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S. Korea's Stress-Driven Online Gaming Addiction
techsoldaten writes "The Washington Post is running an article about the ever-increasing problem of videogame addiction in South Korea. From the article: 'The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans -- mostly teenagers and people in their twenties -- died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials.'"
Or is it the constant smoke inhalation?
We require more LAN parties.
I hate the idea of regulating games, but smart adults should know what these games do to your health. I played WoW for a long time when stress in the real world shoved my ego the wrong way. I stopped fairly recently and resolved my real life problems. Then I realized that I had stopped exercising. I used to run 5 miles a day and lift weights 3 times a week. I'm now about 40 pounds heavier, my muscular strength is about 1/2 what it used to be, and my running endurance is greatly diminished - about 1/5th what it used to be. I'm not blaming WoW per se, but just warning everyone - when I was in the game I had no idea what I was doing to myself. Don't let it bite you in the ass too.
Is Jack Thompson not doing enough recently to demonize games?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Is it wrong that I'm reading this topic while waiting to be respawned in Counter Strike?
Just TEN PEOPLE died?
Sorry guys, not that significant. How many people die every year due to any sort of drug related addiction?
A hell of a lot more.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
When American gamers were asked to comment about their South Korean counterparts, 86% responded "gogo = boot"
The last 14% just said "no gooks ffa snipers r0xor teh n00bs kekeke k thx~~"
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
you know, that's unfortunate and all, but no one is putting a gone on their head and forcing anyone to do anything...unless if you live a bit up north I guess....but yes, to each his own, and if you die from it, what can i say you died while doing something you loved. i blame the parents... ;-)
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
You need to get a job and a girlfriend and move out of my basement!!
Signed,
Mrs. Korea
How can you die from playing video games too much?! Looks like I'm dying tomorrow then...
This item appeared earlier here. I don't have the exact URL to it though....
For those 'afflicted', they see it as the only means of escape from a stress-filled, dead end life into a world where they have the power to do just about anything. For a handfull of people, that is all they have to live for hence their marathon gaming sessions and (sometimes unfortunately) subsequent death.
If society at large wasn't so materialistic and cash-driven (gotta make a buck no matter what the cost), the stress levels would go down dramatically so people wouldn't do marathon gaming anymore as a means of escape from their 'pitiful' lives. Perhaps they could do 'great things' that would benifit society worldwide as a whole without the relentless pressure to 'grab cash' along the way just to stay alive....
gl gp
In the meantime far more people get injured playing or by fights or even killed over their constant passion for Monday Night Football and yet we see no articles about it because "oh that's normal..." It's just more of the "us vs. those weirdos" mentality.
"You died, You will respawn in 3..2..1"
WTS GBS 1000G!!! WTS GBS 1000G!!! Bokchoysally tells you, " you want? on bridge!!"
Just curious... were you doing Pink Floyd and Bawls at the same time while composing this?
Dying because you sit in one spot for 50 hours and don't move other than for the occassional trip to the kitchen for junk food and soda? Holy fuck people it's just a freaking game. Take a break now and then. Go outside and walk around, go have sex with another person in real life, develop a bad attitude and drink a lot - do something. I'm a geek that works on computers all day and I still manage to get up eveyr couple hours and walk to the store, make out with my gf, go to the beach, etc. If you can't do that much then you have some serious issues and deserve to die from your video game addiction. You people are just sad.
Boy it's good having someone that's a bigger losser than myself to point a finger at!
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The much more important factor than 10 deaths, is how many thousands of hours of lost productivity are there? What are the ramifications on the society, are the kids growing up addicted to game play going to be as well adjusted as kids who go outside? Are they going to be as effective in the workplace? This is a real problem.
This is insightful and all, but I really must get back to silkroad... my charachter has most of his health back... kneeling is a good time to read slashtot.
Next on my list of things to do while kneeling: Go to the bathroom.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
Individuality and inspiration are grossly undervalued resources in many Asian cultures. So is reason, but it's not as obvious.
"Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made...A clock without a craftsman."
I bet more people die due to accidental drowning while eating cereal. Or riding bikes. Or jumping rope. What drivel.
I am sure that more than 2 people died from gaming related causes in that time period. The medical community just wasn't yet aware of the effects of non-stop gaming. I am an EMT, but if someone dies of a blood clot, the cause of death will not be listed as "LAN Party," it will be listed as "Pulmonary embolism."
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I'm sure gamers have had that experience where they couldn't just end the game or tell themselves "Just one more turn/level up/etc." I think there is nothing wrong with that. Video games are really intended to provide a rich, immersive experience. It's just the game being itself.
Need a color? Try 100 random colors
-
One form is simply that a game player likes the computer game.
The player might spend hours on playing the game. A good example
of an absorbing game is Netrek of the early
1990s. Many geeks at UC-Berkeley spent hours on playing this
game instead of working on their Ph.D. dissertations.
