 Are video games a pathetic waste of time? Or am I just anti-fun? Let's find out. Well the answer could actually be both. So I'm gonna talk about video games in this video. I'm gonna be doing the read the email that I printed out kind of video. A lot of people have been talking about video games recently because apparently in Linux there's some kind of new thing with the kernel where it's easier to play games or something. I don't know anything about it. You'd have to ask someone else because I don't care about video games. I don't care about no video games. Actually that's gonna be what this video is about. Why do I, on so many occasions, speak about video games? I'm gonna explain my point using this email that I got. So this email is from one Allison. Allison says, in on setting a good example for kids slash zoomers, one of my videos, some other videos, and the hermetic answer, that's an article in my website, you said something along the lines of game and porn. Games and porn aren't worth spending time on because they are inert activities that don't give you back, give you anything from them, which makes some sense. In a comment you also said that video consumption, I guess watching YouTube a lot, is also wasteful which stuck with me because it was very honest. Games are art and it is not worthwhile to spend time with them for you get nothing in return. But paintings are also art. Does this mean it's not worthwhile to spend time with them? Movies? Poems? Literature? Or is it more the kind of art that matters? Like maybe that some post-modernist art wouldn't be worthwhile, but then that raises the question of what criteria the worthwhile art should meet, etc. etc. Okay, so I think this brings up a good point. He compares, I assume this Allison is a boy, I mean in the US it's a girl name, but I'm assuming this is a boy. He has some Portuguese last name. So video games, they're art, right? Well first off a lot of people be like, oh no video games are an art. But I'm actually gonna I'm gonna cuck out on this and I'm gonna say yes video games are art. There is lots of narrative involved. There of course is lots of graphical art involved. It actually takes a lot to put together a video game, sometimes a lot more than a book. I actually definitely a lot more nowadays. You have these big AAA video games. So if there are, why would it be wrong? Why would it be wasteful to consume that kind of art and other kinds of art? Now let me give you an example. Okay, I once had a girlfriend, okay? And she is notable because she was like, she read hours and hours and hours. Like she read these books like Wheel of Time kind of stuff where it's like not just, it's like one book that's like hundreds of pages but then there's like a bajillion volumes in the series. She was a big fan of what is it? Brandon Sanderson, okay? Like these kind of books, actually I think I have one Wheel of Time book back here that I've never read. Okay, it's like books like this but there are like 30,000 of them in the series. She loved these stuff, loved these things. She would read lots of them. She probably read hours and hours of her life, spent hours of her life, hours of her life reading that kind of stuff. Now that said, she wasn't weird because of it. That is, she didn't want to skip out on social things because she wanted to get home and read her books. She just did it sort of, if she had time, she'd open a book and that was it. It wasn't like an addictive thing to her. Now if you asked her about it, she might, she would talk about it. She'd talk very glowingly about the books she read but it wasn't even something that she was like obsessively pushing on everyone. Where I feel like that is very much the case a lot of the times with video games. The one thing about video games that separates them from literature, even if like consuming this kind of literature might be, it might take the same amount of time as playing like, playing a AAA game through or something like that. Depending on how fast you read it might be a couple games, right? So, you know, I don't think it's just the time issue. I think the issue is more like, if you, video games are crafted nowadays to be maximally addicting. They are designed like the quests and the characters and the mechanics of the game incentivize you, they conspire to incentivize you to play more and more. You have things like Steam, you have things like Xbox that give you achievements for doing minutia in the game. All of it is just putting you on a big hamster wheel where you have this illusion of accomplishment where, oh, I gotta go home. You sort of feel like it's your job. You feel like you're doing something. Oh, I gotta get this done, you know? So, people will spend more and more time playing these video games. Not just mind you, it starts, oh, I have some time, I'll play some video games because I'm bored. But it eventually devolves into, oh, I'm at a social event. Oh, I'm at school. Oh, I'm at church. Oh, I'm somewhere else and I'm thinking about playing video games. Whereas I do not feel that that, you know, ex-girlfriend I use as an example. I