Oh, boy. This joke again.
Ben Cost, you flirtatious troglodyte.
Inserting social malaise into a scientific finding that nobody needed hard proof to accept, let alone understand. Can you dial back the agenda, just a smidge?
After all, it did come from a bunch of Chinese scientists no doubt. They’re paid by their government–a government more interested in regulating a leisure-based industry for the sake of their labor union idealism.
Look, I’m not one to deny the existence of problems, I just refuse to go along with them having but one root source. There are always more than a handful of possibilities.
In this case, news outlets gravitated to the wrong one. Worse, they harped on one version and decided to scapegoat it and make readers feel blessed that they’re “not one of them”.
“Diversity and inclusivity alongside equity. PUT ‘EM TOGETHER!”
Cost left out that unequivocal fact about blowing sexual energy: use or lose, true, but that’s the same as any exertion.
And writing is one such exertion, you chundering chowderhead!
Attack of the Punctuation Grays
“I can’t think of anything to write!” wasn’t a consistent-enough instance in those journals that people were writing to indicate that exactly 90% of them were somehow incapable all the time. It happened to them on occasion.
Their minds went blank because the gut-brain connection didn’t have enough calories from which to charge but one neuron. Are you telling me that’s the baseline of all humanity? Then, how do you explain fire?
It happened on occasion to everyone in the experiment. The numbers were mistranslated. We treat the people who underwent an eye-opening clinical study as mistranslated numbers. Now who’s playing games!
They got that way by being physically exhausted and in no mood to write. Why else do any of these crack established authors attest to doing their best work early in the morning and not the middle of the night?
And yet, thanks to news spin and internet discourse being a hivemind of trolls, we have gray Woe-Jacks with blank computer punctuation marks as faces. And we all think everyone else is one of them.
So much for encouraging my peeps to socialize. Like I’m one to talk, at least at first. When it came time to reapplying myself and restoring my physical edge after two years, I did the following:
I applied to a standard retail job.
That’s right.
I’m at least on my feet (or kneeling). Not before the man–I’m there for payola as zeroth priority, but that means doing well to maintain sales (first priority).
Better than spending cash at the gym to be active. I can do both, now that I actually have money. You shouldn’t rule out part-time work if it generates net operating capital for a later enterprise.
Sounds like I’ve “become one of them”. When I first saw this video about seeming lack of inner monologue, I was downright petrified. Then, it turns out she was jerking us around in the first half. For once in my life, I thank God that she was.
The popular (mis)interpretation and assumption of this study befits the worst possible manner of prejudice. Believing that 30% of people are mindless automatons is somehow perhaps ironically comforting, the hallmark of the most stuck-up of persons.
Think of it. No, seriously–think of it!
It erases someone’s humanity quicker and more readily than any racial epithet. It lets you downplay and just disregard one’s very speech as mechanical, which deflates the need to challenge any contradictory notions or defamatory remarks levied at you.
Faking and masking an inner narration? Why not? Monkey see, monkey do. Since this (not so) groundbreaking study, there has been a cavalcade of logical fallacy-sniffing, fedora-twirling pachyderms whose first recourse against dissenters is to describe them as unable to speak, let alone argue about matters that they alone are capable of researching and forming opinions on.
That paper has fed into netizens’ proximity-induced paranoia and inability to envision others’ plights. If all of this is true, then how come we’re really so worried over reproductive rates? I wouldn’t want these people to breed, either. God already promised it won’t happen again, okay? Can we just stick to not trying to make one ourselves?
Although I understand the sentiment that video games have siphoned time from genuine physical activity and T Counts are on the seeming decline, they’re on the ebb and flow at large with no singular culprit. Meanwhile, I have to pretend that I have an inner monologue at all times, ceaselessly when, in fact, the points at which I’m not is whenever I start to think about people who are that insufferably callous.
I’m starting to worry about being in danger of not having an original thought simply by overthinking this. Isn’t that the real culprit behind flaccidity? Thinking too much about everything but what you’re trying to do?
When Did it Really Start to Get Bad, Anyway?
I think, for me, it began when I realized that Babs Gordon is a hot redhead. So then, I stopped pursuing other chicks. The end.