-
Another form is a means to escape an abusive household. The article
at the "Washington Post" states, "'I can understand my son's suffering,'
she said. ' He could never satisfy his father and was failing at school.
But when he plays his games, he becomes an undefeatable warrior.'"
When parents physically or emotionally brutalize their children,
the victims try to flee to safety. In a Western nation, most people
oppose child abuse and would offer to help the victims of abuse.
The first form of addiction is probably acceptable, but the second form of addiction is not. The second form is a terrible cry for help.In Korea, the story is quite different. In Korea, you would consider someone with different blood to be inferior and to be not worthy of your help. The overwhelming majority of adopted Korean orphans are adopted by Westerners. The typical Korean could not care less about orphans -- or abused children. In this kind of cold, brutal environment, an abused child has nowhere to run. So, the child escapes into on-line gaming: a fantasy world where the abused child can have the wonderful childhood that he cannot have in real life.
At last, someone who knows what they're talking about.
FTA:
"Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Son Yeongi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling. "Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."
And later:
"There is nothing wrong with kids relieving stress through games," Chin said. "But parents need to watch for the warning signs of addiction. If a child gets violent when told to stop playing a game, that's one of the first indications that there's a problem."
It's refreshing to see a take on this which doesn't involve video games being the spawn of the devil.
Mr. Period: Nine is the one that's right by ten!
Nine: One day I will kill him. Then, I will be Ten.
Frankly, I don't get why people can't handle games anymore. Is it because they were raised on them? I myself played from age 7 or 8 (I'm still rather young, so that was already Kings Quest era). Presently (As a highschooler) I play the upwards of 5 or 6 hours per day on weekdays. (Which is most of my time after school). I then go ahead and play 10 - 12 hours on weekends. However, despite this, if it gets to the point where I have homework of critical mass - say a batch of projects, I shut off my games for a week or three without a problem. What prevents them from doing this?
I'd hate for my last words to be:
"kekekeke zerg rush ^___^"
People generally want to be respected and liked by their peers. And "in a materialistic society", part of the way people are judged is material wealth. It's hard to decide to not be materialistic when that means people you know will look down on you.
Yes, it's definitely an individual problem, not "just" a societal one - if you pick your friends right, you'll know people that won't think less of you because of your house size. But the more materialistic societies make it that much harder - the same people that would be able to resist in one culture would collapse and go with the crowd in a different one.
You can't win. If you're not all-out materialistic then you're considered "lazy" or a freeloader, a blotch on society.
Nobody plays Marathon anymore. It's all about Halo.
2) Definitions in Addiction Medicine,
3) Computer and Cyberspace Addiction,
4) When games stop being fun,
5) Video games: Cause for concern?,
6) Video games: Research, ratings, and recommendations, Contains many references for empirical studies
7) Video games addiction,
8) Are video games really so bad?,
9) Questions Answered,
10) Positron Emission Tomography ,
11) The Biochemistry of Human Addiction, Discusses the role of dopamine in addiction
0.000000153% of the total world's population.
10/48,422,644
0.000020651% of the South Korean population.
So, yes, compared to the total deaths in S. Korea from cancer (~65,000 in 2004) or suicide (~12,000 in 2004) [source] I would say it is rather insignificant.
I mean, "every day, 37 Korean children under the age of 14 are killed or injured as pedestrians in road traffic accidents." [source] These people were playing video games too much.
Then again, maybe they're right.
Looking at raw numbers, its not a lot of people. It's sad they died, but freak accidents happen all the time.
However, they were very easily preventable. Online gaming communities should make time more aparent to players. If an account has been active for 4 of the past 5 hours, the account should be locked for an hour. It would take maybe 2 hours to write, test, and rollout. This doesn't need to be a law, or regulated, or any of that. Game companies should see this killed some people and as a courtasey to the public, implement some sort of feature. If it saves one life, it would be worth the tiny amount of time to implement.
The bigger story is that almost 3% of 9-39 year olds there are addicted to video games. And that 10% are borderline addicted. That is a huge amount of the population. Sure, they aren't dying, but it is bad for the country and economy if a huge chunk of your population are basically useless because that's all they live for. The death's are sad, but the addiction rate is the real story.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I, personally, am astonished that people can FORCE themselves to SIT until they DIE.
OK, serously, how the hell can you find something enjoyable for more then a few hours. I play games all the time; I even read Slashdot while flying in WoW, but I cannot play that game for more then 8 hours with out dying(in game) from lack of attention to my health bar. it just stops being fun after a while and becomes a chore. What do I do? I LOG OFF and DO SOMETHING ELSE! I can see being stuck longer then you want in a raid or something but not 50 hours. I'd be like you guys have wiped over and over for the past 12 hours... bye!
