Interesting article on Slashdot at the moment concerning game addiction. The comments in particular are quite insightful. I'll paste some of my favorites here, because I know most of you are lazy.

Where are the parents in all of this?

"Seriously.

His parents were frightened of him because, weighing more than 130kg, he was too strong for them to confront. Eventually they threatened to kick him out unless he enrolled for a month of therapy.

You're the parents, you make the rules. Pull the plug, take the computer away, do something, anything. You'd probably hit the roof if you caught your kid with a joint, but when he wants to wrap himself up in computer games you just fucking sit there and let it happen. That shit pisses me off. I hope this clinic is working with parents too to make sure they can control their child's behavior."

Re: Where are the parents in all of this?

"Maybe when someone is deciding how to handle a problem with their own child, doing anything isn't good enough? Maybe they want to do the right thing

It's odd to me that some Slashdotters take "the parents should be responsible" to mean "the parents should do all parenting alone". Parents are responsible for the behavior of their children, but if the behavior surpasses the parents ability to moderate/fix/heal, then why on earth should we mock the parents for seeking specialist help? Are we going to make fun of all youth counselors and child psychologists now because "You're the parent, you make the rule?" Part of holding parents responsible for their own children should be allowing them access to the tools they need to do that job right."

Re: wha?

"Most people hooked on, say, heroin are forced to keep taking it for more reasons than mere lack of willpower. Chemical addiction carries signifigant withdrawl side effects, some of which can be life threatening. Trust me, if you've ever known a real addict, you wouldn't just sum up their addiction as "lack of willpower".

People hooked on things that don't carry an external chemical componant, or are only very mildly chemically addictive, don't have that problem. Yes, addiction can be purely neurochemical, with nothing added to the system, but that isn't anywhere near as signifigant. People can get hooked on gaming, gambling, sex, religion, TV, violence or minimally addictive food or drugs like caffine or marjuana. Their problem is lack of willpower. Other addicts have the far more serious issue of major chemical dependancy, breaking away from which really does require a detox clinic, or support groups, or any number of other external sources of intervention.

I'm not saying that psychological addiction isn't real. It is. It's just not on par with what a serious addict has to deal with. Saying "Real addiction is all about lack of willpower" lumps cokeheads into the same category as people hooked on poker. And the people running this clinic are essentially lumping game addiction into the same category as drug addiction; this isn't fair to either the hooked gamers or the drug addicts."

[on a side note, I love this guy's sig - "Erotic is when you use a feather, exotic is when you use the whole chicken."]

Re: wha?

"Eight years ago, my father had a brain aneurysm and stroke and I am his sole caregiver. I was 21 when it happened. I've mostly been stuck at home taking care of him for my entire 20s while I watched friends finish school, get married, have kids, etc. Between the area where I live and the limited ability I have to go out to enjoy life with my friends, I really started losing touch with society and became depressed.

In 2003, my best friend bought EQ at the urging of one of his co-workers. After two months of him nagging me incessantly to try it, against my better judgement, I did. Everything started out fine, him and I would log on for 2-3 hours a night to play together and that was it. About two months into it, him and I were asked to become officers in our guild. At the point you become an officer, you suddenly feel a whole lot more responsibility and you feel like you're important - everyone in your guild counts on you. Not long after, I became our raid leader and, given the absence of the guild leader for a long period of time, people began to see me as the guild leader as well. Eight months in, I was tagged with the guild leadership officially. I now had seven officers and in the neighborhood of 120 guild members counting on me to be there. By now, I wasn't playing 2-3 hours a day, I was playing 8-12 hours a day. It wasn't reality, but it felt real enough - I was important to people and interacting with "society." Along the way, I met a girl from the other side of the US and we had a fairly turbulent relationship(mostly due to her being bipolar), but we were in love and planned to get married. I knew that EQ was taking up my entire life, but my girlfriend was there and that's how we spent time together from 3k miles apart and I was the engine the drove hundreds of cogs. At our peak, we had 1039 tagged toons.

This spring, my relationship of two years ended with her and at the same time, the officers staged a coup as the pressures from EQ's death throes were mounting (yeah, EQ is dying, netcraft, server consolidations and mmogchart confirm it). About a month after I left the girl and my guild, I realized that I no longer had a reason to play and I simply logged off one night never to return again. That was three months ago last weekend.

