Gamespot is running a feature looking into the facts behind gaming addiction: what it is, whether it exists, and why the need still exists for objective research into the issue. Quoting:
"[Richard M. Ryan, a psychologist and professor of psychology, psychiatry, and education at the University of Rochester in New York] thinks the lack of quality research into video game overuse will be rectified with time as games become more sophisticated in the ways they satisfy people's psychological needs. 'We have a lot of people, some in the media and some in the sciences, who are too ready to make very strong claims about video games, whether we are talking about aggression, addiction, or cultural estrangement, based on very little evidence. I think that is especially how the media often sells stories. Some commentators exaggerate risks, and on the other hand there are defenders of games who deny any and all problems and attack any perceived bad news. Games are relatively new in our culture, and such vacillation between hysteria and denial I suspect often greets any new phenomenon, from hip-hop to the Internet to video games. Both sides usually have some part of the truth, but it may be a while before at least we as scientists, much less as a society, have a coherent understanding.'"
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently called the Internet a "cesspool" of false information. I think he was wrong. I think that the disinformation present on the internet is merely a reflection of the disinformation, poor reporting and outright lies which have become pervasive throughout the media industry.
My firm belief is that in an organisation, industry or society, the rot starts and the top and works its way down. When it comes to information and sensationalism, the national newspapers are the ones to blame for allowing standards to slip as far as they have. In their effort to fish for eyeballs they can sell to advertisers, they have allowed stories to be come more emotional, sensationalist and exaggerated, all while allowing accuracy, fact checking and the honest truth to fall by the wayside.
When it comes to video games or any other activity seen as "fringe", it's easy for newspapers to spin up a story demonising the games and the people who play them. They want eyeballs, and if associating video games with addictive substances like crack cocaine can get them some, then that is exactly what journalists and editors will do.
Keep in mind that most journalists nowadays, in the 20-35 age bracket, will probably have a games console and HD-TV in their home. They probably have a laptop and grab all the latest music, tv show and movie torrents. They probably (almost certainly) go clubbing, sleep around, drink heavily and take illegal drugs. Yet these very same people write stories and reports that demonise, sensationalise, vilify, and condemn every last one of these activities. They do this because it pays the money they need to fund the very lifestyles they are decrying.
This rot has started at the top. With the newspaper industry. We have allowed them, time and again, to publish rot such as "video game addiction" and get away with it, with not a pip of objection from anyone. The game industry has bent over backwards, creating highly conservative [slashdot.org] rating agencies like the ESRB to self censor its produce. While violence is par for the course,(albiet towards aliens, Nazis or zombies) swear words in video games remain unusual to this day; "Fuck" is still reserved for only a handful of titles, and I cannot recall a single instance of the word "cunt" in any title I have ever played. Sex in video games, simply does not happen. Even Rockstar cut out the Hot Coffee content.
But it's not enough. The media will never be satisfied. They will never acknowledge the extraordinary efforts which the video game industry has gone to to mainstream its content. To the media, video games represent an easy target, the attacking of which will produce enough of a spectacle to attract the eyeballs they need. Video games, and the people who play them, will never be given a break by a media industry that has become, in effect, a established and tyrannical bully, preying on those who cannot defend themselves for its own gain.
In short, newspapers are rotten. Stop reading them.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently called the Internet a "cesspool" of false information. I think he was wrong. I think that the disinformation present on the internet is merely a reflection of the disinformation, poor reporting and outright lies which have become pervasive throughout the media industry.
That doesn't mean he was wrong - it just means that everything else is a cesspool of false info too!
I cannot recall a single instance of the word "cunt" in any title I have ever played
I'm pretty sure The Darkness has it.
I don't see the big deal about all of this anyway. Some people are easily addicted/obsessed by things. I've spent periods in my life where I'd play Counter-Strike or MUD every night til 6AM. I think my Counter-Strike obsession was overtaken by a photography obsession, and strangely enough the 3 times in my life that I was addicted to MUDding, I ended up with a girlfriend a
there is no such thing as a fount of absolutely impartial, absolutely trustworthy information. so go ahead and watch fox news... then listen to the bbc. then pravda. then read a chinese news site. then a venezuelan one. then an iranian one. finish it off with pbs
in this way, by being exposed to as many different half truths as possible, from as many different sources, do you begin to actually see the real truth
meanwhile, your prescription to stop exposing yourself to the media actually makes you more vulnerable to propaganda, because you have nothing to judge against what little slivers of info that do reach you
this is the value of a free press: let anyone publish any goddamn lie they want. the truth will bubble up the surface, atop a rotting festering pit of lies. this is only possible with a free press. in countries without a free press, you are breeding weak flabby partisan minds who can not know the truth
a free press, sleazebuckets of media (which is the way its always been, by the way, there was no glorious past of impartial media), is really the only way it can ever be. because there is no such thing as an absolutely impartial and trustworhty news source. they all pander to our lower instincts. and only through repeated exposure to this bullshit do you develop a healthy bullshit meter. and we all need that, badly
so bring on the lies, the half truths, the propaganda, the demagoguery from all ideological sides. atop that festering pile of bullshit we will sit, with a good lock on the real truth. its the only way to discover thr truth, the only way media can work. the more free it is, the more festering lies out there, the better for your understanding of the truth. paradoxical, but true
your search for the "real truth" belies a cognitive weakness of yours. you either have a fantastical devotion to the "truth" being something like the da vinci code or your average hollywood potboiler political thriller. when reality is always much more mundane. conspiracy theories are the mark of a weak mind, or wonderful entertainment, but are never the truth
or you already have it "figured out", and you are attempting to fit the facts to your preconceived notions, "the truth" as it were. and you are unsatisfied, because your preconcieved notions are wrong, fringe. and so you react to the media antagonistically, all of it, because you can't find the support for your wrong ideas that you desire
people who reject ALL of the media, and speak of "the media", as if it were some monolithic edifice allayed against them, are really speaking of their own fringe ideological identity, not about the reality of the media. the way you speak belies the fact that whatever problems media companies have with the truth, you have greater problems with the truth. it is you has the problem, not that bogeyman (dum dum DUM), "the media"
as for 9/11, i left work at the world trade center building #5 at 9 pm on monday 9/10/01, heard a guitar player by the fountain in the dark, looked back at him, then up at the towers, and went into church street subway station and went home and went to sleep, and woke up late to my telephone ringing off the hook the next morning. i never made it back to that job. what happened? some islamic nutjobs highjacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, out of simple spite and hate
that's the truth. really. sorry there is no hollywood plot twist involving jack ryan and the illuminati
and it makes sense. like i said before, the answers will bell curve. idiocy is random, it does not skew in a particular manner. the idiots randomly cancel each other out, and become noise, while anyone with the real answer will stand out as a signal against the background noise. involving quantities like a population count, they simply bell curve to the right answer
Totally wrong. Moreover, provably wrong. Poll a random set of individuals on the age of Planet Earth, which is an estimated 4.55 billion years. In the US at least, the answer you are likely to get by averaging is closer to 2.5 billion years, as quite a lot of people will say 6000 years. In fact, if you decided to cheat by restricting your sampling to academics or scientists, your answer now would be different from answer obtained 100 years ago, and will probably be different to answers obtained 100 years from now. Why? Because this is no way to determine the age of the Earth.