I don't claim to have a life, I sit around and play games all day, but I get up off my ass every few hours even if it's to roam aimlessly becuase I have to walk. i just don't understand how life could suck so much that you don't move for 50 hours. I guess life in S. Korea is allot crappier then here in the US.
just think of all the unreported slashdeaths. slashdeaths are far worse, we take networks and webservers with us as we die at the keyboard.
Communists should grow food instead of play games. There are people dying in the streets there.
That just isn't true. Plenty of very well respected people live quite modestly. The only people I've ever heard considered freeloaders are welfare cases or perhaps people on disability. If the people you hang around would consider you lazy or a freeloader for not being driven by material wealth, you need to find new friends/peers. Seriously.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
As long as there are enough people mining vitual gold and selling it for real currency,
I won't have to waste my time playing the games as a noob.
It's just another tragedy caused by market forces.
Once you get a taste of Online gaming you want more, but you need harder and harder stuff to fit your bill or you get bored and aggitatted with the gaming industry. With drugs, you just take more and you get your high. Online gaming is so new that there isn't enough to satisfy a hardcore gamer's addiction, so they turn to things like walking outside which renders more FPS than the best video card. ITs the less than hardcore gamers that give addicts a bad name. They play and play without realizing the game they're can be broken down into imbalances, paper rock scissor decisions, repetitiveness, or level capping. These addicts without vision are the one's at true risk. A regular hardcore gamer just isn't satisfied anymore. Can I get a,"I can't get no satisfaction" from the hardcore gaming crowd?
God spoke to me.
I believe you mean North Korea.. South Korea is capitalist (or at leasts claims to be, I don't really pay that much attention).
Darwin 12, South Korea 0
Let's see... if 37 * 365 = 13505 per year outdoors in traffic, yet only 10 die indoors playing games, then games are 1350.5 times safer, right? A mere 10 is a figure to be celebrated.
I mean how the hell do you game yourself to death? I play games, LOTS of games. It's my primary form of entertainment. I don't care to watch a lot of TV or movies, I don't drink, and I'm currently single. Means I've got plenty of time to spend playing games if I want to, and I do. However my health isn't suffering for it. I get plenty of food, water, sleep, excersize, and so on. It doesn't interfere with my work, my chores, and so on.
So obviously to DIE from it you have to do it to an extreeme excess, to the point of a total neglect for your body. It's not like your body doesn't let you know when it needs something, and it's not like you can't stop gaming for a bit. Yes, even in MMORPGs on a raid, you can say "Hey, let's take a 5 minute break," and people will.
I mean try to imagine someone dying from reading books, and you'll get why this is scary. Think what it would take to become so totally absorbed in reading that you actually ignore dire warning signs and die.
Dying from drug use isn't supprising, drugs fuck with the funciton of the body. Taken to an extreme, it's no supprise that they cause it to shut down. Also many distort your perception of reality, causing you to do things that are extremely unsafe. Video games don't do that. All they do, or at least all they are supposed to do, is entertain you, like TV or a book or anything else.
I am surprised slashdot hasn't claimed a victim yet. Yes..I am talking about you! Go to bed
You know, that sounds like just what pushed me towards programming.
For whatever other qualities my parents had, and much as they did give me some good education too, they had two problems:
1. Between them and grandma, I had exactly zero privacy.
It may sound like "wtf, he'll have privacy when he's on his own, not in _my_ house", but seriously, please don't do that to your kid. Even the most affectionate cat needs its moments when it's alone.
It's not even just that _they_ were with me all the time (I couldn't even just go to a freaking summer camp, one of them had to come there to keep keeping an eye on me), the worst was that they told everyone every single detail I ever did. It's a freaking nightmare to live with your whole life posted on a public billboard, so to speak. Virtually _noone_ is _that_ extroverted. It gives everyone in town control over your life: e.g., you can't tell your friends "sorry, can't come now, I haven't finished homework" when you know they already know, or will find out, exactly at which hour you were already done with your homework. Or not without quickly losing every single friend you ever had.
Or to give an example that's still traumatic to think about, I had a girlfriend at some point in high school (yes, I wasn't that nerdy) which pretty quickly got addicted to my computer. Well, fairy 'nuff, I'm not even opposed to sharing the computer, but let's at least try to do something else too. So I pull a "let's go out today, mom doesn't let me use the computer today." (Right, I'm losing all nerd credibility here;) Mom actually called her to tell her that's not true. That was one relationship that went down hill very fast thereafter.
2. Their approach to "rewarding" any personal initiative was, well, best illustrated by Mac Hall Comics. (It's just a comic and safe for work.) Just about everything I did was most likely to be met with, literally, "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do that?" or "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do it like that?" It was as good as a slap in the face, let me tell you.
You get the idea.
Thing is, programming was something that side-stepped both issues and put _me_ in control. Finally. Bloody finally.
Now they're both programmers and perfectly capable of understanding what I did there, but:
A) Anyone they _could_ tell stuff like "our little Moraelin used a goto instead of a loop today" (and have any hope they'd understand that) was usually way outside the circle of people I was in. Which was as good as having some privacy for a change.