For me, it wasn't a game I was addicted to, it was all the social interaction, feeling important and spending time with my gf. After years of being depressed, it was nice to be somebody even if it didn't mean anything in real life. After the way things ended, my biggest regret is that the things that helped me break that addiction didn't happen earlier. Oddly enough, despite becoming "nothing" again, I haven't been depressed and I find myself enjoying the mundane things in life that I neglected for 2.5 years. I still frequently think about EQ and some of the fun times I had in it, but I have no urge to play it anymore... and I deliberately avoid anything that might suck me into a similar situation again. In the meantime, I'm trying to rebuild my life even though I feel that I'm fighting an uphill struggle now at 29.

Our brains are an electro-chemical system and I would argue that the stimuli that make you feel important and good about yourself can be just as addicting as putting that cigarette up to your lips, especially when you and the rest of the world appear to have given up on each other. At 21, when you still have pretty much everything going for you and life hasn't completely knocked every one of your plans for the future out of whack, it's pretty easy to think idealistically about how everyone should be able to feel/be/do exactly like you."

Why is your experience not 'real life'?

"Why do people think it's 'not real' if it's conducted primarily on a computer?

Before Everquest existed, I 'was somebody' online - ran a guild on a MUD (although not as big as yours), and eventually even ended up running the MUD itself. There were definitely some stretches where I'd often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.

But I've also 'been somebody' in real life too. I have a real job with real responsibilities and most of the people I work with I have met once, or no times at all, and interact with almost entirely via computer. I'm also the president of one national non-profit organization with a few thousand members I never see, and run another business with 30,000 customers I don't see either.

And I find that I often spend 16 hours a day on the computer.

Now, most people would consider my job, my non-profit, and my business to be 'real life', and I enjoy them. So why are people who enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing something else on the computer not doing 'real life'? I really can't think of anything that's much different between the 16 hours a day I spend playing networked computer games and the 16 hours a day I spend doing various forms of (enjoyable) work. And while you may have felt compelled to play more everquest because people were depending on you, how is that any different than me feeling compelled to go to work for the same reason?

Computer games are certainly no less productive than the time I've spent shooting pool at the bar. But somehow going out and shooting pool at the bar is OK while playing games at home is not - why? Also, why is someone who spends 16 hours a day reading books and/or watching TV considered to be doing 'real life'? All you're trading is a networked screen with a non-networked screen or page.

Playing on the computer a lot, in and of itself, isn't an addiction. It's only natural that you're going to do the things you enjoy doing as much as you can, and playing computer games isn't any different than reading or anything else, except people who do those other activities want to pretend their life is more meaningful than computer gamers I guess.

People need to understand what an addiction really is. If you are COMPELLED to do something so much that it interferes with your ability to pay your rent, feed yourself, or maintain relationships that are important to you, that's an addiction. If it consumes all of your free time, that's just recreation. And I think it's a tragedy to try and label someone an 'addict' just because of their prefered form of recreation.

Anyway, the time you spend on EQ was real life. And it wasn't because you were 'addicted', it's because you enjoyed it. Not playing anymore wasn't an addiction-ending event; you just stopped enjoying playing so you stopped playing. Simple as that."

Overreactive Parents

"

You are now free to move about the cabin.

Two things:

1) If you haven't seen my facebook profile, masterfully haxxed, then go here.

2) I have about 60 of these "Men of Genius" radio ads the Budweiser puts out, all of them hilarious. They are here. I'm fairly sure I eliminated all of the repeats.

Restored as previous. PST~

I'm actually pretty bored of all this. I shouldn't have to lock my computer whenever I have friends over.

I shut down the server until I have everything back.

WTB!!!!

As I continue to swim through my seas of self-doubt to try and figure out what exactly I want to do with my life, I consistently find myself in love with the internet. I can't make a living out of loving the internet, though, and this is what concerns me.

I'm not as naturally brilliant as I'm used to convincing myself that I am. A 1930 on the SAT, a 4 on my APCS exam, and a 2.7 GPA this year just aren't validating my continually waning superiority complex, although this is most certainly not the case when it comes to Halo. So, the reality here is, what do I do? The world isn't gonna keep giving me credit for my stunning good looks and liquid-smooth voice. Teh possibilities, they are teh endless.

A prime element confounding this is the confusion of my natural preferences and tendencies with my bad habits and moods. For example: do I just not like working under other people, or am I really freakin' lazy? Or both? I'm certainly at least somewhat lazy. But the pattern has been that when I'm working for my own benefit, and not my superior's, I work faster and with greater quality. At least, I think. I'm not speaking on solid terms here.

