Slashdot Mirror
Coping with Gaming Addiction
Several readers submitted this story in the Washington Post about gaming addiction in adolescents and adults. The main sources of the story are two people who get paid for solving this problem, so they have an incentive to make it sound scary and widespread, but on the other hand, most Slashdot readers probably have a... friend... who spends too much time playing video games.
Here's a hint: if you're one of those idiots who insists on giving your kid a name with "unique" spelling, at least don't pick a "gaye" name.
John
pay me to do a slashdot addiction survey. please.
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insert sig here,here, and here
I have a friend who plays them addictively... I watched him kill bugs for an hour in Everquest to build experience points (I made fun of him till he quit). I'm sorry but that's just a waste of time.
I think he's addicted to these games because it gives him a sense of accomplishment, something that doesn't come so easily for him in the real world.
could be that way with a lot of gamers...
How many addicted gamers do you know who have a life you would call satisfying away from the computer?
Oooh! Doom 3! [CARRIER LOST]
I do quite well with it, thank you very much.
try and play doom3 on a radeon 9200 . that should scare you away from video games for a few weeks.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
but instead, play games all day.
Can have a problem with just about any activity.
If you don't know someone who's addicted to gaming or online chat, I'm sure you know someone who's a work-a-holic - not just a hard worker, but someone completely obsessed with the trivialities of their work.
A lot of people are addicted to television. People who literally can't cope properly without it. You've seen them. I saw plenty them the last time a hurricane knocked the power out around here.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't have a video game addiction, I only make them, play them, and spend every waking moment thinking about them ...
This goes with spending all my free cash on them, dreaming about them, and of couse the occasional pleasuring my self over them.
- MOSKIE
Call me when they have something to cure a slashdot addiction.
When I was growing up, a lot of kids spent all day watching TV. They'd come home from school and watch TV. Weekends meant watching TV. Guess what, its not games, its kids. When a young person can find something entertaining to do (homework tends not to be entertaining) they'll stick with it. I'm an avid gamer (at the age of 29) but it is not an addiction. Gaming is more entertaining that any TV show I've ever seen, and at least online gaming involves SOME interaction with other people. Of course the best alternative would be some sort of sport.
Am I the only one who thinks that the best solution is to simply take away the games or the computer?
Gamers anonymous would rock, atleast I could get some cheat codes and strategies while being "helped"
who is dangerously addicted to Warcraft III battlenet games. He works shifts and when hes not working, hes playing the game... and swearing constantly, banging his fists on the desk and using the F word quite excessively. It scares me and my cat. When I've had enough, I log into the good ole Linksys and block ports 6112 through 6120 and the problem is solved for a little while. At this point he does something constructive, like laundry or cleaning his room. This a good solution for those who have control over their home networks. :)
"So the Perkinses turned to Jaysen's therapist, Kim McDaniel, for help."
Uh, he's already got a therapist? Oh boy...
I'm not addicted, I've /quit games hundreds of times
I'm sick of there being addictions to everything. Dr Pepper addiction. Sex and the City addiction. The fact is people are lazy and have no will power and allow themselves to form habits.
Want a REAL addiction? Try crack or heroin or be quiet and learn some self discipline.
"Its not a problem until you can't afford to pay for it anymore."
Wasn't it just a few years back that people who played games all day and neglected the rest of their lives were called 'lazy'?
I'm so glad that we now have a label for this kind of behaviour that helps show that it isn't their fault.
.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
It's pretty simple, parents need to take responsibility too.
An addiction is when your "addiction" creates negative consequences in daily life. An example would be having to play before going to school, and constantly being late for class and failing the class. If you play for 13 hours straight, eating while you play over a saturday night because nothing better is going on or you're going through a social life slump, that is not an addiction.
i'm not an alcoholic. i'm a drunk. alcoholics go to meetings.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Poor guy. I understand the problem. A lot of sports, when practiced intensely, are linked to drug abuse. This poor kid is probably doped up to his eyes. His parents must, for his own good, take him off these dangerous sports fields and let him stay home! Why not buy him a couple of video games?