B) They were actually pretty easy to satisfy in that domain. I suppose that when a kid writes machine code and it works, it's pretty hard to pull a "*sigh* Who the hell told you to do it like that?" (And I really mean machine code: the 1K RAM in a ZX-81 wasn't enough for an assembler, so I had to convert it to hex by hand.) If nothing else, it works.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
and in the process, over four months, gained 10 pounds while surviving largely on one meal a day of instant noodles.
You don't gain 10 pounds on "one meal a day of instant noodles". If that's the only solid food he had, he must have had sugary soft drinks for the calories.
As I sit here I am in my 3rd treatment center for heroin. However, I also was an Everquest addict when I was in high school. In my personal experience, they have had some interesting parallels and interesting differences. I'm going to spell out some of the differences, as I feel that this problem isn't being taken seriously enough. This is just my personal experiences, and in no way does it describe everyone.
-Isolation as a result of everquesting all day was even more severe than my worst run on heroin. Heroin alienated my friends, but when I was everquesting, I didn't have any friends to go back to because they were all online. Heroin could be combined with school, and even if it suffered, I was still making it to my classes mids and finals. Everquest/rpgs and school are mutually exclusive - You are either doing one or the other. If you are gaming all day, that is ALL you are doing.
-Self delusional thoughts on heroin and while playing everquest seemed to be similar in ways. In both worlds you feel like you are the master of your universe. The problem is, that feeling gets so strong, both things seemed to be better than experiencing actual life. A fantasy world was way more enjoyable at the time in both cases.
-Health - Now these two were almost exactly the same. Heroin doesn't "damage" your body (except in cases of overdose), so the health concerns are from personal neglect. In both cases, I would stop showering, brushing teeth, eating as little as I could to stay alive.
I was an everquest addict before I ever tried drugs. I finally quit playing before college after seeing friends fail out because of everquest. When I finally tried hard drugs (ie opiates), it seemed like I feel right into it at once, I had a learned behavior with addiction. I used to joke when I started heroin that smack wasnt as bad as eversmack. I don't have the answers though, I just wanted to demonstrate any kind of addiction is bad.
Hope this is insightful.
I had a similar problem in my early teens, when I was addicted to MUDs/text adventure games...I might not have had a girlfriend back then, but at least I learnt howto program computers :-)
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
The numbers look a whole lot more impressive if you play the statistics game the way the Americans do. The american lobby groups tend to fold in the suicide numbers and a percentage of the annual murders into their figures -- doesn't matter whether you're lobbying against guns, games, cars, or bottled water. If they could find some way to fold in the annual cancer deaths without sounding stupid, they'd probably do that too.
I quickly switched to living inside the computer instead of "going outside" once my parents got one. I've already said why in another post, short version: escaping an awful reality.
Mind you, back then it wasn't too hard to program your own game, so most of that time was spent programming rather than just gaming. When you looked at a game that could run in 1K RAM on a ZX-81 or later in 16K RAM on a ZX Spectrum, even having the most rudimentary ideas of BASIC could lead one to think "I can do my own, and add this and that idea of my own." And from there that led to learning Assembly, Pascal and then Prolog, rediscovering formal logic long before having a course in it.
But that's not all in the past. With Python and other script languages gaining traction in games (as opposed to needing to write C++ code using an awful API, if even that's available) it's increasingly feasible again to guide a kid's creativity that-a-way instead of just having them push buttons in someone else's game. It would be pretty trivial to get a kid to make small changes in a game like, say, "The Fall: Last Days Of Gaia", if you took the time to guide them that way.
Virtually any gamer has their ideas as to how a game could be better, more balanced, or just what kind of undeserved advantage they should have in that game. Show a kid how to actually implement those changes, and you may find them a lot more interested and receptive than you'd think.
Or maybe they're more the artistic, creative kind than the analytical programmer type? No problem. Guide them towards making skins or levels for a mod. Not only it gives them a "real world" skill they can earn a living with later, but also some hard proof of that skill when they later seek employment.
At any rate, I spent a lot of time on the computer, I played games too, and I still play plenty of games in my free time.
Where that lead is that I'm currently paid damn well developping buzzword-driven enterprise software at a large corporation. My business card says "consultant", though it's been so permanent an employment it's more like an overpaid "contractor". My boss would say I'm very efficient and effective in the workplace. So would my previous boss, and the one before him. I've had no complaints about my work in a really long time.
So can one be effective in the workplace if they love computers instead of going outside? Damn right, if that job involves computers.
