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 you’re kind of on to something, and I think your ideas cohere with C. Thi Nguyen’s research (for an easy intro, listen to his interviews with Ezra Klein or Adam Connover).
I’m not sure I agree with everything though… I think games and social media are different in lots of ways. E.g. games simulate agency, and it can feel like video games are giving you choices, when really you’re quite tightly constrained by the developer’s ideas of how the world works mechanically and narratively.
Social Media is different in that you’re not constrained by narrative options, but your experience has massive feedback loops with ideas from others you interact with and algorithms (the latter strongly constraining the former). I don’t think social media gives agency-vibes, but it gives other forms of catharsis and other emotion triggers.
IDK, stuff like online petitions, online arguments and general virtue signaling behavior (which isn’t inherently bad TBF) can sure feel like you’re doing something without actually accomplishing much if you’re not also doing concrete things like rioting, striking etc.
Yeah, exactly. I actually worry that social media acts as junk food activism, an activity that feels like activism but really just takes up time and energy that could be used well to no effect.
How many times have you seen someone raging online arguing that they’re fighting for X and will always fight for them?