Internet Gaming Addictions

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by 2112Starman, Jun 16, 2017.

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  1. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    Motive to action.
    The human expression must go in some direction unless that direction is directed by an external subjugator.
    :rolleyes: If I could only get that motivated :D The best I can manage to do is to walk my apartment stairs every 2 hours.
    It's coincided with a mass rise in subjugation. Much of subjugation arises from academia which asserts there's a cause which demands correcting.
    If we only had such immersion, we'd be the #1 game :D Paying allot of attention to our own kids can seem the same escape from having to visit our parents or grandparents, which can be an outside view of escapism. It's all in the eyes of the beholder, "all of it". What one sees and then another joins into that vision is never the only view of what could be correct, or less hazardous wrong. Many birds and other animals flock and migrate, thus some things that happen within that gathering collective idea and in a broader view happen in waves of compelling inevitable actions. Yet when we say that there's a way to guide it, it's nothing more than becoming the active agent searching for validation through leadership, which in itself is a magic which fools us into getting a collective effort done. "This is the escape from a current reality", whether by physical action or by electronic action or by any other means. Without any media what so ever, the human mind will always be in a dream state of escapism within the imaginary abstract searching for what drives their interests.
    Even meditation is an obsessive compulsive, yet when we add the word "disorder" to that, we must accept an academic view of what order is to base that view on. When we do this, we then reject any further evolution of the individual on their way and place them on our own. Thus when we use the words "we & ours" we become a mob and subject to mob mentality's laws and compulsive ideology's subjugation of the individual's spirit which we seek to bring into our own mold of direction.
    Internal conflict gets us out of bed in the morning, and most internal conflict arises from outsider's notions of what we should be conflicted about. I'm not at odds with what you're saying, I'm just saying that there's little difference between the mad man and the actions of academic on others, because both are seeking to either express and share, or to attempt another's change through their actions inflicted.

    All academia employs a form of Gas Lighting to express their subject's importance, it's just the nature of how we teach or learn from others. It's the mob science which at it's base must remember it's base from which all other things must be built on. To say that something doesn't fit into that mold, is to say to the outcast that their days of being different are numbered because "we" are coming to do battle with them if they do not conform. This doesn't mean that academia is wrong, it's just the nature of the beast. One can study the champion chariot racer and may one day be able to speak and recall all his wisdom, "yet will never be a champion chariot racer based on all that academia". This is one of the reasons that what doctors do is called a practice and never a perfect.

    :rolleyes: It's absolutely nothing personal @2112Starman , but that statement is gas lit :D

    If the premise of the outreach to help what is in some people's eyes an OCD in computer gaming and how much we may play, "you must then first convict our gaming developers because they've spent almost every day of their own adult lifetime obsessively creating our video games" ;) I know they must spend at least 40 hours a week dedicated to it o_O...

    :eek: "Those guys must need our help!" :confused:
    [​IMG]
    :cool:~Time Lord~:confused:
     
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  2. TheWanderingPoet

    TheWanderingPoet Avatar

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    Maybe if the real world wasn't so crappy we wouldn't be so encouraged to delve into the fantasy world.

    That being said I am way too lazy to obsessively play. I was an addictive player as a kid but I was a kid.
     
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  3. jammaplaya

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    Smoke.
     
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  4. Time Lord

    Time Lord Avatar

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    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2017
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  5. Jaanelle DeJure

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    UO did come out while I was an undergraduate. As a person with a generally non-addictive personality, I can say I struggled with UO more than with alcohol, or any other substance I've ever consumed... Some of them quite dangerous.

    For me, I had a hard time adjusting to the fact that the game was still "going on" even when I wasn't playing. It didn't help that I could train many skills in my (what passed for) sleep by taping a button down.

    That all being said, I took a lot of heat from my parents growing up about how much time I spent on the computer, not just playing games mind you.

    Besides just having an interest in computer games, I do think it served as a sort of "digital safe space" where I could retreat from people in my environment who struggled with emotional self-management.

    Of course- you guessed it- it was the same people expressing concern for my excessive gaming, who were oblivious to how their own behaviors were causing me to want to retreat from my physical environment.

    There was also no awareness of the hypocrisy around the fact that the television was on 24/7.. mostly blaring the news.

    Apparently, watching television for 12 hours a day is fine, but gaming isn't. :confused:

    So yeah... It's complicated.

    As with many things, it is the addictive behavior that is problematic, and this could be attached to anything.

