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?
People kill themselves for various reasons. Mostly because of a mismatch between expectations and reality.
No Jesus will help you survive in the snow town at -30 degrees Celsius. These stories are good in the south, but not in the north.
Ok, granted, you can not find meaning if you are literally DEAD, but I think people are drawn to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs because they think it is actually some kind of pyramid you climb as a human being. You don’t think about community UNTIL you have housing. You don’t think about meaning UNTIL you have community.
But as you yourself have acknowledged, it does not work that way: someone with food and housing can kill themselves because expectations do not match reality. Someone who is homeless might survive because they think they have a mission to write music or whatever.