Just kidding!
I just learned to not be so forward after several embarrassing hard knocks. It grew into not bothering to try anymore, which became pathological.
So, when exactly did video games start doing this to us? I have a goofy theory: it isn’t because they’re hogging time. It’s that, once you’re done and recoup some, you make dark assumptions about activities that articles like these otherwise endorse.
Take Football for instance. We could have had Metallica or W.A.S.P. or Manowar or Sabaton or Anthrax or Megadeth or John Michael Thor or any of these guys at the halftime show. The most recent act that was worth the time, however, was Katy Perry.
Again, horndog. Of course, it was before her psyche derailed, forcing a retreat to Kentucky, but again–it never truly stops.
I say that to say this: Football is that all-American rugby-based sport where everyone is a Cimmerian, everyone’s a Captain Kirk, and everyone else around the world is just scratching their heads, especially about the rules and refs. At it should be!
But, if you habitually played video games and got one of the poorer representations thereto….
WARNING: DROP SPEAKER VOLUME TO 5%~!
(By the way, there are two things I recoil from: the Sony Corporation and Las Vegas. PUT ‘EM TOGETHER!)
…You’d bow out as well. You’d blow your time on something else that’s somewhere near sane. Like Soccer!
Where they run back and forth for fifteen minutes at a time before someone even manages to TRY TO SCORE ONE FUCKING POINT and that red cards aren’t about getting decent deals at Target.
Aren’t you lucky that International Superstar Soccer 64 is flat-out awesome, enough for us to ignore Konami’s other attempts at relevance on the N64? Aren’t you so lucky, SOCK HER?
I get it. Trust me, lots of dolts prefer outside activity of some kind. We do, too.
But, we hesitate because those get poor press just the same. It sort of came to us upon seeing so many modern sports video games getting churned out in charnel houses ad nauseam:
Dude can’t crack a joke? Raz0rfist, cut him slack–he hasn’t covered a humorous topic in a DECADE!
What we’re seeing is a sudden lack of Bedroom Bushido throughout an industrialized society full of trains and automated chamber pots, a major phenomenon you can’t quite peg to one source.
Yet, Cost tries. That is called “Single Issue Psychology“.
Writhing Snakes
Even at this nascent phase, Linkara got that Alan Moore is a loophole.
“I’M A BLOODY GENIUS!”
Moore & Bolland’s “The Killing Joke”, for all its many faults that keep it from being an alleged classic, does the good and eviscerates the concept of but one turning point in someone’s life that drags them into evil.
Evil is a deed. It is a deed that drags down victims with or without a convenient motive or even a forethought. Evil is never a state of being, however. That’s a stretch.
It’s a greater stretch to believe you will start being evil out of one little thing. It’s likely evil to conduct a social experiment where that is proposed. Evil thinks big. All the time. Everything gets weighed by relative size.
At any rate, “The Killing Joke” explains this in no uncertain terms and should be commended on that front. What shouldn’t be given good press, however, is the same stuff that the comics press harps on for their own enrichment:
He really did drag Babs down, didn’t he?
While not stationed as a canonical work (and if so, how come the Joker was still around afterward?), Barbara Kesel thought it was horrible enough that people started accepting it that she repurposed the paralyzed Babs.
The Oracle became a major part of Suicide Squad, a book that habitually and regularly confronted Batman on his vices. By the time Knightfall was in development, they shifted Babs back to the Bat books as a straight informant about Azrael’s organization for Batman’s benefit.
They just couldn’t leave her alone, could they?
Anyway, Alan Moore did that one Batman story and I’m sure he never snaked his way in for another, thank God. If you read that one book, prepare for some very lurid delivery on the subject.
The generational gaping hole that is its animated adaptation has not done it any favors, either.
They even blotted out the Commissioner’s alcoholism!
Duck, Duck, Goose.
He started with a flashlight beam?
This story starts with paralyzing Barbara Gordon. It ends with sharing a joke between apparent “frenemies”? Now look who wasn’t able to think of anything to write!