In fact, poll people about the number of planets in the solar system. You'll probably get an answer between 8 and 9. But I guarantee you it will not be an integer value, say 8.713452, which will be a fairly strange answer for the number of planets. Moreover, any answer you get will have much less to do with the idea of a "planet" that you might think.
Again, go back to the Emperor of China's nose. Let's take the Last Emperor [wikipedia.org] as an example. Suppose I went around asking people what they thought the length of his nose was? Would the average of the answers somehow converge on the length of his particular nose? Why not someone else? In fact, would they converge on the length of of the nose of anyone who was ever alive?
Now finally go back to the population of China itself. Suppose I asked around. What will people's guesses average to? Say it's 1.3 billion. Am I to take this as a good value for the population of China, which is again an integer? It's only accurate to at best within 50,000 people or 3.8% of the total. That's a pretty wide margin when it comes to such an important number. Do I hope that the answers somehow converge after yet more guesses to the correct one. Will the overestimations cancel out the underestimation? On what basis can I make this claim? The answer is, none at all.
As I said before, I think statistics should probably be taken off most curricula. They seem to induce a rather misguided faith in the primacy of the Gaussian bell curve, and have lead to it application in areas which it is totally inappropriate. Here's a small fact which is completely and totally overlooked in 99.9% of all statistics courses taught. The Gaussian Bell curve is the result of Central Limit Theorem [wikipedia.org]. This theorem states that if one averages the results of sufficiently manyrandom, uncorrelated measurements, then the results will approximate a Gaussian Bell curve.
Random. Uncorrelated. Measurements. If one of these conditions is not satisfied, then no Gaussian Bell curve will result, and the average of the results is meaningless. The answers you get when asking about the population of China, the age of the Earth, or the length of the Emperor's nose will be neither random or uncorrellated, and there will be no accuracy from averaging them. You are in what Nassim Taleb calls the fourth quadrant, and are essentially engaged in numerology. There are very real limits to statistics [edge.org] which everyone using them should be ware of.
its really quite a simple concept, i don't know why you can't grasp it. perhaps you don't need to brush up on your statistics, you just need to brush up on your grasp of common sense reasoning
It is not a simple concept. It is a naive and very dangerous one. I do not accept it because I have studied statistics and I know its power and its limit
In TFA it mentions examples that have (or probably have) been used in the past to demonise computer games - the Chinese kid who killed for game money and that special American family who's son murdered his parents for taking Halo 3 away from him. The article (thankfully) mentions the probable underlying mental illnesses that contribute to these sorts of crimes, whereas the Jack Thompsons of the world see games as the cause of crime, rather than as a changeable variable that could have been television, film, a newspaper, food, a car, a curfew, and so on.
I'm extremely pleased to see increasing research in games and their effect on our minds. It would be naive to suggets that they don't have any affect on us at all, and I for one am interested in seeing some (hopefully) independent research with meaningful results.
People have played games for thousands of years. The only difference now is they've got more sophisticated. Even more recently, I remember people who were seriously addicted to RPGs in the 70's from Tunnels and Trolls through D&D to Traveller. People were muttering about video game addiction in the late 70's too and there's been a ton of research on it since then. I can't help but thnk this is just another case of someone really not being aware of the history of their pet subject.
People have played games for thousands of years. The only difference now is they've got more sophisticated.
Sophisticated is one way of putting it. Another would be to point out they didn't spend thousands of hours grinding pawns so they could finally take down that bishop.
The line between tactics and strategy is blurry. Chess primarily teaches you to play chess, it doesn't automatically make you better at long-term planning.
I think we need a little common sense. An obsession about anything is bad. If you spend hours and hours of your time _______ (gaming, watching TCM, taping music off the radio, drinking alcohol, polishing your car, playing cards, watching the stock market,...) to the point where you end-up damaging your _____ (job, marriage, grades), then you have a problem.
At one point or another I've been addicted to most of the stuff in my list. The item I was obsessed with was the symptom, not the problem. The problem was me and lack-of-self control. Everything should be done in moderation.
The item I was obsessed with was the symptom, not the problem. The problem was me and lack-of-self control.
I can't speak for anyone else, of course... but I've found that every time I've become engrossed in something like that to the exclusion of all else, it was escapism. I was trying to avoid fixing something broken in my life. I would say this was true even as a child playing video games for hours; I could relate more easily to the computer than to other people because of my [lack of] upbringing. If you're ignoring your girlfriend to play a video game, you probably need a new girlfriend. Et cetera.
I can't speak for anyone else, of course... but I've found that every time I've become engrossed in something like that to the exclusion of all else, it was escapism. I was trying to avoid fixing something broken in my life.
Likewise, and well put.
This gets to be a particular problem for me sometimes because of two additional factors - I have a daughter who is not allowed to watch me play (she's 4), and when tired I have a tendency to feel depressed. So I wait for her to go to bed, then start playing, which
My view on gaming addiction is that, just like any other form of escapism, it is merely a symptom caused by various physical, psychological and social factors. In many cases, the subject would be addicted to something (possibly more harmful like drugs or gambling) anyways so the addiction is actually "good for him" in a certain sense. You can just grow up from gaming, unlike booze or crack.
I find it very curious how addiction studies focus mainly on male dominated activities. I am sure if females did it it would not be called an addiction.
Shoe fetishism is rarely called an addiction but I have seen women who spend their whole selves looking for the ugliest shoes.
Compulsive shopping is most certainly regonized as an adiction. As for OCD, that is often called a woman's disease.
And gaming hasn't been male dominated for a long time. According to some survey's there are even more female gamers then male gamers.
Certainly in the MMO I play voicechat seems to be female roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the time. Considering that some females might be reluctant to reveal their are females online and the percentage of females playing Lotro might be as high as half the population if not m
>>>Don't you realise women are perfect and deserve special treatment?
Actually you're not far from the truth. Women are "perfect" in the eyes of the mega-corporations because they spend a lot of money shopping. Therefore a shoe addiction is not advertised as an addiction, but as a hobby or "pleasure" or "fashionable" on the morning talk shows and other corporate sources.
But a girl who spends 18 hours a day playing WoW is even more anomalous than a guy doing the same. A guy who does that is "just a nerd," where a girl doing that has "serious problems" and needs help, asap. Dorm RAs will try to intervene and get the girl involved in the dorm bake sale next week, but completely ignore the guys in the next room who haven't stopped playing Halo (or showered) in three days.