In fact, I'll say that if someone is the kind of total extrovert that spent all their waking time outside with their friends, they're going to find a computer-related job _extremely_ boring. I see people every day who just have to wander off every 15 to 30 minutes to find someone to talk to, and they're anything but effective as a result. And eventually they quit, one way or another. E.g., the most talkative of the lot, the guy who could talk for half an hour _after_ the other had outright left the room... well, he stuck around for about 3 months before he found a job as a teacher instead.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I have an above average intellige (nothing special, half the world has that) and was in the top classes at the trade schools (for dutch people, lts and then mts). Yet while still focusing on some theory it also had plenty of practice sessions. LTS first two years were "general" meaning I got more DIY skills then are healthy for a person. I am not talking about knowing how to use a hammer here. I can draw and read blueprints and actually put up a wall. One that remains standing.
I would never have finished school if I had been forced to attend an all theory school (for dutch mavo/havo) as the 2 days 8 hours practice lesssons allowed me to get the energy out. Theory was not a problem for me but I know for kids who didn't do well in them the practice was also a place where they could do well.
It was good for the economy too. The world can always use another bricklayer, welder, painter. Craftsman are in short supply and lts/mts yes even hts (this is just one step below university) turned them out by the bucketload. Ask yourselve this, what is more usefull, a kid with an american highschool diploma or a kid who you can hand a blueprint and he will build it for you?
This whole system was changed and now we got classes that seem far closer to what you got in america. 100% theory with only faggot shop sessions where nothing real is learned.
Since the change school dropout rates have soared in holland (while industry complains that kids with diploma's ain't worth shit anymore).
So how does this relate to this game article? Well I get the distinct impression that these kids who escape into a gaming world are being pressured into going to theory schools for wich they are just not suited. If you try to fit everyone into the same mold you are going to get people that just don't fit.
With the dutch system there was a choice. Tradeschools were not lower. In fact they rated slightly higher then the administrative schools of the same level. Hell HTS gives you an engineering degree, whole HAVO just makes you eh, fit to be a clerk.
I think gaming addiction may be a real problem but it is merely the sympthom of a far larger problem.
Stop trying to force everyone to fit into the same schooling system and do well. The world doesn't need yet another manager. It does need people that can actually do things with their hands and be good at them. No a cheff or a welder will never rule the world but neither will 99.9% of kids with a theory diploma. But I am willing to put some serious money down that people in practical proffesions are a lot happier.
How many office workers snap vs craftsman?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I blame the parents, friends and gaurdians in allowing these people to die.
There are 2 groups of people.
1. Those people that are so stupid they are unable to look after themselves. Well maybe if they choose to die playing games thats a good way to go. Also we don`t really want people like that in society.
2. Those people (young) that are let down by their parents, friends and gaurdians, who have not taught then about how to live a healthy and balanced life. Their parents, friends and gaurdians should be charged with manslaughter.
This is nothing to do with the games. If they don`t die playing games, then they will probably find some other way to achieve it, intentional or not. What was it 7 people dies putting on trousers... so why do we feel we hve to change games, is anybody making trousers safer?
There are adults who become addicted (more or less) to computer games, especially when under stress.
I know when I have a tight deadline coming up, it can be tempting to pop open freecell. It just takes a few minutes to run through a game and be victorious. Freecell doesn't make me "an unbeatable hero", but I do win about 98% of the time. While the alternative -- doing the work I ought to do -- is much more time consuming, and obtaining a perfect result is usually impossible.
And that's just freecell. I have stayed far away from MMORPGs. Even the worst "freecell bender" lasts only 15 minutes or so before you get tired of the damn cards. I'm told MMORPGs can swallow up hours at a time.
I can quit whenever I want to. I haven't taken a shower in 3 days and have been playing the new super mario brothers while waiting to be re-spawned in counter strike and unreal tournament. I have both switch off by spectating each match. I use the DS also for map loading. I don't have a girlfriend or a car since I never try to get my drivers license either.
My UID is prime is yours?
WTF,I was just about to relieve the stress and duress of my everyday life as a geek by playing some online game.One message, Fuck You.
Computers can reverse entropy.
With drug abuse and teenage sex considered rare in the socially conservative country, escape through electronic games can be a hugely attractive outlet.
Hot Coffee ModI don't know if this is what you were implying, but it isn't really society's fault that people get so caught up in the persuit of physical wealth.
The problem:
Big Business
Big Media
Big Government
Big TROUBLE!!!
I disagree. In a nutshell:
Big Business - The undisputed engine of modern civilization. Without it....'Dark Ages' (pre late 18th century, the time of the Industrial Revolution)
Big Media - The megaphone of Big Business which are the true customers of it. Inescapable (advertising everywhere -- even in bathrooms!) Persuasive (image/emotional/'branding' based ads instead of concise, product facts and benefits based advertising). Rapacious (pop culture is cannibalized to sell stuff i.e. CHEVY TRUCK'S 'LIKE A ROCK' campaign -- Why did Bob Seger let Chevrolet use his song for that (in)famous ad campaign? Surely he didn't need the money and the 1983 film Risky Business made him (and Tom Cruise) household names). Wasteful (U.S. commercial TV is about 25% advertising. How much postal junk mail did you throw away today? How many full-page magazine ads did you flip past today?). Assinine (the worst offender is probably the Enzite commercials and the hot water the company is in....). When Big Media is used in the service of Big Government, the results can be disturbing yet eye-opening! (Remember the fuss over Willie Horton or Lyndon Johnson's infamous 'Daisy' campaign ad attacking opponent Barry Goldwater?)