The Killing Joke was one of the many from Alan Moore’s pen that defined an era of Comics soon later, as a number of talentless hacks broke off, founded different competitors, and got the Tipper Gore treatment.
How so? They got picked on, and the bullies made money off of it. I could go on and on about that kind of malicious abuse, but I don’t want to “spend it all” discussing past slights. We got a present one.
And that is that New York Post article. I thought the New York Post was different from the New York Times, to be quite fair. I thought they were at least ambivalent and reported what the Times would duck.
Duck.
When I started this blog, I promised myself not to discuss current events or deliver a commentary like a hard number of people outside the generalized circus of media, thinking them lurid for promoting the bloodiest, nastiest articles that derailed everyone’s reputations, including their own.
I like red as a color. I hate to see it appropriated like this. Of course, it’s also oh-so black and white in terms of its understanding or it at least endorses such a point of view to foment revolution.
Goose!
So, I must confess those two literal truths: love of the color red and not wanting to entertain useless subjects. Yet, if I want to help people escape these Sphinx Riddles and move on with their lives, they need addressing at some point, particularly when the subject matter touches on my peeps.
Gamers.
They should flip these birds and more at those lying scoundrels.
A lie by omission, for there are plenty of bonks to go around. It is hard to start up after a decade of disuse, but if it wasn’t outside in the elements and inside a garage for long swaths of time instead….
Not everyone is a Ferrari on film with more chicks than you’ll ever get a chance to get turned down by, but tending your machine is not a losing cause at any age. Everyone gets a second wind. Use yours!
That said, why is the New York Post, a centered outlet, dragging gamers down like they’re preoccupied with video games to the point where they can’t get laid–the point where they’re physically negligent?
If you replied, “Because there’s a concerted effort among multiple agencies to crack down on a beloved media type that is being molested by pinko posers like Anita Sarkeesian!” you’re wrong.
No, not that that’s a non-issue, since it bears mentioning, but it’s the wrong issue.
The issue is, they’re comfortable tearing you down because it means they don’t have to lift themselves up. They’re in a position that lets them be comfortable because you’re nowhere near them. You know how easy it is to rile these self-satisfied hiveminders up?
So what if there’s a pinko posse? That’s just one of these groups. They’re all the same, my friends: they think other people are far worse and it’s their mission to help them out–from some warped sense of self-righteousness, mind you.
And before you fire back (again, who came up with that stuff? It’s neat!):
I don’t see eye-to-eye with these types despite having a similar fit of noblesse oblige that compromises by sense of self because I scan all sides at my level, not just up and down and nodding with a smile on the assumption that someone is actually up there or up here.
Looking up too high invites the sun into your eyes, and I’m already near-sighted.
Looking down is what I keep doing no matter what, and I’ve grown sick of it.
How do they keep doing either? Why do they think it’s beneficial?
I say “no sense of self” because that’s what it’s like to be selfless. We call it altruism, but one of the major opponents of Stalinism who emigrated from Russia had been bitten so hard as to claim that it is how that mess even started.
Sometimes, it feels as though it might even be part of a neurosis. Always trying to help or ameliorate a situation indicates fawning, a proclivity towards doing everything possible to keep everything quiet in a setting for fear of recurring social breakdown.
Yet, noblesse oblige must step in. Without any self-actualization or serenity in the face of an external locus of control, dare I describe a ton of people as not only needy, but complacently selfish? As in, out for themselves perpetually instead of temporarily?
Hence, my mission. It’s not that trying to help is bad. It’s their brand of help I am leery of trusting. And they think they’re justified in pulling callous pranks because they doubt your ability.
I can’t afford to do that.
A Little Background
Back in the day, when I got diagnosed with a severe mental illness, I was advised to attend a program. There were several.
#1: A day treatment program where I lament my weaknesses in front of other people and discuss what’s bothering me. You want to talk “Struggle Session”, there’s group therapy.
#2: The other was somewhat pinko but not really. It had a work-based structure that encouraged but did not enforce volunteerism and a desire to reenter society and recover through tapping latent, strengths and individual initiative.
Guess which one I chose and still endorse.
In fact, I don’t recall many others although I entertained all of them as I’m not picky and sought what works best for me, not for everyone.