The concept of running my own business doesn't sound bad. In this way, I wish I were more artistic, as there are generally a lot of avenues for the artistic ones among us when it comes to self-management. I'm not entirely forgetting my love for writing here, but I don't think I'm an author at heart. Journalism is still an option, of course, (even Photojournalism, as my mother suggested), but I have it on the sidelines for the moment. I could see myself running a little computer repair shop, really. It'd be a nice mix of interaction with people as well as doing something that I enjoy. A few months ago, I did make a big 'revelation' about how I thought I was wrong about my love for computers, and I'm not sure I was entirely wrong. However, I would be foolish to abandom them entirely (career-wise), especially considering I have been enjoying my work with Christopher at GNS.

I don't expect to find concrete answers any time soon, but sorting things out through these posts has been quite productive overall, however moody it may make me seem. Patience in all things.

Jenn ate two pairs of my headphones (both were pairs I use for running, the earbud kind) this week, so I'm biking over to Best Buy tomorrow to get another pair, using the money Mom and Dad left for food (which I haven't used yet, I'm getting pretty hungry). Being home alone is fun.

[edit]

Just curious, how many of y'all were aware that North Korea fired 5 non-nuclear warheads at the US and Japan? I hadn't heard about this until two days ago. WW3 ftw? Especially considering how nobody likes eachother down there in the first place, I see bad things happening.

[/edit]

No, really, you will.

BOONDOCK SAINTS SUCKED!

AHH!

Rantzor! Why does everyone think this movie is good? Even people with good taste in movies have fallen prey to this load of crap! I'm not alone in my feelings here; my brothers are with me on this. It's insane. The straw that broke the matephorical camel's back was Paul and Karen. Technically two straws. Shut that face of yours.

On track here. I could go on and on about how disgustingly self-righteous and vaguely blasphemous the movie was. It's like X3, though; the movie sucks, but it appeals directly to 90% of the movie-watching populations, and that's all that matters. It has the goods - violence, Irish accents (or in X3's case, Hugh Jackman), and pseudo-reflective quotes involving God and guns. Heck, the movie has a freakin 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, this SAYS something! That's not stopping them from making a sequel, though.

Life continues on in its general stride. I managed to get to Judo for the first time in two months, and I feel so utterly hardcore. No, really. I ran a mile (okay, maybe 3/4..) with my gi in tow (in a backpack, not wearing it) to Barton Hall, did that Judo thang, ran home, ate, ran another three miles, and here we are. Can you tell I feel like showing off? HAH! I can't tell whether it's the running I enjoy, or the running to techno. I'd do it more often if it weren't for that, you know, muscle damage thing, being human and all. I feel great as is, though, I think I'm gonna try and do this a few times a day. It's not as if I've got better things to be doing.

I suppose the only other piece of news is that my house will be entirely empty by Friday. Hayden, Ana, Jonathan, Mom, and Dad are all gonna be gone. Hayden and Ana back to El Paso, Jonathan to California, and Mom and Dad to....honestly, I've not a clue. I've never really been home alone for several (I believe I'm alone for three full days) days in a row before (never more than 2 full days), and I'm excited. No, I'm not holding a sexy party (queue Stewie clip), it's just the thought of going out and buying my own food, and then cooking it, and then nobody else will eat it but me, and it'll be up to me to stick it in the fridge. And when I wake up the next morning none will be gone, because no one else will be there to eat it. Ahem.

Hope you're all enjoying teh summar. I sure am.

It's times like this that I absolutely love the internet. I knew the very second I saw Zidane flat-out own Materazzi that it would become an instantaneous meme, and it is! Not that this is a hard prediction to make, but it's insanely fun to watch stuff like this evolve.

For those of you losers that didn't watch the World Cup Final, Zidane, one of the best soccer players of our time, used his massive bald head and headbutted a notoriously retarded Italian player, Materazzi, in the chest. Materazzi is reknowned for being a general piece of crap, and in this instance, he most certainly groped Zidane's nipple (and that's about the most eloquent way I could put it), and rumor mills say Materazzi used a racial slur concerning Zidane's sister.

Zidane probably lost the World Cup for France, seeing as the ensuing red card took him out of the final shootuout. Sheer morale and the loss of France's greatest player could most certainly be attributed here, although whats-his-face may still have hit the crossbar. We'll never know now, will we Zidane? I'm positive France would have won if it had gone to Sudden Death, especially based on how Italy was playing, even while Zidane was out.

The truly great thing here is the immortality Zidane has reached via the interwabs. YTMND is, of course, the first out of the gate with the hilarity here. One, Two, Three, Four, Five!

I shall update with new hilarity as it is found. Also, the videos of Zidane headbutting may become harder to find, some of the better ones are being removed for copyright infringement.