Big Government - An outgrowth of the above two items. USA's bipartisan political system is essentially 'two sides of the same coin'. Doesn't matter if the Republicans or Democrats (or both) are in power in Washington D.C., big business is always running the show behind the scenes. Just look at how the U.S. tax code balloned from a few pages when it was introduced in 1914 to several feet of shelf space!...
Big TROUBLE!!! - Unless people 'vote with their wallets' and stop patronizing the handfull of 'big businesses' out there, there could then be genuine competition in a marketplace inhabited by dozens...even hundreds of smaller businesses in various industries. Real innovation could take place instead of being suppressed by 'dirty tricks' and lots of cash.... Decentralization appears to be our only hope to 'undo' this mess in a controlled, peaceful, economically oriented manner.
Because ALL these can be addicted to, and most of these are WAY more fatal than games. Especially smoking. It is a direct HEALTH HAZARD to anyone around, leave aside its being directly SUICIDAL to the smoker.
"Regulate" my fart.
There are around maybe 1 billion gamers worldwide. TEN dies in such a period in such a country, and it does not last long before some fart comes up with the idea of 'regulating' games.
Verily, i suggest that we had some regulation to regulate unnneccessary farts from proposing regulation ideas, first.
Read radical news here
You still have Slashdot.
The fact of the matter is, games of statistical simulation (which is all these games are at their core) have been known to addict people for a LONG time (longer than computers). Gambling is one example. People have this need to want to improve the efficiency of any statistical system. Tweaking your character (kill monster...get better stats...kill monster quicker....get more gold...get better armour...so you can kill a bigger monster...ect..) and improving the numbers becomes the ends that justifies everything you are doing. Now I'm not saying that EVERYBODY does this, but nearly every person I've found who is addicted is addicted has "number addiction" as a primary or large part of their addiction.
Why do you think we don't see that many successful role playing games without statistical numbers? Easy, they DON'T SELL!
I tried. Believe me, I tried. There was no standing up, no tantrum, no whatever that could get mom to shut the fuck up about me just for once. Au contraire, then she'd go and tell everyone about that tantrum too. Standing up to her to at least keep the fuck out of my love life... well, let's just say lasted just until the next girlfriend, where the motherly intervention repeated verbatim.
Just about the only point where I managed to finally have some peace was when I finally finished university and moved to a flat of my own. Not that it stopped mom from trying to continue to rule my life. She still does and I'm in the mid-30's. The notion that she could jolly well mind her own business and live her own life, just doesn't compute. Telling her that is like telling someone to walk on the ceiling: she can't even imagine how that's possible. What's different is that now I can hang up the phone.
So, please. It's easy to dish out some advice like "you should have had the guts and stood up for yourself" or "if you wanted privacy, you should have got privacy." But that's the kind of self-centered assuming everyone's an idiot and only you know the obvious, that misses the point by a mile.
In other words, ok, if you're at giving me retroactive advice, what do _you_ propose that I should have done there? "Have some guts and stand up to them" is good and fine, but it didn't work. What next? Should I have run away from home and joined some gang, or something? Because that would have been just about the only thing that could have solved the problem.
Would _that_ have been better than finding refuge in the computer? Hardly, if you ask me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
actually if i did not have to go to work I would probably spend at least 4 of those 8 hours in a video game.
In addition to the position-related troubles (aka "economy class syndrome"), we can also add :
- Hardcore gamer are sedentary, and lack physical exercise, which makes them overwheighted.
- Most will have bad eating habbits (more junk food than the WHO's recommended 5 fruits and vegetables per day), which also makes them overwheighted.
- Along other health problems, this is another risk factor for deep vein thrombosis.
And you're my IDOL.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My name is Bob, and I'm addicted to ( coke | videogames | food). It started out so innocently, you know? Just ( a line or two | a few hours | a cheeseburger ) here and there. Slowly but surely however, it became much worse than that. I began to feel I needed to ( get high | log on | pig out ) just to get through the day. I couldn't stop ( snorting | playing | eating ) no matter how hard I tried. It was one of the low points of my life. After several months, I realized what constant ( nose candy | WoW | McDonald's ) was doing to my life. I haven't touched it since...
Notice how each version makes perfect sense?
Different people do different things to escape reality if they're not enjoying it. It usually comes down to what's available. In South Korea, it's videogames. Is this a big surprise?
After playing a Star Wars RTS for half a day, I stood up and almost fell over. I felt disoriented and horrible, had a crazy head-ache and then surprised myself by actually vomiting.