Also, god damn it's hard to find a pair of regular, black, work-appropriate shoes that don't have 4 inch heels or are ugly as sin. Few things infuriate me more than shoe shopping.
So far, everything that our youth had a fascination with and was hardly, if at all, understood by parents has been demonized and blamed for all sorts of problems.
Think back (ok, read up in your history books) about so called "bad books". Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn twisted and warped young minds in ways that are all too similar to what is now attributed to games. They set bad examples, they make kids act out what they read, they have no moral, show no ill effects of bad behaviour... then the kids that read those books grew up and, lo and behold, they didn't turn out to be maniacs and generally unfit to lead a normal life. The hype dwindled down, and now it's part of "America's cultural heritage".
Fast forwards to radio. It was new, it was exciting, kids (and even some adults) spent hours in front of the box listening. When Wells' "War of the Worlds" was broadcast, people went into hysteria. And promptly, the radio was the source of all evil. It would cause us to be unable to discriminate between fiction and fact, it would twist our poor minds and warp us... guess what, the radio generation grew up, they didn't turn out to be morons, and the hype went away.
TV was next. The picture boxes that ruined our eyes (ok, those old ones maybe did), that showed us braindead stories and turned us all into zombies. The TV generation grew up...
D&D. Anyone remember Patricia Pulling [wikipedia.org], the Jack Thompson of the 80s? Yet D&D gamers grew up and they don't run amok in our streets fighting imaginary orcs and dragons.
Now it's games. And the gamers will grow up and we'll find out that it's not so bad... in other words, just give it time. In 10 years, nobody's gonna talk about it anymore. But don't worry. We'll find a new scapegoat when our kids go nuts due to poor parenting and mobbing in schools.
Some people, for whatever reason, think they have a moral obligation to tell us how we should live our lives (don't watch tv, don't play D&D, don't smoke marijuana, don't drink beer, don't have sex). I'm sick of their bullshit, and I think we should viciously lash them as petit-tyrants trying to take-away liberty.
Unfortunately, "discussion" changed its meaning. Earlier it was "evaluating the other side's arguments, offering counterarguments, finding a common ground and something both sides can work with". Today it's "show them idiots that I AM RIGHT!"
And I'm not only talking about afternoon talkshows and newsgroup flamewars. I even see it in scientific communities where I used to have very insightful discussions that actually ran along the original meaning. Both sides offered arguments that the other side could understand, both sides evaluated the other side's arguments, some were good, some were bad, some were better than mine, some were something I could accept as a compromise... and in the end, we walked away with something that both sides could accept.
Today, even in circles that you'd expect to be a wee bit more sophisticated than the guest lineup of the average Springer show, you are faced with people that want to impress you with their (often enough false) use of technical terms and jargon to show you just how stupid you are that you can't simply accept their point of view as the only truth.
It kinda saddens me. When did "being able to compromise" become "being too soft to get it your way"?
If I was a kid, and ended up practising and playing tennis or golf for the majority of my day, got really good, was able to compete and win tournaments and make money, I would be considered a natural, a child prodigy with a promising future.
Likewise, if I played chess every day for as long as possible, got really good and started competing and winning tournaments internationally, making money etc. I would be seen as a great example of skill etc.
If I live and breathe business, every hour of every day, driving myself to make a fortune, to become wealthy and successful, I would be applauded.
Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it.
So, if a kid spent the majority of his waking day playing games, gets exceptionally good at it, and was able to enter tournaments, win prize money, travel the world etc., would we then talk about his addiction, or would we be talking about his achievement?
It seems to me that what really matters is the result of your "addiction", and the public's perception in terms of its "worth", not the fact that you're addicted. These stories about "game addiction" look at the worst examples and apply them to all, and that makes as much sense as looking at a sports star who burns himself out as an example of what sport does to you.
Most of this is likely spurred by the opinion that gaming is simply a waste of time. When the value of gaming (in terms of wealth generation, improving mental ability, skill etc.) increases/becomes more well known, the less we'll hear about the evils of game addiction. So, bring on more studies to look at gaming's benefits, and bring on more investment into pro-gaming.
I think that many of these "addictions" you list can be considered harmful, actually. There are far more child prodigy instrumentalists out there than there are job openings for them. For every one that is lauded for his achievements, seen as a great example of skill etc. there are ten people who have spent an extreme amount of effort for very little return. This is why it's cruel to try to lead your child down that path.
Music is the crown example. But it's very much the case with chess, sports, novels, etc.
I think people would be happier if the ideals of Amateurism made a comeback. We might even get better art in some ways.
in all of the endeavours you mention, 99% of people don't make any success in the field
and this bit is especially ridiculous:
"Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it."
nobody takes drugs and makes great art. rather, some great artists, after already having great talent, enter a stage of self-destructive hubris, and start wasting their talent on drugs. classic correlation!=causation
your understanding of the relationship between art and drugs is kind of like the cargo cults of the south pacific: that if you build bamboo control towers and bamboo radar arrays, airplanes full of cargo will magically appear out of the sky. saying that taking drugs will let you make art is exactly the same sort if foolishness
there are millions of hunter s thompsons in regards to self-destructive behavior. thats nothing rare or unique. hunter s thompson, meanwhile, IS rare and unique, but not because of his self-destructive behavior, but because of his communicative skills, on top of his self-destructive behavior
but people glorify his self-destructive behavior, when thats not what makes him a great artist
my whole point is that the glorification of the self-destruction is wrong
if you want to be a great artist, you'll create art. anything you snort along the way is baggage, not some intrinsic part of your art form... which is exactly what you said. i'm just trying to do away with the glorification of self-destruction
I suspect this may come across as slightly trollish, but hear me out:
The principle difference between gaming and TV is interaction - a higher level of engagement or involvement, and thus immersion, that a passive medium like TV can't surpass.
When discussing addiction, I think it's worth noting that - according to the criteria used by most detractors - TV is also addictive. However, it is not considered harmful enough to be of equivalent concern. You're not likely to die from all-night sessions of Battlestar Galactica or whatever.
I think the real issue is about more than just addiction though. I think it's down to the level of passivity or activity required to engage with the medium, and the control over the experience. TV viewing, by its very nature, trains us to passively accept whatever is fed to us. It's in the nature for society to accept and promote whatever maintains the status-quo - a survival trait, if you will - and something which encourages passivity is ultimately a benefit to that. There are also mechanisms for controlling the viewer's experience - you can't choose to change the ending to a film, for example. Gaming, on the other hand, requires engagement, activity, evaluation and decision-making, even in its more basic forms. It also trains people not to let things be, but to strive to overcome obstacles and improve their environment. Whether this encourages socially positive or negative actions depends on the type of game in which the person engages, which in turn is influenced by their social predisposition. It enhances rather than suppresses their psychological traits. There is also less opportunity for control over the medium - the way in which a person experiences the game - and so it could be a threat to social and societal stability.
