Before I settle into a regular series of blogs, which I have been planning for a while now, I wanted to cover this funny little story that I saw pop up on my Twitter feed. This is by no means a new article, having been published back in April, but I guess the Twitter community have a thing for summoning necro-threads because I saw a pundit mention this post just a couple of days back. So, seeing as how this tangentially links to the world of gaming, I wanted to address the allegation that The Daily Star's Sophie Roberts made claiming that; Young men would rather play games than... uh... copulate.
First of all, let me say that I approach this issue from a place of no personal experience. I am a socially awkward shut-in who can't even maintain long-distance acquaintances, let alone dedicated relationships, so I cannot comment on the romantic aspect. However, as a life long gamer, I can certainly see the appeal that playing games has over social interaction. (Perhaps I'm a tiny bit incredibly biased in that regard.) In today's gaming landscape, a lot of AAA games are specifically designed to be an all-encompassing experience that suck up all of your personal time and almost become a second job. That is part of the reason why the Industry cannot sustain itself on the 'Live service' model. If every game is designed to take your time and money perpetually, than eventually you will run out of people to spread between these games. So I can understand why people would want to forgo carnal pleasure in order to seek fulfillment in running the Vault of Glass once again. (Oh Jeez, did that reference date me?), Okay, how about running 'City Of Ash II'? (Oh god, that just made things worse!)
They then went onto to address how The Washington Post looked at sex survey data from the last decade. ('Sex Survey'? This is the same newspaper that champions the quote "Democracy dies in darkness", right? Nice to see this is how they've chosen to fight the good fight.) They found that three times as many males under 30 had "reported no sex over the course of 12 months." (Curious that they were keeping track. Or maybe I'm the weird one.) Also, "28% of young men have abstained for a year." whilst for women that figure is more around the 18% mark.
So what does all this data mean and what is it's connection to gaming? (This time I'm the one asking the questions.) Well, Roberts then goes on to bring one Professor Jean Twinge into the equation. (Who, according to google, is a real person.) Twinge, a Professor of psychology at San Diego SU, lays the blame at the fact that many millennials don't have a "live-in partner." (With that information, one might go so far as to blame this situation on the rocketing price of housing, but Sophie choose a different angle.)
Professor Twinge also implied that the rise of technology might have something to do with the shifting culture, explaining that there are "More things to do at 10 o'clock at night than there were twenty years ago." (Sounds like Netflix binging has taken the place of most other nocturnal activities.) She then went on to make a throwaway comment about how young people are more interested in "Streaming video, social media and console games." There it is ladies and gentlemen! The smoking gun! Slap 'Video games' at the top for the 'headline readers' and call it a day!
It is hard to call such an anomaly like this an epidemic, especially as there is no available information that details the parameters of this survey (or even a freakin sample size), but it is still an interesting reflection of the changing priorities of society. It seems that the further we get we away from the World War II generation, those who lived in times of fear and uncertainty and came to value the most imperative aspects of life, the further we lose sight of that our value for life and the more we seek out tendencies that one might call hedonistic. Perhaps the undeniable rise of video gaming (officially the most profitable from of entertainment as of 2018) is symbolic of how deep our society has sunk into escapism and indulgence. We would rather spend our time in fictional worlds over which we hold dominion, than face us to the world we currently live in.
Although perhaps that is a natural evolution for the wider state of consciousness in response to a world gone (My old Business teacher taught me to hate this word) glocal. With instant access to communication and news all over the world, it can sometime feel like every citizen is duty bound to walk about with the weight of the world on their minds, or else be branded ignorant. Don't get me wrong, I feel that it is important to hold some understanding and/or knowledge over events that occur across the world, but I don't begrudge anyone who finds that responsibility overwhelming. Why trouble oneself with the struggles of a world that you cannot change when you can retreat into fiction instead? Books, Show, movies and games do all reflect the issues of real life to some degree, (I firmly believe that it is impossible for any fiction to be devoid of social/political influence.) but oftentimes it is diluted to the point where one can just enjoy the ride without worrying about the end.
I do enjoy the conversation this Daily Star article has inspired, even though I did not like the article itself. It's not that the topic itself incensed me at all, I found it rather funny and it does seem to meld with similar reports that arose, regarding young Japanese men and video games, a couple years back. My problem is with how lazy, hodgepodge, and sourceless the whole article is. I mean, sure, it's not like I put down my sources, but I'm an idiot on the Internet who pens these blogs to avoid facing the harsh crippling aimlessness of his own
lonely existence, not a paid author for a (semi) well-known online newspaper. (They're in print too! Who knew?) In fact, this article is so dubious, I wouldn't be surprised if it was written on April 1st. Like it was. Now, I'm not going to declare the whole thing is a joke, (Despite being updated on April 2nd, there seems to be no information clearly indicating to one conclusion or the other.) I'm just hoping, for the sake of their careers, that this isn't the standard this newspaper holds itself to. However, I will say, if it is a joke, I'm not sure I get the punchline.
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