Do Video Games and Gamers Deserve More Respect?

Oh my god. I've had my sunglasses on top of my hat and looked for them for 10 minutes before. I was looking for my phone the other day. I'm with my son and I'm looking for my phone and I'm like, where the fuck is my phone? Who the fuck is it? He's next to me on my phone playing a game. Oh. Right next to me. Snatch your phone up. Those kids love those goddamn phone games. No, I'm the one who downloaded the game for him. Oh, you forgot? You're getting old. Yeah. He needed that TRT to read. He was playing a sniper game and I said, you're not allowed to play that shit at all. And then I saw how cool it was and I ended up playing it. Whoa. Do you try to keep him from violent games? I do, but it's like telling a tree not to blow in the wind. It's interesting. Dakota Meyer, who's a decorated veteran and, you know. Oh, Medal of Honor, right? Yes. One of the very few that would ever win it while alive. Yeah. He thinks that video games, violent video games desensitize people. Now, when someone like that, who's open with his struggles with PTSD, he killed a man with a rock. Okay. Tell me the story about he was in a fist fight with a guy, you know, in war with the enemy and picked up a rock and beat his brains in. Jesus. If this guy is telling you that video games can desensitize you, I'm going to listen. Yeah, I am too. I'm going to listen to him. I am too. He's, you know, he understands. I can believe that. Yeah. You certainly get very good at these kids who have the guns. But it also, for some people that don't have any tendency towards violence, like you or me or Jamie or anybody else that we know that's fine and healthy, they're not going to make you more likely to go shoot people. And that's a fact. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like, are you saying that you playing Red Dead Redemption is going to make you want to go out and fucking shoot people? No, it's not going to. They're going to have any effect on you at all. But will it have an effect on minors? I think there are a couple of things going on. One is I think they're addictive. Oh, yeah. I think they're addictive. I think I've always been able to play with my own eyes with my children. They're addictive. And when you take the game away, they exhibit withdrawal. They freak the fuck out, man. Come on, Dad. Yeah. One more game. Yeah. Jesus, crazy. They stomp the ground. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I know. Yeah. And then also, I think when you play video games, you can get so addicted that you will isolate and you'll play those games all day. Oh, there's a lot of kids doing that. Yeah. And then you have a sport. What's that do to you later on? Can you get a girl when you've been sitting in front of a ... There are lots of things that we don't know. I mean, do they lend ... Do video games, when you play them on that level, do they retard your social skills and your ... I mean, there's a lot of considerations. I don't think ... Well, I'm also in favor of you doing anything you want. There's certain people that would make the same argument about someone who's addicted to reading. Sure. There's a lot of people that are in their head just reading novels all day. Then they were. But those arguments were used ... Oh, yeah, yeah. ... before video games. You just don't hear it anymore because you just hear the more accelerated version. What it is, is basically an engaging human creation. Yeah. An engaging human creation that's designed to captivate your attention, whether it's a novel or a film or anything. Yeah. Like, things are designed ... That's what art is in a lot of ways. And you go to an art gallery and you stare at someone's work. It's like some human creation that captivates your attention and gets you locked in. And we see a really beautiful piece. We were in Italy and we were in Florence and we went to this ancient church and they had these beautiful works of art on the wall. Yeah. Just fascinating, fascinating stuff. And you try to picture the people that painted this a thousand years ago and what life was like. And you're looking at the intricacies of these dresses. That's an engaging human creation that captivates your attention. We have merit in that kind of engaging, captivated piece of art. We have put merit in that. But we don't put merit in video games for some reason. It's almost like it's too engaging. It's too much. It's too captivating. That's an interesting question. Why not? Because we know it's detrimental. We inherently know that you're going to waste giant chunks of your life. Unless you're someone who got a trust fund, you never have to work again, you got fucking $10 million in the bank and you could just chill forever and you want to play video games all day. I'm like, all right. I don't know what to tell you. You don't have to work. Yeah, but what is it something like Picasso's Warenka or that painting of when Spain was bombed by the Luftwaffe before World War II? Bring that up because it's kind of a haunting painting. But why is that still something that's considered a masterpiece? And then, like you said, there's like these incredible imagery and what we can do with an iPad. Well, it's all the same thing in some way. It's a human creation. But the thing about these digital human creations is they have this alien, cold feel to them. There's something about digital things, even if they're spectacular, like there's no emotion in this thing. This thing is a creation. It's a one and a zero. It's computer. Whereas if you're just reading novels all day, like if you're that person that just fucked the world, I'm going to go in my house, I'm going to shut the door, I'm going to light a candle, I'm going to sit there and I'm going to read novels all day. I have $10 million in the bank that I got for my trust fund. I just like reading. No one would say you're a loser. Like what does Brian do? He's amazing. He got his trust fund and then said, I want to educate myself. I just want to read. And he just reads all the great