Applying skills allowed me to reenter the workforce with a fair safety net and eventually tend personal affairs without relying on representative payees and social workers and other such nonsense.
I’m not out of the woods quite yet, but that’s the actual appeal of this blog: as I learn (and pen its summary), you learn as well.
You might be invited to purchase something and I make it clear that it’s either home-brew or affiliation that doesn’t raise any prices (it could even lower them since a business does not have to rely on banner advertising, which is utterly expensive and far more bothersome to prospective clients).
Of course, this is pretty much the “Desk Job” portion of my work. I understand that attending a gym is in my best interest. I know that video games do not incite violent emotions, but diffuse them.
And if diffusing violent emotions is something that a gym can do with better physical outcomes, then I understand also the spirit of their argument.
Which brings us to pots, kettles, and the fact that I don’t use them as often as there’s always prepared dinners where I work: isn’t this issue omnipresent and pervasive?
What to Make of This
Think about it. Isn’t it sort of the case with the people writing these kinds of stories or conducting this kind of research? I can’t imagine many flattering things to say about academics, either.
I should. They don’t offer up reasons why I should. Co-Workers of mine hesitate to complete college, seeing a lost opportunity elsewhere if they persist at something that might not pan out.
A degree nets you more opportunities? I thought it just proves you’re willing to withstand long hours of boredom or accepting rote efforts while under someone’s boot.
Does that somehow gel into better pay? Is college and better pay one-to-one?
No. It’s a rolling of the dice, but there are other dice you need to roll as well. If you don’t have those, you have to roll penalties later down the road.
I’m not saying college is not tied into it, I’m saying it’s nowhere near necessary. You can withstand long hours of boredom and accept rote efforts while under someone’s boot without having to pay for the privilege of that happening all at once.
I understand the frustration. I’ve played the Dorter City Slums battle without switching jobs (classes?) beforehand, too. It’s a pain. But a college-educated idiot is worse than an idiot.
College-educated idiots must desperately repay student loans.
And a lot of these young buck writers they got running around in these newsrooms are desperately trying to repay loans. Thus, they will accept any assignment and adhere to every stipulation surrounding the end product.
Ben Cost is too expensive, sure. But, you know what’s worse?
Thinking like Ben Cost. As in, going “NO, YOU!” all day long.
That doesn’t stop the fact that there is a problem that needs addressing.
Sound Mind, Sound Body
Forget about whether you think the authors of these articles are unconsciously projecting and deflecting. Think, instead, upon someone you haven’t spoken to in months. No, really. It’s a meditation, so breathe deep.
I remember one guy, who’s part of a group I’ve attended, a group who’s helped me stay sober and sane, had a Play-Station 2 and a few sports games. I figured we could trade some. I got a few PS2 games, but none are really couch co-op.
Sports Games aren’t my cup of tea, but that doesn’t stop me from trying them out. Car racing, for one. NBA Jam, another. If you deign to imagine it so, Pro Wrestling on the NES is worth the price. On the PS2 (and the other two galoots), you have the SSX [Snowboard Super-Cross] trilogy.
Anyway, I’ve always wanted to check back and do couch co-op with the man at some point. We’re not getting younger, for one, and another, he’s got a few injuries holding him back from the full-on real-life version.
Well, after thinking about him earlier (on the day I first drafted this, in fact), he called me up about our group’s move to another location. I still can’t attend since its time is inconvenient when I need to wake up early for my job, but what can you do?
Even so, I thought of something positive for a moment and presto, I’m talking to him if only for a moment. That’s what I mean by positive thinking. Prayer has a way of doing this, too.
That’s what I think is happening to both the writer and his detractors: everyone’s projecting. Yet, that’s nowhere near the real problem.
The problem is nobody’s thinking. They “can’t think of anything to write”, let alone anything positive.
Fascinating.
Dwelling on Dueling
And, yes, you can punch me in the cock at least once for the pun, Waleed.
If you want to ask who drew first blood in the projection war, then you’re obviously not thinking positive. It doesn’t matter. This journalist feels hard-pressed to disobey his handlers and also justified in addressing game players directly with his information.
