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How gamer culture is heavily based around the ability to have an accessible and more real-feeling power fantasy in your imagination to fill in for a lack of power in real life, and the damage this is doing to our societies.
Games allow you to feel like you're very good at something. You used to have to earn that feeling in some way, but no longer. Now it's purchasable for $40.
I agree with the observation but not the conclusion. It isn’t the people who use some digital escapism that are failing society, rather the reverse.
People feel powerless and helpless in real life, without any real perspective for betterment, because our economic system needs it that way. Getting to feel good for a bit in a digital world is an attempt at treatment, not the disease.
Perhaps that's also why superhero movies were so popular for a time recently.
That’s my personal theory as well. Because we feel powerless we love stories of people who are very powerful and change the world for the better.
Personally I dislike it for much the same reason the op doesn’t like gaming: it teaches the people the wrong thing. It’s always a some hero saving everyone, never the people who have enough and save the world through unity and the destruction of the system.
One could almost call it capitalist propaganda
Indeed. The message: you're helpless. Just sit around and wait to be rescued. Any minute now...
I'm a superhero movies fan, so let me explain my perspective. The message I take from those stories is not that I should wait for the hero, it's that I should become one. Even though I don't have any supernatural powers, I identify with the hero easily and I draw strength from the stories that helps me in real life. For a couple of days after such movie, I feel like I'm able to make the hard but right decisions and stand up for both others and myself. There are different kinds of people, so I understand it doesn't have the same effect on you, but please consider there are also people like me.
The people are the society, society is not something outside of you. That said, I agree it is an attempt at treatment. Just not a very wise one, it's comparable to a drug addiction in its likelihood of actually improving a person's situation in any concrete way.
So, I guess I'd describe it as an offshoot disease, that stems from another disease.
Por que no los dos? Why the urge to dilute it to a black or white issue? Why can't it be the people and the current society? I am a gaming addict, I know it is up to me.to change that and not fall in the hole. Could there also be a society change, of course, but it is not 100% my problem or 100% societies problem.
I can fight my own phyche and make small gains, then spend that spare time to improve my community.
Society is fucked, but we can all try and make it a bit better