    There's a tendency for people to want to demonize the "thing" that people become addicted to.

    People tend to engage in addictive behavior in an attempt to avoid pain resulting from abuse or neglect from other human beings, most often the ones whose job it is to care for them. IMO- we too often like to blame and shame the addict, while giving abusers and neglectful caretakers a free pass.

    Just my two cents. Thanks for sharing though, Starman. It's an important topic.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2017
  6. 2112Starman

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    This was a great write up!

    It brings up a few more topics, most of the time it can just be an addictive personality. A player may also at the same time be addicted to smoking, alcohol, sugar, cafeen, weed (in its typical rare cases), and like the article notes with some of those people, even sex (masturbation). Its an indicator of a more severe problem if the person has several other addictions.
     
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  7. Xkhan

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    Not sure it takes a degree to know the axiom "everything in moderation".
     
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  8. tekkamansoul

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    Three comments.

    1. Being addicted to video games (and MMOs) is way more preferable than being addicted to drugs, or alcohol, and other destructive behaviors. If you have an addictive personality, you're going to fill the void with something. Gaming is probably one of the least harmful addictions there is.

    2. If the virtual bits and bytes of rewards you get from a virtual (MMO) world are more pleasurable and more rewarding than your real life, you have other issues that need addressing; likely escapism and chronic depression.

    3. The socialization and sense of community some people (agoraphobics, people with social anxiety and other disabilities) get from online gaming have proven to prevent suicide and increase mood.
     
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  9. Spoon

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    Yes, but I don't think it has to be and I think it is about perception not necessarily reality. (Not arguing against you here, just using your post as a starting point).

    There are far more stories of being saved /or being liberated /or getting out and actually meeting people /or finding a partner - from gaming /computing than there ever is stories about gaming/online addiction and such ruining lives.

    Problem is that unless you are a bit famous:
    https://www.gamespot.com/articles/warcraft-movie-actor-i-credit-world-of-warcraft-wi/1100-6434332/
    then those stories never get repeated in the press.

    While stories about gaming/online addiction /or dying from gaming /or violence from gaming is much more speculative and thus much more commercial.
    All of which is flawed since it doesn't do a relative comparison versus what would have been done otherwise.

    For instance when compared to one of the biggest entertainments there is: Sports. Then that is much more addictive in hours spent, many more die from watching it (obesity related) or attending it, and it has a causal effect on violent behavior instead of a correlated one like with gaming.
    But since that is too big and too old then there are no/few support groups for watching too much sports or being too much of a team fanboy to where it detracts from your life, nor would it make the headlines if someone collapsed/died from sports since it is too frequent an occurrence so one doesn't even make the connection, and it takes a pretty big outburst of sport related violence to make a headline while the local brawl about which team is better in the sports bar is so standard it is never brought up.

    Just imagine these two headlines:
    -Wife divorced man addicted to playing video games
    -Wife divorced man addicted to watching sports
    Then think about what is most socially acceptable, which you would click or which you think happens more than the other.

    So to me it is rather simple. The good outweighs the bad.
     
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  10. Time Lord

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    :rolleyes: Good statement but does not apply to all.

    Yet moderation seldom produced true excellence. But I guess thinking about things too much didn't do us all well when the likes of Einstein invented the bomb, yet brought about nuclear energy.
    It is all too often the obsessed are ridiculed when they are not producing for the many, yet when something comes from the obsessed that is useful to the many they are held on high as genius to be revered.

    [​IMG]

    Wars demonstrate this mob mentality on a grand stage. When products are not manufactured by the masses which are in rebellion, it's easy to go to war against them as casualties of progress. Yet when they manufacture things that are vital to the whole, they are protected from war, "the most drastic of all actions", which is applied by those of academia with (among other a great many things) video game technology which guides bombs through remote control, which is the "correction" being made for their remedy.

    We must look at the drastic ends in their amplification to see any middle there is to work with which would benefit either the individual or the greater majority. Middle grounds are fuzzy and grey in that way, where one set of eyes can see only one side. Depending on which end technology or academia is on determines the winner in most cases. Yet we must understand the essence of Halloween as it regards to academia, when the individuals become the mob the academics attempt to control, come asking for their portion of the candy. In many countries we have the rich and poor with no middle which always lead into revolt, while those who have a great academic society, control their masses though corrective yet restrictive boundaries of behavior.