He thinks he’s treating our woes by reminding us of them, or which ones we should be addressing. How belittling is that?
“Yet, if projection isn’t happening, then this has to be a pinko psy-op administered by the triple-letter types. If it includes AAA studios, that’s even worse!”
Is that the net’s consensus? Again, I hate to incorporate lurid and fleeting topics like these, mostly because from an individual standpoint, we can’t do anything and that’s frustrating. “We know the article is wrong, or it must be–we have to demonstrate this!”
No, you don’t. Give it no thought and it goes away. Well, okay–not on its own, but it does so far quicker. What did they teach you in advertising school?
If you think the public venue drying up to bankruptcy allowing that one’s continued existence as a consultant is an issue, why aren’t you there as well?
This is not our reality. Great. So, why bother mocking those who claim it’s so? That’s not getting you in the seats that these dumb busybodies are sitting in right now.
Don’t waste time with the choir–they’re sometimes the meanest of the bunch–you need to get in there and repel their lurid hot takes.
This is so because the public habitually needs to be told about something before they appraise it themselves. Other people might actually agree with the busybodies. They’ll think it’s only the gamers and then stop considering how far the rabbit hole goes.
But, what about the part where their sample included men they knew would likely have a problem? We haven’t even gotten to that.
(And no, I refuse to become one of those who will bait continued reading or watching with such blatant tactics.)
In short, I don’t want anyone lingering upon things they cannot control when there are ways in which to address them that require all of one’s energy to the task. And that also involves not thinking about everyone else who’s picking on you.
It’s antithetical to my mission otherwise. I want people to pursue dreams and they will refuse if every single one somehow resembles a nightmare.
It’s all between you and God, by the way.
I’m Not Alone, Yet I Am
Within Clownfish TV’s article, several chimed in. Here are some examples, composition warts and all.
(Yes, I did reply. Of course, I did!)
@CocktailsConsoles
2hrs of playing games can make my boyfriend sterile??
Phew! Thank God it’s not the 12hrs a day he spends working in an office chair.
She runs her own booze-riddled gaming-oriented Channel, which is worth a look.
Here are 5 replies to her:
@blockmasterscott
That’s actually a really good point.@jaredaadland9692
I’m glad to hear it’s the video games that made me sterile and not the chemicals from my job.@vergillives9890
That would be a problem for the “message” because going to watch a 2 hour movie somehow doesn’t@bitterangels4001
Hey that’s great, who needs to bother withB controI now? 😂@aahzmandiaz2767
Thought the same. Btw, that comes from somebody who sits under guarantee this long on his chair.And I chimed in:
Both can still use the gym, though. Nobody is off the hook, but gamers aren’t splattering their negativity on their blogs without reeling it in and saying, “We got problems, but they’re neither insurmountable nor exclusive to us.”
Hence, my article. Really, I didn’t wake up with a hate-boner, but it sure metastasized into one!
Here’s another:
@plumaDshinigami
Like an edgy middle-schooler, these news sites only trash talk when safe behind their computer screens.
And 4 replies:
@Chun_0w0
one moment we’re coomers, another we have ED…. they just can’t make up their mind about which narrative they wanna run with@lucianjaeger4893
They can’t decide what gender they are makes sense.
(Note: Do I really need to teach people how to proofread and copy-edit?)
@c4caffeen134
As if they actually care and want to help? Then we find out @ 7.32 that they just randomly inserted the gamer part of itSo finally, I had to say this:
7.32? I know of the dreaded 8.8 phenomenon in gaming journalism, the stigmatizing score used to downplay a future classic and reduce its sales, but 7.32 is not a score I’d give the Post’s article.
See, Angry Joe uses all the numbers, never cutting off and using 7, 8, 9, and 10. For him, 5 is the average and 7 the above average. From what I understand, a 7.32 is…?
….
….
….
….
….
….
(Oh, wait….)
“Dial-Up Speed” moment, handwaved away.
I’ll Keep it Brief
Okay, “coomer”! Want me to bump up my timetable? Well, here you go! As a brief primer….