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
"I used to be heavy into basketball," he says of his days before Socom. "Now I've been playing basketball again, I've been going to high school football games. I've been going to that youth group with friends. . . . We're trying to keep my schedule busy."
The article doesn't make clear what the difference between being "heavy into" something and being addicted. Isn't this kid just trading one "addiction" for another? Who's to say basketball isn't just less interesting to him than Socom (his video game of choice)? When was the last time you got out your crayons and colored in a coloring book? Perhaps he grew out of basketball?
Parents can discern between misuse and addiction if they notice two important telltale signs in their children: withdrawal and isolation.
Translation: If your child is not interacting with people you can see, [s]he's addicted. By definition you can't play a multiplayer game and not interact with the other players on some level. How many online gamers do you know that sit around in empty games? So aren't they seeking the company of others? As for people playing single player games being withdrawn and isolated, compare with reading a book: both spend hours alone engaged in a single activity and not interacting with others. Why aren't books considered addictive?
She founded Online Gamers Anonymous in 2002, after losing her son, Shawn, to suicide that same year. He had become addicted to EverQuest while being treated for depression.
The depression is what killed her son, not the game. There was a point in my life where I played Counterstrike over 50 hours a week, I just flat stopped one day and started doing other things that had greater appeal to me at the time. I didn't get headaches or a nervous twitch or classic signs of addiction withdrawl. You know why? Because it wasn't an addiction. Pulling the same thing with caffeine is a different story.
Mostly, it seems to stem, in most of the addicts I'v talked to, from a combination of state run education and depression. Most techies aren't preppy, and infact most of them have had a lot of bad problems early on in life, especially with social rejection and the realization, subconsciouncly, that things were fucked and had to cope with them.
State run education comes in when it makes learning boring and monotonous compaired to videogames and TV. Really, the kids who play videogames are far better prone to be self-learners than slowed down by everyone else. Lord knows when I switched to learning on my own I started learning 3 or 4 times faster, and that's been steadily increasing over the past 2 years. Kids who watch TV just learn take what they're given and sit there until ordered to do something.
I think, mostly, it's getting them away from the games, advertising, TV and this whole screwey culture for a good 3 or 4 months. You'll notice that the kids who have no TV tend to have fewer social problems and fewer problems in life in general, namely because their identity of reality is based off of something solid. When you spend 6 hours a night watching TV, it becomes part o your reality. When you play games, likewise, it becomes a part of your reality. Gamers tend to become more dependant on their medium, namely becuase it integrates more throughly into their reality. By playing games (not shitty arcade games or football, we're talking the heavy stuff, doom, quake, evercrack, ect, games that require thought to win), you begin to understand intrinsically how a lot of things work and how to think through situations.
The last reason, I believe it happens, is becuase kids get something, psychologically, they don't get from the rest of their reality. If they have no control over their lives, then they may like playing a major RPG game or engauging in something that makes them feel important and in control. Same goes for adults. Some kids get a sense of social acceptance through the internet by playing games with other people. It can also be a heavily spirtual, if even tribal, experience where kids can hit an almost meditative, sublime minerva-type state. I know that, for quite some time, that was why I played games. It's hard to get to that high, but baby when you hit it is it ever so gooooooood (especially when you've got music pumping).
As for that article, it's truely scary. They're equating videogame addiction to crack addiction (which isn't as nearly as bad, imho, the word evercrack is satire afterall), then talking about "guides" to help parents "identify" the problem, from the sound of the article, it's the same thing with school teachers usingdugs to medicate problem kids. Really, it's about learning to like other things. When you're all consuming desire for 13 years is supposed to be slow, boring learning and sleep, games can become the number 1 thing you do. This becomes a problem, because kids just can't develop into real people like that, unless they're in a gaming clan inwhich older people usually talk to em' and help to set em' straight.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I attended an instructional technology conference last month where a doctoral student presented her research into Never Winter Nights. A brief discussion followed where several "former gamers" commented, I being one of them.