(I invite you to don your tin-foil hat in response to the above paragraph, but I've tried to avoid making a conspiratorial point.)
It's no surprise that gaming has a highly addictive potential to those who are thus predisposed. The question is; would such an addiction be a problem? Where TV addiction is generally harmless to others, I think games serve to enhance the strengths and weaknesses already imbued in individuals by our society. The root causes of game-influenced behaviour are therefore much more fundamental than the game itself, and blaming games for the actions of individuals who are already thinking far outside the accepted norms of morality is a bit short-sighted.
You need to turn off the console and do your English homework. Games are a wonderful distraction and far more engaging and active than watching TV, but you shouldn't do either to the extent that you ignore homework and study, as you so obviously have.
For more support of this point, read Warrior Girls [michaelsokolove.com] by Michael Sokolove. The book is about sports injuries among school age girls playing sports, and more specifically about tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL.) The tears happen disproportionately to girls, and put them out of action for 9 months to 1 year. Frequently, and more to the parent's point, these athletes are so driven and motivated to play (mostly soccer in this book) that they try to complete the rehab faster than they should and suf
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
According to your criteria, second-hand sports addiction is very common. Guys will stop in the middle of sex because their stupid hockey game is on, or they'll find an excuse to go find a TV on their WEDDING DAY because the soccer game is on. Preachers hide mini tvs in their pulpits so they can keep track of the football game while they're preaching. Is any of this any better?
But to call it addiction in today's legal and social climate is to help "enable" the people who do it, just as calling morbidly obese people addicted to food would. It's time we took a real look at addiction, and admitted that there is always a choice involved - even for those who claim they can't stop. You can be darned sure that if you held a gun to their head, and told them that you'll pull the trigger if they don't stop, they will, if they've just seen you blow away the person next to them for the same reason.
To claim that there is no choice involved, ever, is to open up the door to pedophiles claiming they're "addicted" to having sex with 3-year-olds. Well, if they're "addicted", then they can't help themselves, and we have no right to punish them... do you REALLY want to go there? Especially since there IS more evidence that pedophilia is an addiction than that gaming is... What about the person who shoplifts because they're "addicted" to bling? The person who defrauds millions because they're "addicted" to a certain social lifestyle and the endorphin high it gives them to lord it over eveyone? They don't need to be treated for addiction - they need to grow up.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
So, why are so many adults behaving childishly? Follow the endorphins. "It feels good" / gives an endorphin high - is NOT sufficient reason to lay a claim of addiction. The phony "disease" of kleptomania is just one example of how we make poor impulse control socially acceptable by mislabeling it. If you have poor impulse control and decide that you don't want to delay gratification, that's your choice. Live with the consequences. Drink yourself to death, eat yourself to death, game yourself to death, pile on credit card and mortgage debt to your financial ruin because you want it all, and you want it NOW - if you don't care, why should anyone else? But don't excuse it by saying you're addicted. After all, you LIKE it that way. Don't ask others to bail you out until you've learned the hard lessons, because only YOU can learn them, and that means YOU have to decide you're fed up with things as they are. Nobody else can make that choice for you, ever.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
Too many adults in this generation never really grew up. "Psychological addiction" is a joke. Label it what it really is - poor impulse control - by people who refuse to take responsibility for ruining their lives. THEN maybe we'll be in a better position to actually treat it, by confronting people with the fact that they need to learn to take control of their lives instead of playing the victim card all the time. Example: impulsive eaters are claiming discrimination because they're now being charged for the second seat. They should shut their mouths... actually, they should have shut them 20 years ago, after that 5th piece of cake. Funny how we don't accept that with little children, but in adults, we slap the "psychological addiction" label on it, and poor impulse control is suddenly socially excusable. Fuck that - and
Pedophiles, who should be took out back and shot IMNSHO, are hard-wired to be attracted to children. They can not be re-wired. You may modify their behavior to an extent(BTW, my solution actually does modify their behavior) but you cannot alter their attraction to children.
At the risk of being labeled as someone who sympathizes with child molesters, I would just like to point out that there is a very large difference between being attracted to something and acting on that attraction. In my day to day life I find myself to be very attracted to a number of women that I consider "hot". This however does not create some uncontrollable urge for me to hit on them or follow them down a dark alley and rape them. There is a distinction between those who are attracted to children and those who act on that attraction. If you had your way, a lot of innocent people who haven't actually done anything wrong would be executed.
As you so rightly say, a lot of our desires and impulses are hardwired. Sexual orientation, preference. If you suddenly realised one day that you were sexually attracted to children, would you kill yourself on the spot?
>>>I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball
You've never heard of Olympians? Only difference, instead of staying up late, they get up early. 3 am in the morning; spend all day in the gym until suppertime, and go to bed. Someone like skater Michelle Kwan has been following that routine for ~20 years now. That's called "dedication" in the sport-loving media which profits off sports broadcasts, but it's really an addiction.
The fans are addicts too - dressing in weird clothes, spending thousands of dollars traveling around the country to follow the teams and/or buy huge wall-sized televisions to watch them late into the night. But for some reason we celebrate that addiction.
Exercise bulimia [wikipedia.org] could be an example. Granted, it's a bigger, more complex problem than just 'really liking exercise', but thought I'd throw that out there for the sake of argument.
Yes they do. People HAVE died from taking sports to extremes. Long distance runners who die from exhaustion or getting lost. Weight lifters who are crushed under weights. What about racers who go just a bit to fast? Taking the sport to extremes, same as gaming for 18 hours is extreem.
Except that I gamed for longer then that this easter weekend and did NOT die. Sure, I took some brakes for the toilet but more or less spent a full day from dawn to past midnight in the game.
Anyway, wouldn't it be more logical to connect addiction to games to addiction to being a sports FAN (as in a watcher of sports)? Is Holland alone in coming to a standstill because of mysterious illness whenever the national team plays?
Yes they do. People HAVE died from taking sports to extremes. Long distance runners who die from exhaustion or getting lost. Weight lifters who are crushed under weights. What about racers who go just a bit to fast? Taking the sport to extremes, same as gaming for 18 hours is extreem.
Golfers who have been killed by their wives for never being around, bowlers and softball players die of cirrhosis of the liver (the drink more than they play!), hunters who are shot by Vice Presidents, and then there's the tiddlywink players who are just killed for being sissies.
You are right, but at the same time... unlike many of the other major media outlets, they actually do have a fair amount of what I would consider reasoned discourse. They are not spot on all the time, they still have a fair amount of bullshit from every side. However, its one of the few places I have seen an in depth discussion on any topic that wasn't all sound bites and frothing at the mouth.... look at shows like "on point" or "Talk of the nation" and they really do at least seem to try to avoid being ju
media (Score:5, Insightful)
based on very little evidence. I think that is especially how the media often sells stories.