I figured it was food poisoning or something, as I'd never had that reaction to a game before, and I'd played thousands of hours worth.
The next time it happened, however, I'd been eating well and only a couple of hours had passed. Same symptoms, same game.
Then it happened again, (with a different game), after barely an hour of exposure. This time I didn't throw up, probably because I backed off shortly after I felt the sickness and head-ache coming on. This was all over the course of a few months.
I don't play games at all now. I'd wanted to stop anyway because I didn't like the amount of time I was wasting at the computer being totally selfish and unproductive.
-FL
My wife and I both take it starting 3 days before we fly now.
Quick note of warning - DVTs in people younger than 18 years of age is almost unheard of. I bet that most of these people who died were probably older and smoked (many Koreans smoke from what I've read). Aspirin is not recommended for those less than 18 years of age, also because of Reyes syndrome.
I'm an orthopaedic surgeon and have always played video games. The only real advantage that I can perceive that they grant are 1) stress relief and 2) improved hand-eye coordination - useful for doing arthroscopy or interventional radiology. I'm pretty sure Quake II kept both me and my med-school housemate from gettinghigh-honors one semester. :-(
If I ever need an interventional radiologist, then I'm making sure that they play video games. Honest.
..........FULL STOP.
the picture in TFA is faked, the guy isnt playing zerg.
keke korea ^_^
know how to party or what?!
I'll let you know when I finish in 3 years. :)
For(k;;)(Fork();)
If they just pulled the broadband in S. Korea in the gaming lounges, and gave them all 28.8k, that sure as hell would solve the problem :D
Exactly. If the people you know look down on you because you are not wealthy, then I suggest you get to know different people. But you're right, it can be difficult, although whining that "It's hard!" is just a lame excuse. Live your life within your means the way you want to. No excuses.
"Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made...A clock without a craftsman."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Also, I think people will always find things to be extremely stressed out about no matter what. It comes from thinking that everything in your life is more important than it really is. Once you let go and realize that your life is a meaningless spec on the landscape fo the universe, all of that stress dissappears because, since you came from nothing, you have nothing to lose.
"Who makes the world? Perhaps the world is not made...A clock without a craftsman."
I *know* that a small serving of an organically-grown red onion, ginger root, and a half-cup of non-alcoholic red wine is the natural remedy to deter blood clotts. There is also another supplement, but the file eludes me to this day on the archive. While travelling on a high-passenger land or air bus, the reality of Tuberculosis spreading throughout the plane is much higher danger than a blood clot. It's in likeness of asking if someone wants to live a tortured life(tuberculosis) or not at all (blood clott). I'm one of "those men" that would rather be thrown from the car, other than wear a seatbelt and live after being mutilated by a flying four-wheeled "accordion."
Aspirin, like alcoholic drinks and animal meat, causes the body to lose its Vitamin-C content; thereby the immune system is to a lower bar of microbiological sickness that challenges it. Yet, it depends on what variation of sickness one needs to avoid in the environment, because a high blood-alcohol content prevents most bacterial and fungal diseases from living on the host. On the other hand, allowing the body to have a high Vitamin-C content prevents a virus-function of injecting DNA-matter into a cell (for commandeering the cell to replicate the virus matter). We're somwhat at a junction to what we want to avoid, when in densly populated areas where the people interact. To fortifty against Virus, or Microbial?
without prejudice
You're addicted to MMORPGS, and that helped you get a girlfriend ?
WTF which game are you playing?
He would also mess with my diet because he did not like me knowing more than him. When I was in 3rd grade, I came home to tell him that kids need calcium to grow. The school taught us that milk is good for kids' growth. A few months later, my father forbid me from drinking milk or consuming any dairy foods. The milk ban continued until the 11th grade. Anyone who looks at me can see that my growth was stunted. (I did not eat tofu because I hated it and did not know that it is rich in calcium.)
I tried to tell people what was happening. But my Chinese mother and brother hid everything and would not tell anyone. Being slightly autistic, I was afraid to talk to people. My Chinese mother contradicted me on the one time that I mustered the courage to make a major effort to tell a stranger.
When I was younger, there were no online computer games. My only thought of escape was suicide.
You will not find anyone who hates Chinese society more than I.
I still have a huge amount of anger. I channeled it into two things: legally changing my name and voluminous writing. I consistently receive high moderation scores in my Slashdot writing. Various newspapers have published my short commentary. More than 50% of my commentary condemns Chinese society.
The only thing that I learned in life is that god does not exist. Where the hell was god when I was a kid?
I am probably not suicidal any more, but I find solace in my mortality. Eventually, all this crap will end, and I will not need to deal with it anymore.
I know I'm flirting with trolling here, but...
if it's as bad as you say, then my money's that the last thing some of these guys breathed was a sigh of relief.
They were all playing World of Warcraft right? Damn Blizzard makes some addicting games.
Only Old people die from Video Games!