When the session was over, one of the other recovering gamers approached me and told me going cold turkey was really difficult. He then asked me how I quit. The only answer I could give him was, "I got married."
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
There are some pretty clear differences between a "hobby or passion" and addiction. I believe psychologists start using diagnostic language like "addiction" when the activity in question starts to interfere with the other aspects of your life, like holding down a job, paying bills on time, keeping up with friends, etc...
Also, just because someone "bounces back" from an addiction doesn't mean they don't have a problem... alchoholics, compulsive gamblers, and others may have a cycle of trying to give it up every so often when things start get get really out of control, then relapsing once they've gotten their act together.
My father in law was an alchoholic, but had been sober for over a decade when he died. He told me that drinking and going cold turkey were both possible for someone addicted to alchohol, but that the sign of a true alchoholic is that they can't drink in moderation. The idea of drinking only one or two drinks per day is inconceivable to them... and I believe this is true for other addictions as well. This is why 12 step programs don't talk about being "cured"... you're always an addict, and you're either clean, or you're not. There is no middle ground.
The measure of addiction is not the impact it has on those around you- it's about your state of mind, and how easily you can quit. Your example of someone quitting a job and playing Evercrack until they're broke is a perfect example of this... outside circumstances (poverty) forced them to stop. I can't think of a better description of addiction.
-R
"Ordinary" games such as first-person-shooters provide this sense of progression to a lesser degree. The more you play the better you get and when you perceive the progress you get your serotonin rush. However, after a while you get tired or hungry, your performance suffers and ends the reward of continued play. MMORPGS are less skill-intensive and continue to reward the player for button-mashing until they can no longer keep their eyes open.
The community of MMORPG players can also reinforce this addiction, by providing a surrogate to a "real life" community, thus making it easier to withdraw from personal contacts and harder to start them up again. Cults use much the same technique to make it difficult for members to leave and rejoin the larger community.
How many times do we have to go over this?
BLAME THE PARENTS...
First it was Ozzy Osbourne records, then D&D, now video games.
Case in point... This woolley lady...
The mother of a 21-year old EverQuest addict who killed himself last Thanksgiving morning is filing a lawsuit against Sony Entertainment on the grounds that the addictive nature of the game weakened her son to the point of suicide. Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola, Wisconsin says that her son, Shawn, was so addicted to EverQuest that he surrendered everything - his home, family, and job - to play the game.
Shawn had more than his share of personal problems - in fact, if you've been reading this site for a while, you can practically recite them along with me. He was diagnosed with "depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings." He was also an epileptic, and according to his mother, his last eight seizures were due to computer use.
Woolley's lawyer is the "colorful" attorney Jack Thompson, who is most famous for the 1990 debacle over rap group 2 Live Crew. Thompson attempted to get the members of the infamous rap group thrown into jail because their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be contained numerous instances of words that he just didn't like.
Elizabeth Woolley wants a label on games like EverQuest, to warn people of the potential dangers of playing them for extended periods of time. This has two problems with it:
Woolley herself had no need of such a label, as she was fully aware of her son's mental and physical problems, and knew that his game playing was getting out of hand.
Neither Woolley nor her son were likely to heed such a label if it did exist previously, since they both seemed to have ignored the epilepsy warning that came with EverQuest - the same warning that is voluntarily printed in the manual for practically every video game on the market.
Lets blame Sony for making the game, Walmart for selling the bullets, Ozzy for making the records, and leave the innocent parents alone.
There are alot of gamers out there... Im one of them, I go to lan parties, have a ton of cyber friends, but I also have a girlfriend, a job, a car, and many friends in RL... because my parents taught me the ability to differentiate between REALITY AND FANTASY
I wish more parents would do the same.
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Every month when the welfare queens get their welfare check, the supermarkets are flooded with "the ghetto'.