#1: Stop your finger from poking the submit button on your touch-screen.
(If you wrote this post via desktop, shame on you.)
#2: Best advice: read aloud.
#3: Even better advice: Punctuation. Enough said.
Hint: Sometimes, it’s good to double-space between sentences so they don’t blend together when reading.
(WordPress removes them automatically and I never figured out how to switch it off.)
BIGGER HINT: If you must do it one-handed, at least use the other hand to HOLD THE PHONE!
You want a good example of typing on the net, then read a comment by someone who’s older than the net’s commercialization:
@BorgWolf359
I am a 57yr old male Gamer, I will die many many years from now while I am playing a game! I will never stop or quit! I don’t think you are ever too old to play video games! I am a fan of Grandma Shirley who still plays & streams her Skyrim Vids! On the topic of the vid, I have no problem in this area, my husband can attest to this! What business of these idiot so called journalists is it if my Joystick doesn’t get up! Do they want to play with it, well it is not on the market!
This based alpha netted 4 replies, including my own:
@blockmasterscott
I’m also a 57 year old gamer. Started playing PONG back in the 70s. 💪👍👊@DarkCT
brought into the industry by my father. ill be damned if im ridiculed out of it.@aahzmandiaz2767
@blockmasterscott Also started with pong. Still alive. The insults never changed, over all these years. Why should I even care what Urinaliists say?
You know what? We will be able to do our hobby, even if we are 80.Here’s mine:
Gaming ain’t a font of virility, but it is a lot of other things: achievers can strive, explorers can spelunk, socializers can… oh, you get the point, and trolls…? They can lurk inside industries and institutions where they can comfortably belittle others! But gamers still include them. How come they have to exclude us? Heh, I think I just answered that one.
@blockmasterscott PONG in the 1970s? I was playing Yar’s Revenge, Warlords, Spider Fighter, Video Pinball, Donkey Kong Jr. (yeah, I said it), Jumpman Jr., Miner 2049er, almost every variation of Combat, Frogs & Flies, Dolphin, Pitfall, Frogger, Gyruss, E.T. (Atari 400 version…), Dark Cavern, Super Cobra, and a boatload of others. And they all smoke PONG.
…Wait, did I just…?
But, you’re probably right about dying as a gamer. To wit, my mother still plays them. Final Fantasy XIV, and I can’t believe I have to disclose that one. Might not be my cup of tea, but my desktop computer is relatively ancient and I never quite got online multiplayer compared to couch co-op. She could stream them since she plays alongside my brother, but it’s a sporadic schedule and she’d probably want to adopt a vTuber persona.
There are times when I lament not getting the chance earlier in life, but it isn’t like pursuing a relationship equals virility. I saw a Tiktok of a 30-something complaining, justifiably so, that her husband not only left her for another woman, but took the frozen embryos that belonged to her–they were going to inject and bypass a fertility issue. There are better explanations to lowered fertility. Not staying physical and inspiring hormone production is the main one.
Everyone at a couch or desk suffers that one. Couches and desks have been here since ancient times.
(By the way, I did make some errors, but YouTube lets you edit them, unlike some other BBS’s I knew back in the day. Errors like forgetting about Q*Bert and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Asteroids and Solaris and Star Raiders and Dig Dug and Pole Position and Pole Position II and Ms. Pac-Man and Dragster and Food Fight and Salmon Run and Forbidden Forest and, and… I can’t think of anything to write, I can’t think of anything to write, I can’t think of anything to write, I can’t think of any….)
So, Do You Want to Be the Oil or the Water?
So, that’s it. There’s your heated argument typecasting a massive slew of people as impotent blobs. Suddenly, those cracks about being virgins sting far worse, don’t they? Everyone’s a hedge case but all wear gray and blank faces–a garden-variety font of pure ideology.
Might as well end this with a parting remark: hey, Costly Boy, you know why you shouldn’t write big?
You didn’t read the fine print!
AAAAAANND THEY WENT FULL NUCLEAR!
Think about a loved one. If they don’t call back immediately, call them.
Don’t let anyone make any topic all about you. Especially yourself.
I can see that you’re well-skilled.
Good hunting.