You’re 31 years old, stop playing video games. You don’t have a job, you neglect your girlfriend (my sister) and more importantly your son. Be a man, take care of your responsibilities. Why is it today’s males still act like children? Your grandfather, who you brag about fighting the Germans in Holland, did so at the age of 20. He wasn’t sitting on his ass getting fat off chips, pop, and playing Call of Duty. Loser! —A very unhappy sister
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2011.
There is one very compelling reason why “The Greatest Generation” were exactly that. They were the last generation to take growing up as a matter of course.
Not to mention pride.
Roger that!
“They were the last generation to take growing up as a matter of course.”
Wonder where that got them.
by the way – i’m not condoning having a kid and not working (thats fucking lame)
I just hate that people think that they have to fulfill a set of criteria of “growing up” to satisfy other people’s expectations of them when they would rather live other ways.
The same generation is now playing wii bowling.
Gross…..fat. Do like that chick did down in Michigan: picked up her boyfriend’s Xbox, took it outside on the pavement, and beat the shit out of it with a shovel….video taping the whole thing. Video games are for children, and people without social lives. No wonder they end up fat.
Shit , I love COD. But I make sure when I do sit down to play it any and all things that needed to be done, got done.
It’d be better if the OP did what the florist in NB did by not selling flowers to the sebastians. Just refuse service to the bf, OP.
This reminds me of a great story. I was in the Dr’s office waiting room one day. I have this horrible curse of not being able to eavesdrop on what people are saying, especially when they’re talking loud in a quiet waiting room. So anyway, this family of a mother, father and two children were sitting across from me. The father went on to talk about how he was going to play some WOW when he got some. The mother said “No you’re not! You have kids!” then the father replied, “No I can still play, I just won’t go in the dungeons”. I just found it all so funny and sat there trying not to laugh, frantically texting someone to tell me something sad to prevent my laughter.
I understand what you’re saying neville…but When you bring a child into this world you want to watch them succeed – getting jobs, moving out of the house at the age of 21 (I use that age loosely as every situation is different) – but instead they don’t and make their parents feel like failures and now they have to support you longer instead of saving for their own retirement. And If you bring your own child into this world then you should be the best person you can be and make sure they have all the tools to become good independent citizens. Either way this guys parents failed him and now he’s going to fail his children.
My BF plays Tiger all the time…but after his day at work – followed by empting the dishwasher and doing any other chore that needs to be done. Then he plays until I get home from work. 🙂
His grandfather did that so he, the grandson, would be able to do as he wants. (he fought for freedom, and this is what the grandson chooses to do with his freedom)
Many people who can’t control their video gaming are addicted. If gaming is taking away from hours every day that should be spent addressing responsibilities in the real world then addiction is the problem. If this is the example being set for the addict’s offspring it will be a multi-generational problem. Who is paying to support the idle addict’s lifestyle?
I just learned that the average kid stays living at home until the age of 29.
That’s right… the average is up to 29.
OP, how is the hobby of video games and worse than your “I shop for 2 hours for a single pair of shoes” bullshit? I’m only assuming of course… since you’re a woman.
but if he enjoys it and its not hurting anyone, then who cares what his hobby is?
Your beef should be with him being a slack ass, couch potato with no goals or motivation in life.
I’m a skinny white chick holding down three jobs and going to school part time. When I’m 31 I’ll be still playing video games because I make time for things that I enjoy.
It’s funny how reading books, watching movies, and playing games like chess are all fine and dandy but playing a video game, which can incorporate all the things we love about the stories in books and the visuals in movies and the strategy in chess, is still considered to be childish regardless of the growing number of games that are made for and marketed to adults (games that incompetent parents buy for their eight-year-olds without bothering to do any research on the content first, then when the kid turns into a delinquent because the parent bought an electronic babysitter instead of actually spending time with and parenting their kid, they use the video-games they bought for their kid as a scapegoat instead of owning up to their bad parenting).