I swear that most of the little girls are named after cars (Lexus, Diamanti, Kia, Allante, Sonata) and most of the little boys are named after DuPont products or similar sounding words (Jermal, Nylon, Teflon, Kevlar)
It's a shame but when I hear some fat mama call Nylon and Kia, I can't help but laugh.
Any negative results those people experience are because of social and mental problems they have...not because they play games. If someone took away their computer, they'd spend all of their time reading, watching TV, working out or staring at a wall. They are depressed, suffer from OCD, anxiety issues, self-esteem issues...lots of things.
For example, if you know a man who washes his hands every 30 minutes, gets up in the middle of the night to wash his hands and mostly stays at home so he is able to wash his hands at regular times do you say that he is addicted to washing his hands? No, you recognize that he has a mental disorder and get him treatment. Does that make hand washing bad? No, its not the activity, its the illness that should be corrected.
I've been playing games for years and have managed to get an education, maintain a successful career and enjoy a healthy social life. Why? Because I'm a healthy person. I like myself and those around me, I enjoy my days at work, my evenings with friends and family and my evenings gaming. My gaming groups are just friends I hang out with.
In my time gaming, I've come accross people with social problems, anxiety problems, depression and severe self-esteem issues. I think the reason they turn to gaming is because it allows them to interact with others in a social enviornment where there is a barrier that keeps others at a safe distance and keeps their problems secret. They get a chance to be judged just on their gaming skills and their chat humor. They usually find people who like them and maybe who share their problems.
I spend a significant amount of time gaming and will continue to do so until I no longer enjoy it. I do not consider it an addiction and never will. For years, I've played games or read books instead of watching TV. While roommates and family have come home and watched mindless sitcoms and gameshows, I was in the other room reading or slaughtering my enemies. I think my time was better spent.
At least when you're playing Madden NFL 2004 you know your dad won't yell obscenities at the other team, shit on the ref's car hood after the game, or beat you for not "giving it 110%". There's no chance of your coach molesting you, or of losing your first adult teeth to a cleat in the face. And the other players won't stick pine cones up your butt when you join the team.
Freedom: "I won't!"
He plays...*gasp*..."sometimes up to six hours a day."
Amateur.
Joking aside, if he spent six hours a day watching tv it would be considered no big deal. If he spent six hours a day reading slashdot, it would be...okay it would be pretty freaking weird...but still it would be considered no big deal.
But no, he plays games, which, as we all know, are the devil. They have warped his fragile mind. He needs psychological help! Yadda yadda yadda.
Like the violence on TV is different from the violence on a game, and like...seeing...violence makes you an evil monster.
Hell I've been to LAN games that started on friday and didn't end until Sunday around five o'clock. Went to work the next day, did fine. Is it an addicition? No, because I didn't bust down the walls trying to get my fix at any time during the work week. I don't do it often. It's a hobby. It's fun.
God forbid you're not a vapid consumer of "Friends" and "Will and Grace". Games'll rot your mind, you know.
Now go watch some damn TV.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Poor sap. He has three accounts. That's right. Pays for three seperate accounts, spends LOTS of bucks buying weapons, scrolls etc. on ebay, and even payed for three months on another account to try and hook me into it. I played the game when it was first released, but since they patched the cool die-in-someones-house-get-ressed-loot-their-stuff bug it got kinda dull, IMO:) He plays every night at least three hours straight. If he misses a night he gets depressed and call in sick to work. Sometimes he'll call me to talk about his expoits. Oddly enough, he quit drinking almost exactly the same time he started playing the game. UO is almost the only thing he uses his computer for, besides email and ebay. He upgrades once a year. Guess I can;t complain there as he donates his old one to FreeGeek, a local non-profit. If this ain't addiction, I don't know what is.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
If you spend most of your free time (free meaning time that you have to do whatever you like with) playing games because that's genuinely what you like doing. Many Americans have this obsession with games somehow being bad. It's ok to spend 4 hours at the bar chatting with people and drinking, it's ok to watch 3 hours of TV, but playing games? Must be something wrong with you!
Different peopel find different things entertaining and for some, games are the most entertaining. There is nothing at all wrong with that.
