna go nowhere and by playing video games like saying that you're gonna go nowhere playing basketball you're gonna go nowhere playing basketball why are you going to the park and playing basketball with your friends you're not going to be in the nba one day right i get your point but i'm not sure that you get your point playing video games is a waste of time playing basketball also a waste of time to say that you're gonna go nowhere and by playing video games like saying that you're gonna go nowhere playing basketball if you've been waiting your whole life to hear someone say this to you let me tell you you're gonna go nowhere playing basketball dude dude dude dude you're gonna go nowhere playing basketball there is a slim chance that you're gonna be a ninja or that you're gonna have a career in gaming entertainment and make money just like there's a slim chance that you're gonna work somewhere in the nba you know you there's a slim chance that you're even going to be the ball boy you know what i'm saying like so joe rogan's wrong part of the problem here is uniquely american and it's not that americans are anti-intellectual they just imagine that anyone they look up to is somehow much more intellectual than they really are michael jordan do you think michael jordan ever read the complete works of william shakespeare kobe bryant what do you think were the last five or six books he read before he died should we keep going through the list here wilt chamberlain shaquille o'neal you tell me americans have not learned to regard athletes with the derision they truly deserve most of these people and like i don't even know of one exception they are ignorant scumbags who deserve to be looked down upon with utter contempt you should say to your kids i don't want you to grow up to be like kobe bryant i don't want you to grow up to be like michael jordan i want you to have a better life than that i want you to have a more meaningful life than that you should be able to look at these famous video game players like ninja or like pewdiepie and say wow i don't want to be like him when i grow up and i sure as hell don't want my son or my daughter to grow up to be like that but all of this is only possible it's only thinkable if you open the door of your mind to the possibility that there is something more meaningful in life than steroids weightlifting and throwing a ball through a hoop to make people cheer and pay you millions of dollars for those that don't know he came out with these statements he basically said you know people are wasting years their life playing video games and they're not going anywhere right the witcher 3 102 hours of play time elder scrolls 5 skyrim 108 hours of play time yeah the numbers kind of speak for themselves legend of zelda breath of the wild 93 and a half hours i heard someone offhand refer to it as 150 hour game i guess he was a completion oh what the last of us part two what is this only only 28 and a half hours well chuck what what could you possibly accomplish in 28 and a half hours of uh focused dedicated the complete works of william shakespeare is only 21 hours and 20 minutes you could have read the complete works of william shakespeare in less time than it takes to play through the last of us part two not everyone can do kung fu not everyone can do jujitsu and if everyone tried not everyone could win but yeah you know what everyone everyone everyone could read the complete works of william shakespeare you could read something you could do something that would make yourself into a better person and make the world a better place especially when you're talking about hundreds of hours of waking focused mental work and that's what video games are video games are a job that you don't get paid to do joe rogan's wrong joe rogan's wrong video games are awesome and you're not wasting your life playing video games i mean some may be like all things things can be addictive i've never heard anyone say that reading the complete works of william shakespeare was addictive and i mean this was pretty much the situation comedy of its day i mean a large part of william shakespeare is just light-hearted entertainment and ribbedry i've never heard anyone say that doing anything really positive really meaningful and really rewarding is addictive not even like charity work to help the poor maybe that's the tragedy all of us want to overlook here right joe right keem i mean maybe the problem is precisely that what people find fun addictive rewarding it's only and exclusively the things they ought to discipline themselves to avoid i mean some may be like all things things can be addictive but uh for the most part you play video games because they're fun you know you're not wasting your life you're doing what you love in some ways playing video games is just a waste of time and can be compared to any other waste of time although it is an especially significant waste of time for my generation and the next few generations that are now growing up i can't sit here and tell you that video games are comparable to people watching tv or listening to the radio or listening to music from my perspective they're just not i have never known anyone who adopted a tv show as their personal identity in the same way that millions of video game players adopt as their identity being a gamer or being a player of a particular genre of games a particular series of games and yes you can mention star trek fans here but when you think about it how many hours per year did star trek fans spend actually watching star trek or attending events and conventions when i was a kid there was only one tv show broadcast it was star trek the next generation it's just not that many hours not compared to even a single video game and these people are buying and playing dozens of 80-hour video games per year so for one thing it's very different because of the role of the ego video games aren't just something they play a gamer is something they become their sense of identity gets wrapped up and look the thing with collecting there are also uniquely pathetic aspects of collecting video games i really thought about this recently why is it so different from collecting books well in some ways it's different and in some ways it's the same this seems kind of charming to amass a collection of these you know lavishly illustrated pulp fiction books the way this guy has you know i can imagine you have a room and filling up the walls with this kind of pulp fiction it would have a certain kind of charm and this guy is a collector i doubt he's read even one percent of the books he owns like many video game collectors a large part of the thrill is just to have a complete set they're all numbered they're all in order on a shelf and he can sit there and work through the stack but he's not actually reading these books he is just collecting the but to me there's something rather pathetic in amassing what was ultimately produced as a soulless for-profit corporate industry i mean these books they were commissioned and decided on by a board of directors at a heartless corporation that you know paid the money to create these beautiful paintings on the cover and so on understand that corporate background gives them much of their aesthetic i mean this world of for-profit pulp fiction publishing it's not so different from a disney corporation churning out one movie after another or whatever corporation now owns star trek star wars and so on there is this sense in which collecting this form of collecting in a sense just makes you a slave to corporate america like somehow they're proud of this and they have a checklist where they're trying to buy every game that was published for the wii u every game that was published for the playstation 3 whether it be nintendo or microsoft what have you and they can't just behold that they're the errand boy for a soulless corporation it is in a word pathetic whereas collecting stones that you happen to find on the beach that happened to be beautiful to you subjectively collecting stones from moments in your life that meant something special if you picked up a stone on the ground one day when you took a walk with your wife and you'll always remember that stone because you remember that day that's a collection that revolves around who you are it has to do with who you are you know what you could have a collection that revolves around someone you aspire to be but someone you aren't yet things you haven't accomplished yet or you could collect things that help you accomplish those things there were ways in which collecting books could be much much more meaningful than this for one thing you could just collect books that you read and actually meant a lot to you but you could collect books that you'd used in your own creative work whether that's research or writing fiction you could collect books where you're not just working against a corporate checklist where they're actually things that are hard to find that are some historical significance in some area that you have expertise in so you know in my case i've studied some obscure languages and there was a time when i owned books that were rare not valuable not expensive but rare and hard to find that related to those languages and the history of those countries and those peoples i don't have any of those books anymore i've never been a collector and i've never had enough stability in my life to collect so yeah there is something especially pathetic that i see here in the video game collectors because on the one hand they're just making themselves slaves to corporate america in this abject embarrassing way and they refuse to be embarrassed about it that's why they have to cling to this identity of being a gamer