Would young men be rioting in the streets if they didn’t have video games to pacify them?
Hear me out.
We are seeing record levels of young men unemployed and living with their parents: The future for them is bleak. Saddled with college debt, they can barely get a job that pays miimum wage, while living independently is forever out of reach.
I feel like at other points of history, there would be more social unrest, but things are exceedingly calm given the economics.
I was watching a video by Healthy Gamer, a gamer bro-turned psychiatrist. He points out that video games are very addictive and seductive because they MIMIC accomplishment. You can grind to get to the next level, you can gain new skills, you are continually put on a treadmill of constant progress. It’s very satisfying in a hollow way, satisfying in a way that might make you forget that society has nothing to offer you but debt and homelessness after you followed all the rules.
Are video games weapons of mass distraction, the metaphysical equivalent of a million Christians being fed to a million lions every day?
I think it’s got more to do with the manosphere being an easily accessible community. There is almost no bar to entry, because they just need bodies to grift. You don’t need to pass a vibe check, you don’t need to have any sort of social skills. Matter of fact, failing to pass a vibe check and having no social skills make you an ideal recruit.
Manosphere is a huge part. I just think that the impressive improvements in video games have increased the pool of lonely young men on whom the manosphere preys.
As a crude example, I had surgery and finished Persona 5 while recovering. Mentioned that to a coworker when I returned and he was stoked and talked about his multiple playthroughs on that and his experience with the others in the series. With a full time job, that’s so very many weeks worth of time just devoted to a video game instead of meeting people, socializing, finding a partner etc.
Correlation vs. causation.
I think it’s a lot more likely that people who have little success meeting people, socializing, and finding partners are turning to videogames, as that’s a reasonably cheap mostly solo hobby.
Personally, if I’m not playing videogames, I’m out sailing. Not socializing.
Absolutely, there’s definitely folks who were already not good at socializing turning to video games. Buuut, I think the cheapness, ubiquity and quality have all improved so much that it has become a much easier alternative than it was in the past.
Like, if you lower the price of cigarettes, many who smoke those cheaper smokes would have smoked anyway. But as the price drops, it’s easier for those marginal smokers to continue to do so and for new ones to start. (You had to be pretty dedicated to suffer through Ultima VI etc.)
And the timing also kind of makes sense; for the last couple of decades there’s been a marked decrease in teenagers and young adults having sex. I assume part is the ubiquity of porn but I can’t imagine teenagers are just getting less horny…
Why not?