Part of the problem is we have a cultural overemphasis on being social. Being an extravert is seen as good and normal, whereas being an intravert is seen as bad and problematic. Now it's quite the opposite in, say, Japan. There being a quite introvert is valued and being an extravert is frowned upon.
This isn't to say that no social contact is healthy, we are a social species. However different peopel have different amounts they like. Just because someone is generally an intravert and doesn't want to be in social activities all the time, that's fine.
As the parent noted, it's only a problem and thus an addiction if it starts interfering with your life. If you are late to work and missing important events all the time because you are playing games, you have a problem. If you choose to spend your free time playing games, you do not have a problem.
From kindergarten through 12th grade, my mom yelled at me until my homework got done. I got pretty good grades and ultimately got into Cornell (with my mom also yelling at me to get the applications done all the while).
I went as a physics major since I got a 5 on the AP and aced the regents. Within one year I got so molested by engineering calculus that I was asked to leave for a while. At the same time I was getting sucked into playing the early network games (early 90's, on Macs... Spectre, in case anyone recalls). It got to the point where my friends had an intervention and removed the hard drive from my computer! I still ended up leaving for awhile, joining the USAF, living it up in California for 4 years while traveling the world, coming back to Cornell as a Psych major, and did OK.
My point is- Even though she meant well and I know she loves me, my mom didn't know the first damn thing about how to instill discipline in me at all! All she taught me how to do was to work in response to a very negative stimulus, and when that stimulus was removed (and suddenly), I was completely unprepared. To this day I struggle with motivational issues (and I verge on game addiction, but only when a cool new game comes out for OS X, which fortunately is not that frequently, heh).
So don't be so quick to blame the parents, unless you also have a plan to train them on how to instill motivation/discipline in their children. Unfortunately, there is no "parenting class", and as parents like to joke among themselves, "you are the best parent your kid will ever know." Most parents care a ton about their kids, but the natural skill seems to vary...
I bought a Mac
in bed.
I still don't know who is more to blame: the children's parents, the game creators or the whole society ?
:x
:) Our society is evolving, lately there's been an explosion in the computers field. It made the Top 3 news, I might say. What are news about? Politics, social events and technology. The technology field is mostly covered by IT. There's plenty of geeks in the world. This phenomenon, severe game addiction, is not something particular that occured in just one place, it's something global that's affecting the whole human society. Parents should do "something about it." Children are given too much freedom. It's a dangerous world we live in! I'm definately not saying you should never let your kid out of the house. That would be the stupidest thing ever but you should try to understand why other children aren't smoking and make sure yours won't either. Same goes for drugs,
In many cases, games are similar to drugs because they are drugs, exactly as the article said. They give the player just what he needs: power!
Only today a friend installed Wolfenstein - Return to The Castle and I started playing for a bit, to see how it would behave on her hardware. Result? I tried to get past the same guards for 3 times and still didn't make it. I wanted to try again but she reminded me there was no time to play. When Doom came out, I had no idea that there were "cheats" for games so I finished it on my own. Few people believe me and that gives me a bit of self-confidence, I did things that others couldn't. In Wolfenstein, I only wanted to pass those guards, then I would have quit the game. Killing "the bad guys" and destroying monsters, saving the world and sometiems getting the girl sounds like fun, doesn't it? Who wouldn't like to be able to do that? The idea is that games tend to give you a reward for anything good (according to the game story) that you do. Delightful! The moment you do something good, you're rewarded. The moment you do something bad, you're punished, but it's OK, you can start over again. That's the world of the games, a perfect world. If you take the ability to replay a scenario, your game pack will never even reach the shelves. How many times have you done something very insignificant but very wrong? Wouldn't you like to go back and fix that? I have a feeling even the Pope wants to repair some things he did. In the real world there's no such thing as on-the-spot satisfaction. The story of the game moves on very fast, otherwise it wouldn't be playable while in the real world it takes a lot of time to get the reward for your actions.