Oops, off topic…
Anyway I agree with you about how a person with a kid should have a job, but besides that:
I find your comparison to this guys grandfather tacky and ignorant. Besides the fact that video games didn’t exist back in the forties… men and women fought in Holland because there was a motherfucking global war going on, not because they were go getters or ambitious. Your ignorant comment trivializes the shit out of a horrifying global tragedy. His grandfather wasn’t in constant danger of dying in the trenches because he necessarily wanted to be there, he had to be there to fight for the freedom of his descendants so that they could enjoy a better life. And as a person who wastes their time doing unproductive shit (don’t try to argue that you don’t, we ALL do) because they live in a free country thanks to the sacrifices of war veterans, what fucking right do you have to judge if this guy enjoys playing FPSs? I can think of so many things non-gamers do all the time that are just as, if not less productive than playing video games but don’t have the same “fat loser” stigma attached to them, and yes, some of them are unemployed.
And hell yes he brags about his grandfather fighting in Holland! Do you have any idea what we were doing in Holland? We fucking liberated them. They LOVE Canadians over there to this day because we fought for them. I’d brag too.
fuck off, i am 61, and i like playing a few good games, like doom3, duke nukem, diablo, and a few other shooter games. the ones i hate, are those that have all this fucking crap music noise in them. yeah, i know, turn sound off, but you need on some. let the dude play his games, and if you are a female, go out and play yours, get the drift.
Fuckin’ A, snoop. You basically said what I wanted to say, only a million times better.
The OP needs to mind her own business. The Bitch is directed at her SISTER’s boyfriend, not her own.
LS, diablo. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours;)
“If gaming is taking away from hours every day that should be spent addressing responsibilities in the real world then addiction is the problem.”
No, If gaming (or anything for that matter) is taking away hours every day that should be spent addressing responsibilities then time management is the problem.
By your definition ANYTHING can be an addiction. But the problem is that we are using the same word to describe two very different things.
Addiction traditionally means physical or psychological dependence on substances that are psychoactive – they get into and change your brain function, often drastically.
But to a layman, addiction can also be used to describe obsessive behavior or doing a particular activity so much that it interferes with your life in a harmful way. This is more precisely known as behavioral addiction.
The problem is that we use the word “addiction” to refer to both of these very different things, which gives the false impression that behavioral addition is the same as physical/psychological addiction.
It is not.
This is exactly why being precise in language is important.
Behavioral addiction is not caused by the things the person is “addicted” to (like physical/psychological addictions are). Behavioral addictions are caused by problems that the person ALREADY has (impulse control disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, etc.) and because of this they can basically be “addicted” to anything or any activity they happen to be exposed to at the right time.
Video games are not inherently dangerous or “addictive” but people who are already at high risk for behavioral addictions may latch onto video games just like they might latch on to food, sex, or shopping. That’s why whenever a new piece of technology comes out people suddenly get “addicted” to it (just because it happens to exist now). Now we are seeing people “addicted” to the internet who, if they had lived in a different time, would have been addicted to something entirely different from that time period instead.
The reason people pick on video games more than food, sex, or shopping is because video games are not as easy to disguise as they are not a necessary part of life. Food, sex, and shopping are things everyone has to do at some point on a regular basis, thus it’s easier for the shopping addict to deny that they have a problem and get away with it.
Also, video games have been the subject of a huge misguided and irrational scare in recent years because of a number of things; school shootings by kids who happened to play video games (what are the odds a kid would play video games?), the religious right labeling them as satanic, and of course Oprah for scaring the shit out of millions of housewives with her uninformed televised fear mongering.
The high profile video game “addiction” has gained is why people with time management problems who also happen to enjoy playing video-games often get misdiagnosed by everyone (fucking assholes shouldn’t BE diagnosing people in the first place unless they are qualified to do so) as “addicts”. Even if you don’t have a time management problem, chances are, if you’re a gamer, someone has told you that you are addicted to video games (usually just minutes after watching their 465th episode of Oprah). Non-gamers with time management problems do not have to endure this annoyance because the things they enjoy doing haven’t been condemned in the media the way video games have.
And no, time management problems are not the same thing as having a behavioral addiction. Don’t trivialize a serious problem many people suffer from by confusing the two.
Anyway, all this boils down to is an overestimation of the dangers of video games, they are incorrectly portrayed as highly addictive similar to how heroin is addictive when they are not. This is annoying to gamers at best and very dangerous at worst. It leads to people misunderstanding the problem a behavioral addict actually has and usually ends up being remedied by simply taking video games away from that person only for them to fill their need with a different behavior that might be more self destructive than video games were (for example, cutting is also a behavioral addiction). It ignores the root of the problem by falsely assuming they acted that way because of the video game itself and not because of their actual problem which cannot be remedied by simply taking away their crutch.