    As this has to do with academic behavior and attitude towards the individual, "the lawyer will never break ranks to ever say the courts are not needed in every case", because it's where they make their money. It's not that they are never needed, it's that they must allow for their battles in ideals with the plaintiff and defenders as their cannon fodder which they feed on... which is the same as saying that the rice farmer attends and expands his rice fields with obsession because they are addicted to eating. yet when a new product comes out which speeds the proses, it becomes the new addiction to gain more profit from, or affords him a computer to play our SOTA with or buy a TV set to watch their free time away and becomes the moderator within his life of rice field toil.

    :rolleyes: Then there's always the new "drug" that needs to be sold using academia as it's justification. The same academia which feeds off it's wishes to correct. Aspirin cannot be found in every corner of the world any longer because of new products which have worse as well as different side effects, because academia wished to expand their control, with whatever motive, good or bad, doesn't matter. One costs more and therefor must be better which is the academic force combining with market's wishes for expansion. It's not a bad thing, but one must understand the nature of the beast and not it's intent to see the total picture of how the forces of the mob overtake the individual's normal behavior. If that behavior is not in self torment, then that behavior is not needing to be corrected at all.

    What I bring to this conversation may seem harsh to some, but facts of history seldom are anything less than harsh when they meet with "wonder". Sociology is a subject of "wonder" as it is a practice and not a perfect, which history is sometimes unknown and wondered about, but when known, is often challenging to our presumptive and wondering academic. "The earth is round" could get one not only ostracized, but killed and tortured as well, by the Inquisition's academic of knowledge of their time, just as one can here in this conversation when standing as and for the individual's right to be as they are. Within our current times, we continue to isolate the individual who stands before the mob's behavior to correct the individual from being an individual. Academia tends to isolate the different from the collective which hides what's truly going on and needs a much larger jury to view for it's better needed actions. When we don't live in a war zone and see it's horrors, we think more lightly about it's use, just as we see a life of video games, as being much better than the war. There was allot better internet there before we bombed them for being unusual and un-useful to us o_O...

    "Torture was a carefully conducted game of truth. It's purpose, to secure a confession. But with executions were an opportunity for the condemned and the crowd to invert authority by swearing and rioting" Quote by Foucault.

    Michel Foucault was many things, yet he was very greatly correct when his madness brought us to the reckoning with our true history of such corrective actions and what they brought with them presented as being better, which were actually far worse than they were ever before in modern times, yet he was only following the same observations made within the teachings of the Tao which describe those who are different as being our greatest teaching masters in disguise.

    [​IMG]
    :rolleyes: Our obsessions can create genius, yet also be our biggest enemies when they are physically self destructive.
    But I don't thing video games can fall into that category o_O

    And BTW) I'm not saying that academia is somehow evil, or that Einstein, or sociology is somehow a bad thing. What I'm saying is that there's always an offset or reaction which deflects harmful effects for sometimes better, worse or the same. That having great power to change needs to see it's own reflections through the history of probable outcome. The fact that wars can now be won without many casualties is only seen through those eye's on one side, while the casualties on the other side amount to the same as before but only on one side. Yet it's the money $ involved that drives that industry, and just like any industry shows only the benefits and hides it's offsetting nature of outcome to grow the industry that much more, thus perpetuation it's own need to be there, just as the lawyers and other academic professions have done throughout our history. It's not bad being an academic, it's bad to show a need where none truly exists. Self reflection is always needed with any profession to see it's downsides reflected through history. So if one doesn't see the beast in the mirror as a beast with certain things that come along with that, then someone's fooling themselves o_O and it's the guy in the mirror :confused:~TL~
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2017
  11. Tahru

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    Focus and overcommitment are often mistaken for addiction because of the appearance of slacking.
     
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  12. Jaanelle DeJure

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    Yes, I think sports are a great example of how societal biases around which sorts of activities are deemed acceptable, or appropriate pastimes, can totally warp the conversations we have around these issues.

    Not to go too far off topic, but another corollary to your point about sports is addiction to exercise and physical activity in general.

    There is massive denial around the fact that excessive exercise- particularly when coupled with poor nutrition- can actually harm the body.

    Zoom out again, and I just tend to think of strong societal biases around always having to be "productive" in order to be worthy of existence.

    Which does feed back into addictive gaming, I think as well. For example, there is the notion that one is "wasting their time" if not squeezing every last drop of productivity out of their gameplay.
     
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