Games can contain cool monsters, blood, weapons of mass destruction, space ships and abilities you never had. Let's face it, very few people will deal with any of the above in a life-time. This is what makes games attractive. Let's not get too Matrix-ed, but our actions are based on cause and effect. Our minds can hardly comprehend the fact that for something good that you've done, you'll have to wait days, months of maybe years to get the results. If children would understand that, everybody would have straight-A's in school, wouldn't they? They'd understand how useful what they're being taught will be in the future but there's no such thing as waiting days/months/years in games! Everything you do is rewarded on the spot, in a few minutes or hours. There's no greater satisfaction than doing something constructive and quickly seing the results, that's something basic in human behavior. This makes games similar to drugs. Their purpose is to relax you. Drugs do about the same (apparently). The results should be about the same
Sometimes games cause addiction, it's fun to save the world and get the girl, isn't it? In my opinion, everyone is to blame but in different manners. Game writers shouldn't make games so addictive, but they have to make money out of something, don't they? Blaming them is like blaming the tobacco industry for the fact that your child is smoking (which I'm doing right now
And that's where the problem comes in. We've blurred the use of addiction in society until the abstract definition of addiction - the need to perform some behavior compulsively - determines the connotation of the word. The only meaning of the word addiction that applies to physical reality is that version that arises from biological adaptation to the ingestion of substances, which some people (alcoholics, for one) are much more prone to. Continued use develops continued need, and soon, their bodies (literally) depend on the substances for normal functioning, as they have stopped producing sufficent amounts of affected neurotransmitters on their own.
The other connotation of addiction is the one we refer to in common speech - when a person repeats behaviors, regardless of the consequences or his/her own inclination to do so. So we speak of those addicted to shopping, grooming, sex, or any other behavior a person focuses on for what others would deem an unhealthy period of time (this behavior is almost always a vice, or capable of becoming one in excess). This is where our definitions overlap and the problem first appears. Any thought or behavior is necessarily biological. What's more, for all of human history, people have tried to resist pleasure, such as eating or sex, that is innately tied with both biological reward and negative consequences. And in this way, the reward and the strong drive to perform the behaviors that bring about this reward are abstracted on the basis of their biological similarity (the same brain rewards both behaviors) and the strikingly similar behaviors of those deemed addicted (when you want to do something, you do it). But when we do this, we overstep the bounds of the word addiction, and soon we start regulating all human behavior associated with pleasure, negative consequences, and an obsessive quality (games, sex, etcetc) into the category of addiction. Now, if you think that a reasonable definition of addiction is one that can apply to any pleasure-deriving activity, including every vice, that's your opinion. It just happens to be a very wrong one.
Listen, it's hard not to do the things we like. They make us feel the same (happy) as heroin makes heroin addicts feel (happy). And for all of human history, we've been trying to figure out how to supress the human tendencies towards pleasure that can hurt and destroy us. But when we talk like this, we cheapen the real meaning of addiction and blur the only real use of the word, and we replace deeper understand of human action with trivial and shallow definitions we read in magazines. I used to smoke cigarettes, I occasionally smoke pot, and I love math. When I quit smoking, I felt nuts, like I was losing something that my body depended upon. When you're a smoker, you can't remember what it was like to be a non-smoker - to go a day without thinking of a cigarette. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and if you non-smokers could imagine that suffering, you'd know what we mean we when talk about addiction (and why we get angry when this pop psychology bullshit shits on our plight). But when I stop smoking pot, I feel upset that I'm not doing what I like to do, I feel urges to smoke, and very often, I will smoke once or twice again before starting my real month off. But I don't feel like I can't think, that my head is being smashed, or that I can't register anything other than my shaking and desire for a cigarette. There is a biological reality to real addiction. The rest is human behavior and the same old virture and vice discussions we've lived with for years. While this is necessarily biology, it comes naturally from human behavior, and is not caused by physical adaption to external agents and chemicals that act upon the biology of the body. This is a critical distinction, and not one easily understood by half-rate scientists, people who read magazines, and those who've never wanted a cigarette.