A Korean orphan has no family. Yet, this Chinese sh*t then creates a strawman rationalization for why Koreans do not want to adopt the orphan.
Chinese are worse than sub-human animals.
The Chinese sh*t is right about 1 thing. Chinese do not offer help.
Let's put it like this. Logic is good and fine as long as both parties involved start from the same axioms. Otherwise you can argue until you're blue in the face that "X => Y", if that person doesn't acknowledge X as obviously true, that whole implication is devoid of any meaning.
And unlike science, where you can measure X accurately, in terms of inter-personal relations and human feelings, all "axioms" are more of a matter of education, goals, social convention, etc. Two people can be perfectly logical, yet arrive at wildly different conclusions.
What does this mean in this case. Well, mom is/was:
A) An Asperger's case, and not even a pretty one. She often can't even tell the difference between being screamed at or not. And you should see it when she thinks she was all subtle and diplomatic, and doesn't even realize that she shocked or upset everyone in the room. She's even had problems at work, because while she was a brilliant programmer if you ask any of her ex-bosses, she had trouble understanding the subtle human interactions at play there.
So trying to explain to someone like that the need for subtlety and discretion in inter-personal relations, is like trying to row up shit waterfall without a paddle.
And the next points are largely just consequences of this one.
B) Like many such nerds, lived by some idealized extreme notions, in her case a sorta D&D "lawful good" code of priniciples that would put Piffany from Nodwick comics to shame. It bit not only us kids in the ass, but her too. (And like many such nerds, seeing any shades as black and white, now she's flipped to the opposite "everyone is evil and I should have been a psychopatic bitch too.")
At any rate, trying to explain why I need to lie to my friends every now and then, again went against _her_ axioms. "Well, just tell them the truth. That you don't want to play with them today." Thanks mom, now why didn't _I_ ever think of that.
C) More importantly, a victim seeking refuge too. Mind you, mostly a victim of her own inability to deal with society and most of the time with dad or other relatives either. Except while the Koreans in this article find their refuge in having some level 60 warrior in an MMO, she had me and my brother. We were her MMO characters, so to speak. We were going to get to level 60, have an epic mount, and be her grand achievement, so to speak. Even if we had to grind and farm our way there, so to speak.
So just like in the aforementioned MMOs, just talking an addict into abandoning their characters and stopping talking about their latest instance raid... is a tad harder than you'd think. Just logic, of the "here are reasons X, Y and Z why you should deal with RL instead of seeking shelter in a game" kind, will at most make them feel rotten and give them even more reason to seek refuge.
And that's just one parent.
And here's another thing: I actually loved them. I didn't _really_ want to hurt mom, I just wanted her to just shut up about me, just for once.
So if standing up for yourself worked for you, well, I'm glad for you. Honestly. It didn't for me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Don't assume that just because your body lets you know when it needs something, the same will be true for everyone else.
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
Well, the "society" is just a collection of individuals. Individuals and their views. To change a society, you have to influence the people in it.
People generally want to be respected and liked by their peers. And "in a materialistic society", part of the way people are judged is material wealth. It's hard to decide to not be materialistic when that means people you know will look down on you.
Yes, it's definitely an individual problem, not "just" a societal one - if you pick your friends right, you'll know people that won't think less of you because of the size of your (parent's) basement. But the more materialistic societies make it that much harder - the same people that would be able to resist in one culture would collapse and go with the crowd in a different one.
Unrelated to the main topic, here is why WoW is the devil.
http://www.redrival.com/hateown/
In the grand tradition of Asian matchmakers I have a prospect for you. She's boundlessly perky, very intelligent, and participates in rhythmic gymnastics like nobody you've ever met. OK, so she's a little on the emaciated side, but you would be too if your primary food groups were revolutionary spirit and grass. She also is sort of sadistic, kidnaps little children for fun, and really hates your guts... but wants to get with you, TODAY, if its on her terms. If you're so hard up for a girlfiend that you could stand being trod on, look no further than North Korea.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
It was as extreme for me in the area of privacy.
It wasn't as extreme for me in the area of privacy.
In this whole world only, my best friend and my cousin know this.
In this whole world, only my best friend and my cousin know this.
Yeah, but have you ever played Everquest... on heroin? It's crazy man!
Sounds like they're all eager to get on that gameshow and improve their financial status.
It may sound cruel, but this also sounds like natural selection. If a human is too stupid to allow survival instincts to override addiction, then they probably deserve to be removed from the gene pool.
I'm addicted to WoW, I'll admit. I'll play whenever I'm not busy doing something else, but I know when to get up from the machine, eat, shower, go to work, go exercise and spend time with my family. I honestly feel I'm in better balance than some of the other players I know.
It's all about moderation. While I wouldn't mind regulation of these games to force moderation, I'd prefer we let the abusers die off. We've already had too many government programs saving people that are too stupid to survive on their own. Survival of the fittest, IMO.