Really ?? I can't believe my eyes. /sarcasm.
Re:media (Score:5, Insightful)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently called the Internet a "cesspool" of false information. I think he was wrong. I think that the disinformation present on the internet is merely a reflection of the disinformation, poor reporting and outright lies which have become pervasive throughout the media industry.
My firm belief is that in an organisation, industry or society, the rot starts and the top and works its way down. When it comes to information and sensationalism, the national newspapers are the ones to blame for allowing standards to slip as far as they have. In their effort to fish for eyeballs they can sell to advertisers, they have allowed stories to be come more emotional, sensationalist and exaggerated, all while allowing accuracy, fact checking and the honest truth to fall by the wayside.
When it comes to video games or any other activity seen as "fringe", it's easy for newspapers to spin up a story demonising the games and the people who play them. They want eyeballs, and if associating video games with addictive substances like crack cocaine can get them some, then that is exactly what journalists and editors will do.
Keep in mind that most journalists nowadays, in the 20-35 age bracket, will probably have a games console and HD-TV in their home. They probably have a laptop and grab all the latest music, tv show and movie torrents. They probably (almost certainly) go clubbing, sleep around, drink heavily and take illegal drugs. Yet these very same people write stories and reports that demonise, sensationalise, vilify, and condemn every last one of these activities. They do this because it pays the money they need to fund the very lifestyles they are decrying.
This rot has started at the top. With the newspaper industry. We have allowed them, time and again, to publish rot such as "video game addiction" and get away with it, with not a pip of objection from anyone. The game industry has bent over backwards, creating highly conservative [slashdot.org] rating agencies like the ESRB to self censor its produce. While violence is par for the course,(albiet towards aliens, Nazis or zombies) swear words in video games remain unusual to this day; "Fuck" is still reserved for only a handful of titles, and I cannot recall a single instance of the word "cunt" in any title I have ever played. Sex in video games, simply does not happen. Even Rockstar cut out the Hot Coffee content.
But it's not enough. The media will never be satisfied. They will never acknowledge the extraordinary efforts which the video game industry has gone to to mainstream its content. To the media, video games represent an easy target, the attacking of which will produce enough of a spectacle to attract the eyeballs they need. Video games, and the people who play them, will never be given a break by a media industry that has become, in effect, a established and tyrannical bully, preying on those who cannot defend themselves for its own gain.
In short, newspapers are rotten. Stop reading them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently called the Internet a "cesspool" of false information. I think he was wrong. I think that the disinformation present on the internet is merely a reflection of the disinformation, poor reporting and outright lies which have become pervasive throughout the media industry.
That doesn't mean he was wrong - it just means that everything else is a cesspool of false info too!
I cannot recall a single instance of the word "cunt" in any title I have ever played
I'm pretty sure The Darkness has it.
I don't see the big deal about all of this anyway. Some people are easily addicted/obsessed by things. I've spent periods in my life where I'd play Counter-Strike or MUD every night til 6AM. I think my Counter-Strike obsession was overtaken by a photography obsession, and strangely enough the 3 times in my life that I was addicted to MUDding, I ended up with a girlfriend a
Re:media (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly, you have never heard of Slashdot.
Parent
no, read more of them (Score:5, Insightful)
there is no such thing as a fount of absolutely impartial, absolutely trustworthy information. so go ahead and watch fox news... then listen to the bbc. then pravda. then read a chinese news site. then a venezuelan one. then an iranian one. finish it off with pbs
in this way, by being exposed to as many different half truths as possible, from as many different sources, do you begin to actually see the real truth
meanwhile, your prescription to stop exposing yourself to the media actually makes you more vulnerable to propaganda, because you have nothing to judge against what little slivers of info that do reach you
this is the value of a free press: let anyone publish any goddamn lie they want. the truth will bubble up the surface, atop a rotting festering pit of lies. this is only possible with a free press. in countries without a free press, you are breeding weak flabby partisan minds who can not know the truth
a free press, sleazebuckets of media (which is the way its always been, by the way, there was no glorious past of impartial media), is really the only way it can ever be. because there is no such thing as an absolutely impartial and trustworhty news source. they all pander to our lower instincts. and only through repeated exposure to this bullshit do you develop a healthy bullshit meter. and we all need that, badly
so bring on the lies, the half truths, the propaganda, the demagoguery from all ideological sides. atop that festering pile of bullshit we will sit, with a good lock on the real truth. its the only way to discover thr truth, the only way media can work. the more free it is, the more festering lies out there, the better for your understanding of the truth. paradoxical, but true
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the truth is never that complicated or deep (Score:4, Interesting)
your search for the "real truth" belies a cognitive weakness of yours. you either have a fantastical devotion to the "truth" being something like the da vinci code or your average hollywood potboiler political thriller. when reality is always much more mundane. conspiracy theories are the mark of a weak mind, or wonderful entertainment, but are never the truth
or you already have it "figured out", and you are attempting to fit the facts to your preconceived notions, "the truth" as it were. and you are unsatisfied, because your preconcieved notions are wrong, fringe. and so you react to the media antagonistically, all of it, because you can't find the support for your wrong ideas that you desire
people who reject ALL of the media, and speak of "the media", as if it were some monolithic edifice allayed against them, are really speaking of their own fringe ideological identity, not about the reality of the media. the way you speak belies the fact that whatever problems media companies have with the truth, you have greater problems with the truth. it is you has the problem, not that bogeyman (dum dum DUM), "the media"
as for 9/11, i left work at the world trade center building #5 at 9 pm on monday 9/10/01, heard a guitar player by the fountain in the dark, looked back at him, then up at the towers, and went into church street subway station and went home and went to sleep, and woke up late to my telephone ringing off the hook the next morning. i never made it back to that job. what happened? some islamic nutjobs highjacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, out of simple spite and hate
that's the truth. really. sorry there is no hollywood plot twist involving jack ryan and the illuminati
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Re:that's your counterargument? (Score:4, Informative)
Totally wrong. Moreover, provably wrong. Poll a random set of individuals on the age of Planet Earth, which is an estimated 4.55 billion years. In the US at least, the answer you are likely to get by averaging is closer to 2.5 billion years, as quite a lot of people will say 6000 years. In fact, if you decided to cheat by restricting your sampling to academics or scientists, your answer now would be different from answer obtained 100 years ago, and will probably be different to answers obtained 100 years from now. Why? Because this is no way to determine the age of the Earth.
In fact, poll people about the number of planets in the solar system. You'll probably get an answer between 8 and 9. But I guarantee you it will not be an integer value, say 8.713452, which will be a fairly strange answer for the number of planets. Moreover, any answer you get will have much less to do with the idea of a "planet" that you might think.