If you spend six hours a day watching TV and I am your friend then I am going to tell you to get out more. I don't consider that normal. If you spend six hours a day reading Slashdot then not only am I going to tell you to get out more but you are also a good candidate for one of those internet addiction programs. In fact the only situation I can think of where it is considered normal to sit there like a vegetable for six hours or more is work :)
This is different than someone who goes to LAN parties, which is basically a social function. Like you said, you went to a LAN party and then went to work the next day. This is like a late night party with a lot of drinking. It doesn't necessarily indicate a drinking problem because there is no pattern and it isn't necessarily interfering with the rest of your life.
Kids who spend six hours a day playing video games are missing real life experiences. I know this from experience, because I was a compulsive gamer when I was young. I think this problem should be recognized so that kids and their parents can starting doing something about this problem.
henceforth known as a "Ghetto Name". A Ghetto Name implies a lack of education or sophistication
on the part of the one who gave the name. By no means is having a Ghetto Name indicative of anything
negative about the individual unfortunate enough to bear it.
The list applies only to those of us who are native born black Americans. I will leave the list of Red Neck names or
Trailer Park names to Jeff Foxxworthy or someone else. This list is mine.
#1. If your name is misspelled, it is a Ghetto Name.
#2. If your first name includes an apostrophe, it is a Ghetto Name.
#3. If your first name includes the sounds "eeta", "ona", "eekwa", "onda" or "eesha", it is a Ghetto Name.
#4. If your first name is an adjective or an adverb, it is a Ghetto Name.
#5. If your first name is the last name of a former president of the US, it is a Ghetto Name.
#6. If your first name consists of a regular name preceeded by "Ne", "La"
#7. If your first name begins with the sound "My"/"Mi", "Ty", or "Shy"/"Shi", it is a Ghetto Name.
#8. If your first name consists of a monosyllabic word repeated two or more times, it is a Ghetto Name.
#9. If your first name is the same as a City, State, Country or Emotion, it is a Ghetto Name.
#10. If you have never known of another human being who bears your name, it is a Ghetto Name.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
You joke, but this exactly what I did.
Not that he can't play games, but think of the evil that is me logged in the kid's computer from work with "top" running...keeping ol' Dad apprised of everything that kid is doing:
*phone rings*
"Hello?"
"Hi, Nick. It's Dad. Tell me why you're running Galeon."
"Oh, I'm looking up info for my natural disasters report."
*clickety-clickety-click* --Dad brings up the proxy log--
"Hmmmm.... so why did you go to games.yahoo.com?"
"Uhhh... what?"
*clickety-clickety-click* ps auxw | grep nick | grep -v grep | cut -c10-14 | xargs kill -9; passwd -l nick
"Well, you're grounded from the computer for 2 weeks. One for goofing off, and one for lying to me. Any questions?"
*silence*
(Cheerfully) "bu-bye then!"
Needless to say when I see things like "smacx" or "wine dotwine/fake_windows/Program Files/Starcraft/starcraft.exe" running when he's supposed to be working on homework assignments he's complete toast.
Yeah, someone once told me to get a life, so I did. RL is as boring as the Sims, but it's even slower-paced, and the speed-up key can only be used once a day, and it only works at night, when you're at home trying to game, rather than you just pusshing fast-forward during the day when nobody's home!
And there's no fucking save/restore feature either! Sepend six weeks setting up a menage-a-trois with you, your boss' wife and just one lousy goat, and you might as well pull out the old .45 and reroll.
RL is teh suck. I wouldn't even warez it.
Are you out of your mind? Someone who can spend 16 hours in row doing one thing to the exclusion to basic human functions has anything BUT attention deficit disorder.
Tell me how long attention span would regular person has to have if someone with ADD can spend 16h/day 7days/week doing one thing for months at a time?
Damn people who throw around abreviations they don't understand and damn moderators who dare to label it interesting
Look,...
ADD does not mean that you have the attention span of a goldfish.
