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Way before video games were a thing people often lived in multi generational housing out of necessity without riots.
Riots happen when people are starving.
If people are in the basement playing video games it’s because they aren’t starving. It’s the not the video games preventing the riots, it’s the Doritos.
Hey hun, new Doritos slogan just dropped
Escapism is a thing for a long time before we were born. Alcohol or drugs is an escape. At one point you realize that the world is full of pieces of shits that are also in control of everything.
Ok so first of all, it's not than just young men who play video games, so it's kinda shitty to imply that it's only young men.
It's also shitty to imply young men are the people who are obligated to riot, or the only people who do riot.
We've noticed a trend of less violence from people over the last several decades, which started before video games, so video games might be unrelated.
There's always been something that feels like accomplishment but isn't. Reading about how to do something tricks your brain into thinking it's done that or is making progress on a project, but education only goes so far.
So imo it's probably a combination of things. Video games might be one of those things but people feeling like they are rebelling by just reading about countercultural things may also be a factor, as well as humans being less violent and also maybe people are just scared and don't want to die.
Women escape reality with youtube, tabloids, tiktok, instagram, and more. They don't need gaming to be distracted and yet, they are. Guys would just find another thing to be distracted by.
There's another article (thread) saying there is no loneliness epidemic but a poverty epidemic. And yes, that's the problem: the uber-rich just have taken as much as they could and will continue to take more. They bought up our apartments, our debt, our third places, are playgrounds, and more. They own the media to tell us that the problems are all due to minorities that have no power and want us to look down or be distracted by services that we give all our information too, and allow them to find more ways to hook us into distractive crap so that we don't look up.
Want to solve loneliness, childlessness, poverty, etc? !twnw@fedia.io #TaxWealthNow #TaxWealth
Yeah, I was a little unsure if I should gender this discussion, but a few factors went into it:
Totally agree that economics is at the root of all of it,, and at the root of all of that is wealth (and power) concerntration.
Edit: Keeping in mind gender essentialism is bullshit, men in general tend to be more attracted by themes of power and control, women more by themes of connection. I think the gendered nature of the distractions we are bringing up reflect that.
I see where you're coming from now and can understand your line of thinking. It is a difficult question because it is difficult to predict. Gaming is also a source of radicalisation.
Whether removing it altogether would lead to a sizable mass of men to become politically active and engaged, that I kind of doubt. Gaming is more accessible now and there are many poor men that game. Poverty goes hand in hand with worse education and more precarity. Removing one source of distraction from a badly and/or insufficiently educated man would not necessarily lead to an awareness of the source of their struggles. It might make them receptive to influences claiming to know the source of their struggles, but unfortunately, I believe that most of those influences are controlled by those who actually are the source of the problem.
IMO, there's a greater chance of more affluent and educated gamers to become aware of the circumstances. But they often will not be the ones doing the damage IRL as they have more to lose than the lower classes. Times are changing and they also possess less, especially housing, so the uber-rich might actually be creating a system where even "affluent" and educated people have so little to lose that they are willing to actually gamble and go protest, try to change the system, and violently or peacefully enact change.
In summary, my guess is that removing gaming wouldn't change much - unless if it were done suddenly e.g the state said gaming is now illegal.
I think there are more media-related distractions available, such as movies, tv shows, porn, sports, music, social media (though sm can also be used to incite/organize protests/riots), plus the old mainstay of religion (which is also a propaganda tool, but in most cases pro-government). But yeah, all these distractions definitely help. It's like Rome's Bread And Circus.
I think social media and video games are in a class of their own, because they are something you can put EFFORT in and get REWARD out. Movies and TV just kill time without rewarding you with any senses of accomplishment.
I think SM is a net negative, too. Hear rumors that research shows that people engaged in twitter combat are less likely to do anything actually effective.
Before video games, TV, or Movies people just read books, which can feel rewarding. If that’s still too passive for you, people played instruments. We have thousands of years of entertainment to draw on.
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.
I'd say video games play a very minor role in this. Distractions have always existed and video games is far from the only one existing now. And it's not like we haven't seen huge protest movements by young people recently, for example in Nepal.
I'd credit the global reduction of lead exposure
I often wonder if gaming may also be responsible to the drop in violent crime seen over the last 30 years.
I like to attribute that to removing lead from petrol
Worth a reference for those not in the know, shit's crazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
Probably going to be an unpopular take online but... A lot of the most chronically single people I know are very into videogames. Not sure which way the causation runs or maybe it's a self reinforcing cycle but there does seem to be a relationship.
The folks I know tend not to be the angry incel type but I could very easily see a pathway that goes something like: video games are cheaper and easier than putting yourself out there, thus you isolate, but isolation kind of sucks and no one likes to blame themselves, so the "manosphere" and it's precursors are there to tell you it's actually women/wokeness/the Libs that are responsible for your angry singledom..." To me, I see them at least partially a factor in the hard gender split in politics these days.
The timing also kind of maps out. Video games have moved from niche to one of the most lucrative entertainment industries. The generation of young men raised by really quality games was coming to electoral age just about 2016 and boy, did things start going g off the rails.
I'm not blaming everything on videogames and do play some myself but I do wonder if they've contributed to the problem.
Definitely. I'm pushing 50 and know that, had games been more sophisticated, realistic, and able to be played online in my teens, I'd have struggled not to let that consume me. However, as it happened, the allure of gigs, beer, nights out, and girls didn't really have much competition with the likes of Street Fighter 2.
On one hand, I definitely feel I've missed out on that gaming experience and to this day don't have that shared interest that my younger colleagues have with each other. On the other, I see younger guys at work who are just regular dudes but have no family, friends, or partners outside work or their online world. And by younger, I mean pushing 40. We're talking about decades where their free time has been spent mostly gaming.
To each their own—please don't get prickly if you feel seen or think I'm being condescending. I can absolutely see how that can happen, and if you're cool with that, then that's all that matters. It's just not the way I personally would want to live from my current perspective, although I know that had I been born a decade later, I'd probably be in the same boat.
Bread and Circus. They take different shapes over the ages, but the core remains the same.
Desperate people don't riot.
Revolutions are started by the "middle class" (or at least someone that can afford to miss a few paychecks).
Desperate people will fight to the death to defend a rich person tossing a couple crumbs off the table for them, because those crumbs are what keeps them from starving.
Could also be that poor people are much more easily thrown in prison or murdered by police.
Yes.
When we were kids in the 60's, we were perpetually bored and getting in to trouble.
Its not that we were socially active, we just had nothing to do, and wanted to impress girls.