Again, go back to the Emperor of China's nose. Let's take the Last Emperor [wikipedia.org] as an example. Suppose I went around asking people what they thought the length of his nose was? Would the average of the answers somehow converge on the length of his particular nose? Why not someone else? In fact, would they converge on the length of of the nose of anyone who was ever alive?
Now finally go back to the population of China itself. Suppose I asked around. What will people's guesses average to? Say it's 1.3 billion. Am I to take this as a good value for the population of China, which is again an integer? It's only accurate to at best within 50,000 people or 3.8% of the total. That's a pretty wide margin when it comes to such an important number. Do I hope that the answers somehow converge after yet more guesses to the correct one. Will the overestimations cancel out the underestimation? On what basis can I make this claim? The answer is, none at all.
As I said before, I think statistics should probably be taken off most curricula. They seem to induce a rather misguided faith in the primacy of the Gaussian bell curve, and have lead to it application in areas which it is totally inappropriate. Here's a small fact which is completely and totally overlooked in 99.9% of all statistics courses taught. The Gaussian Bell curve is the result of Central Limit Theorem [wikipedia.org]. This theorem states that if one averages the results of sufficiently many random, uncorrelated measurements, then the results will approximate a Gaussian Bell curve.
Random. Uncorrelated. Measurements. If one of these conditions is not satisfied, then no Gaussian Bell curve will result, and the average of the results is meaningless. The answers you get when asking about the population of China, the age of the Earth, or the length of the Emperor's nose will be neither random or uncorrellated, and there will be no accuracy from averaging them. You are in what Nassim Taleb calls the fourth quadrant, and are essentially engaged in numerology. There are very real limits to statistics [edge.org] which everyone using them should be ware of.
It is not a simple concept. It is a naive and very dangerous one. I do not accept it because I have studied statistics and I know its power and its limit
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Bring on the scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm extremely pleased to see increasing research in games and their effect on our minds. It would be naive to suggets that they don't have any affect on us at all, and I for one am interested in seeing some (hopefully) independent research with meaningful results.
Re:Bring on the scientists (Score:5, Funny)
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Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not new (Score:5, Interesting)
People have played games for thousands of years. The only difference now is they've got more sophisticated.
Sophisticated is one way of putting it. Another would be to point out they didn't spend thousands of hours grinding pawns so they could finally take down that bishop.
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Re: Grinding Pawns... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what mod your post deserves, so I'll post a Whoosh comment, but at least one that's not sarcastic.
We spend thousands of hours grinding *moves*, which includes pawns.
Re:Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
The line between tactics and strategy is blurry. Chess primarily teaches you to play chess, it doesn't automatically make you better at long-term planning.
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Re:Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need a little common sense. An obsession about anything is bad. If you spend hours and hours of your time _______ (gaming, watching TCM, taping music off the radio, drinking alcohol, polishing your car, playing cards, watching the stock market, ...) to the point where you end-up damaging your _____ (job, marriage, grades), then you have a problem.
At one point or another I've been addicted to most of the stuff in my list. The item I was obsessed with was the symptom, not the problem. The problem was me and lack-of-self control. Everything should be done in moderation.
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Re:Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
The item I was obsessed with was the symptom, not the problem. The problem was me and lack-of-self control.
I can't speak for anyone else, of course... but I've found that every time I've become engrossed in something like that to the exclusion of all else, it was escapism. I was trying to avoid fixing something broken in my life. I would say this was true even as a child playing video games for hours; I could relate more easily to the computer than to other people because of my [lack of] upbringing. If you're ignoring your girlfriend to play a video game, you probably need a new girlfriend. Et cetera.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Likewise, and well put.
This gets to be a particular problem for me sometimes because of two additional factors - I have a daughter who is not allowed to watch me play (she's 4), and when tired I have a tendency to feel depressed. So I wait for her to go to bed, then start playing, which
Well (Score:3, Funny)
I could tell you the real story behind gaming addiction but I need to lvl up my human mage to lvl 80.
Absurd (Score:5, Funny)
Symptom, not a cause. (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe it because it it male dominated (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it very curious how addiction studies focus mainly on male dominated activities. I am sure if females did it it would not be called an addiction.
Shoe fetishism is rarely called an addiction but I have seen women who spend their whole selves looking for the ugliest shoes.
Shopaholic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Compulsive shopping is most certainly regonized as an adiction. As for OCD, that is often called a woman's disease.
And gaming hasn't been male dominated for a long time. According to some survey's there are even more female gamers then male gamers.
Certainly in the MMO I play voicechat seems to be female roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the time. Considering that some females might be reluctant to reveal their are females online and the percentage of females playing Lotro might be as high as half the population if not m
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah but, come on... it's voice chat. Of course it'll be dominated by women.
(Kidding!! Sorry honey...)
Re:I believe it because it it male dominated (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>Don't you realise women are perfect and deserve special treatment?
Actually you're not far from the truth. Women are "perfect" in the eyes of the mega-corporations because they spend a lot of money shopping. Therefore a shoe addiction is not advertised as an addiction, but as a hobby or "pleasure" or "fashionable" on the morning talk shows and other corporate sources.
Parent
Re:I believe it because it it male dominated (Score:5, Insightful)
But a girl who spends 18 hours a day playing WoW is even more anomalous than a guy doing the same. A guy who does that is "just a nerd," where a girl doing that has "serious problems" and needs help, asap. Dorm RAs will try to intervene and get the girl involved in the dorm bake sale next week, but completely ignore the guys in the next room who haven't stopped playing Halo (or showered) in three days.
Also, god damn it's hard to find a pair of regular, black, work-appropriate shoes that don't have 4 inch heels or are ugly as sin. Few things infuriate me more than shoe shopping.
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New, poorly understood media, are scary (Score:5, Interesting)
So far, everything that our youth had a fascination with and was hardly, if at all, understood by parents has been demonized and blamed for all sorts of problems.
Think back (ok, read up in your history books) about so called "bad books". Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn twisted and warped young minds in ways that are all too similar to what is now attributed to games. They set bad examples, they make kids act out what they read, they have no moral, show no ill effects of bad behaviour... then the kids that read those books grew up and, lo and behold, they didn't turn out to be maniacs and generally unfit to lead a normal life. The hype dwindled down, and now it's part of "America's cultural heritage".
Fast forwards to radio. It was new, it was exciting, kids (and even some adults) spent hours in front of the box listening. When Wells' "War of the Worlds" was broadcast, people went into hysteria. And promptly, the radio was the source of all evil. It would cause us to be unable to discriminate between fiction and fact, it would twist our poor minds and warp us... guess what, the radio generation grew up, they didn't turn out to be morons, and the hype went away.
TV was next. The picture boxes that ruined our eyes (ok, those old ones maybe did), that showed us braindead stories and turned us all into zombies. The TV generation grew up...