don't feel that I ever felt like she was, oh, I've gotta get home and read my books. Like it never came up. Like if I knocked on her door, she might be reading one. But, you know, it's not the kind of thing that is, that takes over your life. Even if you're using an equivalent amount of time, if you happen to have more time and you read literature, I don't feel like it's addictive in the same way. Same thing, you know, other kinds of art, you know, painting, stuff like that. I mean too, let's say, if you take a painting, if you take some kind of simple form of art, okay, look, there's a work of art. Oh, that's pretty, okay. You've now enjoyed this. There might be deep layers in here. There might be like subtext to this painting. But it does not take hours and hours to consummately enjoy a painting or something like that, or even a movie. And I think video games, you know, video games especially, the same thing, actually, this has happened with television, okay, used to be back in the couple decades ago, that if you had a video game or television, it was a very small thing. You know, you had Pong, okay. Pong is only gonna be so addictive. I'm sure there are people who loved Pong and played it all the time and were addicted to it functionally. But it has nothing on the kind of games that come out nowadays that are like designed around your psychology to get you thinking about them, to get you laying in your bed at night, thinking about the mechanics of that game. I remember one time in college, there's some period where me and my roommate, we were playing like, what is it? Like Fallout 3, which was actually sort of a sucky game. But we played it so much for like a day in, day out for like a full weekend and then some that when we finally left the room, you like forget that you're not in the game, you're like, oh, I got a drink from this. Does it have radiation? It takes over your brain in a way that only a video game can. And video games as time has gone on have become more like that. They've become, they suck more and more of you. They're time sinks, they're time vampires that are taking more and more of you. Same thing is true with television, actually. Because television, you know, it used to be the thing, oh, you know, here in my boomer family, we're gonna turn on the tube and watch a show because we're too awkward to talk to each other during dinner. Okay, and that was it. Okay, that's as bad as it got. Nowadays, it's here Netflix release this television show, it has 20 episodes, each of them are movie length and you know, have movie quality, and they're engrossing and people watch them all and if they binge watch them all in a big row. It's something that sucks up your life a lot of the times. Now, I don't think television is quite as addicting as video games, frankly, because I don't really see, you know, many people out there who are like, oh, I got to get home and watch my show. I'm sure that happens. Okay, if you're really engrossed in it, but video games, it just seems a little worse. Okay, that's just my opinion. Or at least, I shouldn't say my opinion, it's what I've observed in my life and in other people's lives. So I definitely feel like media has definitely, you know, it has more claws in people nowadays, because it's more, it's basically psychologically designed to take more and more of you, which with each passing year, they get better and better at what they're supposed to do. So what ends up happening is people, you know, they are no longer invested in their actual life. They're just more invested in this video game or something else. And, you know, for me, even if you're, you know, I could even look at a video game and say, oh, wow, this is very well done. Wow, the plot is brilliant. The graphics are great. Wow, it is a work of art. In fact, even the the psychological manipulation of it is appreciable. Wow, they did so good in that. But, you know, it's just not the kind of thing, you know, I just don't feel right about it. Like I can't I think it is something that you have to be a little, you have to treat it as sacred, you have to sort of be careful around it because it's one of those things that's going to manipulate you. So, you know, that's my opinion on video games. And, you know, in a social event, if I'm, you know, if I'm at a party and people are playing like Super Smash Brothers or something like that, I'm not going to be like, oh, I'm against video games. I'm not going to play them. But it's just one of those things. It's just a severe opportunity cost. I wish I could have all those, you know, years back, frankly, of playing video games. I wish I could have all that time back. But I never will. And, you know, again, one of the best assets to have in your life, just be bored for a little bit. Because when you're bored, you start playing with things, you start fixing things, you start accomplishing things, you know, boredom inspires you to do things better than, you know, just latching on to whatever media consumption you do. So, that's why, that's my opinion on video games, okay? Just hopefully I clarified some of that.