Using the word “addiction” without further specification leads to this lumping of behavioral addiction and physical/psychological addiction into the same category, which adds to the already startling amount of ignorant people in the world who will immediately assume I have an addiction and have no life outside of Azeroth as soon as they find out I play WoW.
…and that makes me a sad paladin.
🙁
better yet… do the world a favor and jump off the MacKay… b-bye
holy fuck snoop, you on a roll today grl. wow, two longgggg, comments in one bitch. i award you bitch biter of the year, and some of these games, teach good hand and eye co-ordination to otherwise clunky kids, and adults too.
hugo, show you mine???? that’s rather cryptic isn’t it? what do you want to see? and i’ve beaten doom3 in 7 different pay scenarios. i have a pirate copy from taiwan. you don’t need to understand the lingo, just the pay. fucker needs something like a i gb video card to play it, and hard as fuck to get shit on, not like pussy u.s. game.
and i have tried to make copies, but no fucking way, will it let me do so. there is a video blocker in it somewhere. copy comes out all fucked.
Wow snoop, a little touchy aren’t we? Why is that? My response was directed toward the person in the OP’s bitch, who is described as not facing their responsibilities i.e. not working to support himself or his child, in lieu of playing video games. The possibility of addiction is relevent, whether psychological/physical/behavioural, the result is the same. Obviously, not everyone who plays video games is an addict. Perhaps not even the person the OP was bitching about. Maybe instead, he just doesn’t give a fuck about anything or anyone other than himself. There’s no shortage of folks like that.
No I’m not touchy, I just used your lax language to kick-start a discussion about a common misconception that gets on my nerves, I do it all the time on here and I have a reputation for writing comments that are way too long, yeah. But you’re the first person to assume one of my rants was was all about you, why is that?
Anyway, since were on the topic:
The result is NOT the same, you are trivializing real addictions by saying so. I won’t repeat everything I just said but I will say this, being addicted to heroin or meth or crack etc. changes your brain physically, PERMANENTLY. Behavioral addiction does not result in holes in your brain, or infecting yourself with contaminated needles, or rehab and withdrawal, or fucking gouging flesh out of your skin during a bad trip. It is NOT the same type of dependency, they are two completely different things with completely different results and methods of recovery.
I didn’t assume your rant was all about me. (A-S-S-U-M-E, oh, never mind. We all know how that one goes.) I was merely responding to your comment about a comment I made. Why would you think that I thought it was all about me? Not that it matters, but I don’t even play video games, but I have known people who have a problem controlling their addiction to gaming.
Since my comment: “If gaming is taking away from hours every day that should be spent addressing responsibilities in the real world then addiction is the problem.” was taken by you to mean something that touches a nerve with you, then it is you, not I, who has demonstrated who your comment is really about. Having to write a novella to defend your gaming habits speaks volumes. But go ahead and continue with your position that I think your comments are all about me if it makes you feel better chickie.
http://static-p4.fotolia.com/jpg/00/01/27/…
I think, in today’s relationships with two incomes, when one of the incomes are lost, we see differences in coping male vs. female.
Men are much more forgiving and supporting of their female counterparts, in such a difficult situation. Whereas the female view is that, it is a men’s faith to be the provider and when that is lost the female is quick to condemn/ be non supportive.
OB does that make today’s women selfish?
Yeah I NEVER write long comments, obviously I’m hopelessly addicted to video games and my novella was a desperate attempt to justify my crippling addiction.
Listen, If you want to respond to a comment I made, then say something constructive in it. Don’t start out with a snipe about how I’m “touchy” and then imply with a passive aggressive “Why is that?” that I’m an addict.
If you have a problem with the arguments I presented then talk about the arguments I presented. Tell me WHY I am wrong, WHY you think behavioral addiction has the same result as physical/psychological addiction, and then maybe we can have a nice conversation. Don’t go on the defensive when you have nothing to be defensive about.
And please don’t call me chickie.
I’m frequently guilty of over-romanticizing The WW2/Greatest Generation and using them as a stick to whale mine over the head with. I’ll gladly and unashamedly cop to the first; but the 2nd is both unfair and factually incorrect of me. From the Japanese nuclear plant workers to those who take what life hands out with a smile and a joke or who give up much to care for those they love, heroes are all around us. You don’t need to look terribly hard to find them. Sometimes all you have to do is listen. Thanks guys.