D&D. Anyone remember Patricia Pulling [wikipedia.org], the Jack Thompson of the 80s? Yet D&D gamers grew up and they don't run amok in our streets fighting imaginary orcs and dragons.
Now it's games. And the gamers will grow up and we'll find out that it's not so bad... in other words, just give it time. In 10 years, nobody's gonna talk about it anymore. But don't worry. We'll find a new scapegoat when our kids go nuts due to poor parenting and mobbing in schools.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It all comes back to control.
Some people, for whatever reason, think they have a moral obligation to tell us how we should live our lives (don't watch tv, don't play D&D, don't smoke marijuana, don't drink beer, don't have sex). I'm sick of their bullshit, and I think we should viciously lash them as petit-tyrants trying to take-away liberty.
Re:New, poorly understood media, are scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, "discussion" changed its meaning. Earlier it was "evaluating the other side's arguments, offering counterarguments, finding a common ground and something both sides can work with". Today it's "show them idiots that I AM RIGHT!"
And I'm not only talking about afternoon talkshows and newsgroup flamewars. I even see it in scientific communities where I used to have very insightful discussions that actually ran along the original meaning. Both sides offered arguments that the other side could understand, both sides evaluated the other side's arguments, some were good, some were bad, some were better than mine, some were something I could accept as a compromise... and in the end, we walked away with something that both sides could accept.
Today, even in circles that you'd expect to be a wee bit more sophisticated than the guest lineup of the average Springer show, you are faced with people that want to impress you with their (often enough false) use of technical terms and jargon to show you just how stupid you are that you can't simply accept their point of view as the only truth.
It kinda saddens me. When did "being able to compromise" become "being too soft to get it your way"?
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Funny thing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If I was a kid, and ended up practising and playing tennis or golf for the majority of my day, got really good, was able to compete and win tournaments and make money, I would be considered a natural, a child prodigy with a promising future.
Likewise, if I played chess every day for as long as possible, got really good and started competing and winning tournaments internationally, making money etc. I would be seen as a great example of skill etc.
If I live and breathe business, every hour of every day, driving myself to make a fortune, to become wealthy and successful, I would be applauded.
Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it.
So, if a kid spent the majority of his waking day playing games, gets exceptionally good at it, and was able to enter tournaments, win prize money, travel the world etc., would we then talk about his addiction, or would we be talking about his achievement?
It seems to me that what really matters is the result of your "addiction", and the public's perception in terms of its "worth", not the fact that you're addicted. These stories about "game addiction" look at the worst examples and apply them to all, and that makes as much sense as looking at a sports star who burns himself out as an example of what sport does to you.
Most of this is likely spurred by the opinion that gaming is simply a waste of time. When the value of gaming (in terms of wealth generation, improving mental ability, skill etc.) increases/becomes more well known, the less we'll hear about the evils of game addiction. So, bring on more studies to look at gaming's benefits, and bring on more investment into pro-gaming.
Re:Funny thing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that many of these "addictions" you list can be considered harmful, actually. There are far more child prodigy instrumentalists out there than there are job openings for them. For every one that is lauded for his achievements, seen as a great example of skill etc. there are ten people who have spent an extreme amount of effort for very little return. This is why it's cruel to try to lead your child down that path.
Music is the crown example. But it's very much the case with chess, sports, novels, etc.
I think people would be happier if the ideals of Amateurism made a comeback. We might even get better art in some ways.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I think people would be happier if the ideals of Amateurism made a comeback.
Particularly in the field of pornography. I'm sick of paying inflated prices for rubbish movies.
you paint a rather naive picture (Score:4, Insightful)
in all of the endeavours you mention, 99% of people don't make any success in the field
and this bit is especially ridiculous:
"Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it."
nobody takes drugs and makes great art. rather, some great artists, after already having great talent, enter a stage of self-destructive hubris, and start wasting their talent on drugs. classic correlation!=causation
your understanding of the relationship between art and drugs is kind of like the cargo cults of the south pacific: that if you build bamboo control towers and bamboo radar arrays, airplanes full of cargo will magically appear out of the sky. saying that taking drugs will let you make art is exactly the same sort if foolishness
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yeah but (Score:4, Insightful)
there are millions of hunter s thompsons in regards to self-destructive behavior. thats nothing rare or unique. hunter s thompson, meanwhile, IS rare and unique, but not because of his self-destructive behavior, but because of his communicative skills, on top of his self-destructive behavior
but people glorify his self-destructive behavior, when thats not what makes him a great artist
my whole point is that the glorification of the self-destruction is wrong
if you want to be a great artist, you'll create art. anything you snort along the way is baggage, not some intrinsic part of your art form... which is exactly what you said. i'm just trying to do away with the glorification of self-destruction
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Games vs TV (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect this may come across as slightly trollish, but hear me out:
The principle difference between gaming and TV is interaction - a higher level of engagement or involvement, and thus immersion, that a passive medium like TV can't surpass.
When discussing addiction, I think it's worth noting that - according to the criteria used by most detractors - TV is also addictive. However, it is not considered harmful enough to be of equivalent concern. You're not likely to die from all-night sessions of Battlestar Galactica or whatever.
I think the real issue is about more than just addiction though. I think it's down to the level of passivity or activity required to engage with the medium, and the control over the experience.
TV viewing, by its very nature, trains us to passively accept whatever is fed to us. It's in the nature for society to accept and promote whatever maintains the status-quo - a survival trait, if you will - and something which encourages passivity is ultimately a benefit to that. There are also mechanisms for controlling the viewer's experience - you can't choose to change the ending to a film, for example.
Gaming, on the other hand, requires engagement, activity, evaluation and decision-making, even in its more basic forms. It also trains people not to let things be, but to strive to overcome obstacles and improve their environment. Whether this encourages socially positive or negative actions depends on the type of game in which the person engages, which in turn is influenced by their social predisposition. It enhances rather than suppresses their psychological traits. There is also less opportunity for control over the medium - the way in which a person experiences the game - and so it could be a threat to social and societal stability.
(I invite you to don your tin-foil hat in response to the above paragraph, but I've tried to avoid making a conspiratorial point.)
It's no surprise that gaming has a highly addictive potential to those who are thus predisposed. The question is; would such an addiction be a problem? Where TV addiction is generally harmless to others, I think games serve to enhance the strengths and weaknesses already imbued in individuals by our society. The root causes of game-influenced behaviour are therefore much more fundamental than the game itself, and blaming games for the actions of individuals who are already thinking far outside the accepted norms of morality is a bit short-sighted.
Re:Games vs TV (Score:4, Insightful)
Your parents have a very good counterargument:
You need to turn off the console and do your English homework. Games are a wonderful distraction and far more engaging and active than watching TV, but you shouldn't do either to the extent that you ignore homework and study, as you so obviously have.