It means two things:
1. You are easily distracted by environmental stimuli. (making it difficult to focus on boring tasks)
2. You can go into "hyperfocus" mode, whereby you can focus massively intently to the exclusion of everything else on one thing and one thing only - which most people can't do. Most programmers will recognize this "flow" mode. It's a hallmark of ADD.
Attention Deficit Disorder is a very badly named term.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
FIRST, there is an activity enjoyed by a relatively small segment of the population. This activity is mysterious to the mainstream, perhaps it's a little beyond their ability to adapt to.
THEN, the activity becomes more popular. What was once a relatively minor thing becomes a phenomenon. The people currently In Power (tm), being old farts who have a hard time adapting to change, notice the phenomenon and are threatened by it. It is mysterious and strange, and like The Thing, it must be destroyed.
THEN, despite their best efforts, they fail to destroy it. People really like it, and tell them to get stuffed. They assume that people just don't understand the terrible thing they're doing to themselves, and they try to figure out a way to frame it so that they can bring social pressure down on the phenomenon.
THEN, usually, they invent some imagined syndrome, some terrible ailment caused by the new phenomenon. Recently, thanks to Hollywood's fascination with Heroin, "Addiction" is the popular ailment. The mainstream applies the ailment to the social phenomenon in an attempt to stigmatize it.
THEN, the stigma makes the phenomenon more popular. Inevitably, the phenomenon becomes mainstream, and the mainstream gives up trying to kill it off.
Examples: Rock and Roll, television, education, marriage (really! back in the years of the early church, it was considered bad for the soul), bathing, reading, printing books in the vernacular instead of latin, Science Fiction, video games, disco, folk music, and new age thinking.
Extreme example that hasn't gone mainstream yet: porno. Porno may never go mainstream in this country because of the puritan curse (the mindset passed down from puritans for the past several hundred years that sees sex as dirty and dangerous and sinful).
Interesting side phenomenon: goody-two-shoes types who were never really into the phenomenon (whatever the phenomenon might be) who deal with their guilt by buying into the ailment theory, and who try to claim social status by telling everyone within earshot that they've "overcome" their ailment.
Amazing irony: television, which is now mainstream, is considered "okay" to spend six hours or more a day with, remote in hand, brain in neutral. But when a person plays a video game (which engages their mind and imagination) for six hours, they are immediately pounced on by the "gaming as addiction" idiots.
Interesting side result: kids raised in gaming-friendly households will end up happier, smarter, and more alert than their television-addled counterparts.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
If I am a gaming "addict" and I game 2 hours a day, every day, at times that don't interfere with some other part of my life, who the hell cares?
If someone smokes 3 cigarettes a day, who the hell cares? That guy is smoking less than a pack a week! I get more secondhand smoke than that!
So no, my argument is NOT faulty. Time and quantity is the heart of the whole issue. If your "addiction" doesn't interfere with your life, your job, or alienate your family, then its not a big deal, and YOU should get to worrying about something that actually matters, rather than spending your dissaproval on a moderate and in control habit.
Makes me sick. I've seen alcoholics that can take a quart of vodka A DAY, or a pack of cigarettes at ONE MEAL, and you talk about fiddling nothing habits? Addicts don't stop. Thats practically the definition. A smoker doesn't HAVE three cigarettes if he's addicted.
If you can't drag someone from his computer, if he gets the shakes when the power goes out or freaks out when the cable dies, yea, get him some counsiling, but just because he games 6 hours a day, that means NOTHING.
So spare me your moralistic babble. If I read 12 hours a day, which I do sometimes, you'd think it was great, but I've had a hell of a lot more trouble putting down a book than I've ever had turning off a damn computer.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, people with ADD are able to hyperfocus on tasks as long as that task has a dynamic nature, like a video game for instance. Or TV.
What they CAN'T do is focus on something they find boring or have to put serious effort into thinking about. Nor can they focus on more than one task at a time. Ever try talking to an Everquest-addicted buddy while he's playing? His sentences just trail off....and he doesn't even realize it.
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