works. And he sits at home all day and just reads. It's amazing. But that is somehow more intriguing because what you're doing is developing and expanding your understanding. And I think when you do that, what that means is you're someone who is worth speaking to. You might have some secrets and some understanding that I can use. So when you talk to somebody who's really gone down that rabbit hole, like Joseph Campbell, who read all the philosophers and everybody who influenced them, you want to hear what he has to say because he's organized his brain and his thoughts in a way that might shed some light on the things that are confusing to you that are depressing or that are scaring you or whatever. And you do need leaders like that, leaders of thought that can put things into perspective, that can kind of tell you why there's a difference between say Picasso and this other shitty artist. I don't know. No, yeah, for sure. For sure. But you also need people that know how to play the fuck out of a video game. The thing is those people don't get any credit. When you see these kids today that are winning these video game tournaments and winning a million dollars and their parents are told them to not play games. Meanwhile, the dad works at fucking IHOP like, hey, asshole, these guys are making real money playing this stupid game that you told them to never play. And they're filling arenas. Arrhenas. It's fucking crazy. This is where the world goes. The world goes to the most engaging creation that human beings have that locks in other people's attention. And the most engaging creations for young people are these goddamn video games. They're just group efforts. They're giant group corporate efforts, whether it's Grand Theft Auto or the new Doom. When's that new Doom coming out? Three months. Three months. But I feel like Doom, but I do think there's a difference. I do think that when you're really good at a video game, there is an addictive quality to it. Yes, you're really good at doing this thing, right? But at the end of the day, it's a game. And that game is somewhat masturbatory. That game, I don't know that when you really get good at Fortnite or Doom, I don't know if that game in any way expands your understanding or your ability to contribute to the larger conversation. Okay. But I'm just saying. The snooker. Uh, so is that the strategy game? No. How dare you. What is it? What? Chess. Chess is a good one. But there's a reason why I said snooker. The reason why I said snooker is because you're executing. You're actually doing, you have to keep it together and you have to physically execute a move. It's a giant pool table that they play in England and they play with red balls and blue balls and pink balls and black balls. And I don't understand the game. I've watched it a bunch, but there's these people that play it and it's less popular now. One of the guys, one of the big time guys got busted. He got busted doing a fixed game. Like someone paid him off to lose and he agreed to do it for a certain amount of money. But the thing is that a game like that is well respected because someone has to execute. It's not just thinking. You have to actually pull off the shot. Yes. It's a skill. And also people love to watch it who play snooker. Probably not me, but people know the difference, right? A video game you have to execute as well, but it doesn't seem like you're doing it because you're not physically, you're just moving your hands around and moving a keyboard and it doesn't seem like it's as skillful, but it is. Yeah. That's a really interesting question. I don't know. You're, you're asking a really interesting question, right? Yeah. Because what they are doing is they're providing entertainment for people, just like a great pool player, right? Right. So when you watch pool, you're doing it for stakes, you're doing it for money, but you're also watching these people who have mastered this insane geometry. Well, we respect some versions of that, like golf. Yeah. We respect golf. Yeah. Because we play it. And also the money that's available. That's why we don't respect bowling. Yeah. Like someone's a good bowler, you're like, congrats, you pat him on the head. Good for you. Good for you. Nobody cares. But if you're fucking one of the best golf players of all time, you know, that golfer is going to make millions and millions of dollars a year. That guy is a baller. He's a golfer and he's at the top of the food chain when it comes to any of those skills require you to master yourself in many ways. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sure. But the thing is that the video games, it seems like it's happening in a digital realm. And because of that, it's not taken as seriously, even if you found out they made more money. Like when you find out someone's a successful video game player, there's a certain part of you that are like, oh, why are you wasting your time with that? Even if you go, he makes $5 million a year. You're like, oh, well, huh, good for him. Yeah. Huh. Seems weird. Yes. Right. There's like a weird, you don't, it's still not good. Even though the, you know what it is for us who are older? It's subversive. Yes. That for guys that are, it's subversive. It's, we don't trust it. We don't like it. We don't understand it. And it scares us a little bit because it's also reminds us of our own immortality. We're also brainwashed to think the video games are for losers. All of that. So, so, so we have a, we have a stereotypical idea of what a video game player is, all that stuff. So, so for older people, I'm, I'm feel, I feel left out. I don't understand it. And I, and I feel like they're being bad and they should listen to chess. Whereas chess is noble. Well, chess is someone playing chess. That's noble. Special, special. Yeah. You find out someone who's really good at chess. Like fuck that guy's impressive. They can, they can think deeply. If a girl could beat your ass at chess, I dated a girl once. She was really good at chess. Humiliating. Shut me down.