Parent
Re:Sports addiction = games addiction (Score:5, Interesting)
people don't die from playing sports for 18 hours a day.
No, they wear out their bodies.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For more support of this point, read Warrior Girls [michaelsokolove.com] by Michael Sokolove. The book is about sports injuries among school age girls playing sports, and more specifically about tearing the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL.) The tears happen disproportionately to girls, and put them out of action for 9 months to 1 year. Frequently, and more to the parent's point, these athletes are so driven and motivated to play (mostly soccer in this book) that they try to complete the rehab faster than they should and suf
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sports addiction = games addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Drop by a 24 hour gym I guess...
Time to stop enabling spoiled brats (Score:5, Insightful)
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
According to your criteria, second-hand sports addiction is very common. Guys will stop in the middle of sex because their stupid hockey game is on, or they'll find an excuse to go find a TV on their WEDDING DAY because the soccer game is on. Preachers hide mini tvs in their pulpits so they can keep track of the football game while they're preaching. Is any of this any better?
But to call it addiction in today's legal and social climate is to help "enable" the people who do it, just as calling morbidly obese people addicted to food would. It's time we took a real look at addiction, and admitted that there is always a choice involved - even for those who claim they can't stop. You can be darned sure that if you held a gun to their head, and told them that you'll pull the trigger if they don't stop, they will, if they've just seen you blow away the person next to them for the same reason.
To claim that there is no choice involved, ever, is to open up the door to pedophiles claiming they're "addicted" to having sex with 3-year-olds. Well, if they're "addicted", then they can't help themselves, and we have no right to punish them ... do you REALLY want to go there? Especially since there IS more evidence that pedophilia is an addiction than that gaming is... What about the person who shoplifts because they're "addicted" to bling? The person who defrauds millions because they're "addicted" to a certain social lifestyle and the endorphin high it gives them to lord it over eveyone? They don't need to be treated for addiction - they need to grow up.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
So, why are so many adults behaving childishly? Follow the endorphins. "It feels good" / gives an endorphin high - is NOT sufficient reason to lay a claim of addiction. The phony "disease" of kleptomania is just one example of how we make poor impulse control socially acceptable by mislabeling it. If you have poor impulse control and decide that you don't want to delay gratification, that's your choice. Live with the consequences. Drink yourself to death, eat yourself to death, game yourself to death, pile on credit card and mortgage debt to your financial ruin because you want it all, and you want it NOW - if you don't care, why should anyone else? But don't excuse it by saying you're addicted. After all, you LIKE it that way. Don't ask others to bail you out until you've learned the hard lessons, because only YOU can learn them, and that means YOU have to decide you're fed up with things as they are. Nobody else can make that choice for you, ever.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
Too many adults in this generation never really grew up. "Psychological addiction" is a joke. Label it what it really is - poor impulse control - by people who refuse to take responsibility for ruining their lives. THEN maybe we'll be in a better position to actually treat it, by confronting people with the fact that they need to learn to take control of their lives instead of playing the victim card all the time. Example: impulsive eaters are claiming discrimination because they're now being charged for the second seat. They should shut their mouths ... actually, they should have shut them 20 years ago, after that 5th piece of cake. Funny how we don't accept that with little children, but in adults, we slap the "psychological addiction" label on it, and poor impulse control is suddenly socially excusable. Fuck that - and
Parent
Re:Time to stop enabling spoiled brats (Score:5, Insightful)
At the risk of being labeled as someone who sympathizes with child molesters, I would just like to point out that there is a very large difference between being attracted to something and acting on that attraction. In my day to day life I find myself to be very attracted to a number of women that I consider "hot". This however does not create some uncontrollable urge for me to hit on them or follow them down a dark alley and rape them. There is a distinction between those who are attracted to children and those who act on that attraction. If you had your way, a lot of innocent people who haven't actually done anything wrong would be executed.
Parent
Re:Time to stop enabling spoiled brats (Score:5, Interesting)
As you so rightly say, a lot of our desires and impulses are hardwired. Sexual orientation, preference. If you suddenly realised one day that you were sexually attracted to children, would you kill yourself on the spot?
Parent
Re:Sports addiction = games addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball
You've never heard of Olympians? Only difference, instead of staying up late, they get up early. 3 am in the morning; spend all day in the gym until suppertime, and go to bed. Someone like skater Michelle Kwan has been following that routine for ~20 years now. That's called "dedication" in the sport-loving media which profits off sports broadcasts, but it's really an addiction.
The fans are addicts too - dressing in weird clothes, spending thousands of dollars traveling around the country to follow the teams and/or buy huge wall-sized televisions to watch them late into the night. But for some reason we celebrate that addiction.
Parent
Exercise bulimia (Score:3, Informative)
How common is sports addiction anyway?
Exercise bulimia [wikipedia.org] could be an example. Granted, it's a bigger, more complex problem than just 'really liking exercise', but thought I'd throw that out there for the sake of argument.
Eh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes they do. People HAVE died from taking sports to extremes. Long distance runners who die from exhaustion or getting lost. Weight lifters who are crushed under weights. What about racers who go just a bit to fast? Taking the sport to extremes, same as gaming for 18 hours is extreem.
Except that I gamed for longer then that this easter weekend and did NOT die. Sure, I took some brakes for the toilet but more or less spent a full day from dawn to past midnight in the game.
Anyway, wouldn't it be more logical to connect addiction to games to addiction to being a sports FAN (as in a watcher of sports)? Is Holland alone in coming to a standstill because of mysterious illness whenever the national team plays?
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Re:Eh? (Score:5, Funny)
I took some brakes for the toilet
Incidentally, how fast were you going on the toilet?
Parent
Re:Eh? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes they do. People HAVE died from taking sports to extremes. Long distance runners who die from exhaustion or getting lost. Weight lifters who are crushed under weights. What about racers who go just a bit to fast? Taking the sport to extremes, same as gaming for 18 hours is extreem.
Golfers who have been killed by their wives for never being around, bowlers and softball players die of cirrhosis of the liver (the drink more than they play!), hunters who are shot by Vice Presidents, and then there's the tiddlywink players who are just killed for being sissies.
All sports can be rough!
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
people don't die from playing sports for 18 hours a day.
Actually they can die from playing sports for 18 hours a day, but they won't because they will get tired before they can kill themselves.
Like smoking, it's a slow death because it's so subtle and enjoyable. I don't think any smokers would enjoy living in a room full of smokes though.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right, but at the same time... unlike many of the other major media outlets, they actually do have a fair amount of what I would consider reasoned discourse. They are not spot on all the time, they still have a fair amount of bullshit from every side. However, its one of the few places I have seen an in depth discussion on any topic that wasn't all sound bites and frothing at the mouth.... look at shows like "on point" or "Talk of the nation" and they really do at least seem to try to avoid being ju