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Why do Gamers get a bad wrap?

German Hops

German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
Like many guys from my generation, I love to play video games, yet it seemingly gets a worse rap about the negative effects.
There seems to be an underlying sentiment from society that men who play video games are somehow worse than any other addiction related vices.

If you want to talk about addiction, I feel that video game players get a bad rap for no good reason. Truth is ANYTHING that can be considered entertainment or fun runs the risk of addiction, so should we ban anything that is fun or addictive?
Sports is a great example - sport fans can go crazy and especially in regards to the big games, you have sport fans going on city wide rampages, vandalizing vehicles, shops etc. and beatings/shootings etc/. Should we ban sports? Or gambling where there are people that literally gamble their savings away, should we ban casinos? Or guys that spend all the their time at bars at the detriment towards their family, should we ban bars and alcohol? Video games, much like any entertaining activity can obviously be abused, but I don't get the point in pointing it out as some inherent evil any more so than sports fans, bar fans, etc.

So with that said do you believe nothing should be allowed that gives lots of entertainment or enjoyment given how no matter what there will always be those that become addicted and thus bad consequences?

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Valt7786

Valt7786

Member
TLZ said:
It's because of guys like these

fruit salad GIF


The world thinks that's what we all look/act like.
Click to expand...

Pretty much this. The "gamers" like this are what get put in the media, thus the "normies" believe that's what we're like. That all we wanna do is sit inside, guzzle soda and junk food and play caw a doody or "that weeb shit". When I'm pretty sure for the most part 98% of "us" aren't that way inclined.
I play games a lot, it's my main hobby for sure, but i've never said "nah not gonna do that other thing that might be fun, gonna sit on playstation".
 
N

Novacain

Member
While it's still an easy scapegoat in the media, it's nowhere near as taboo as it used to be in my location. It's more accepted than ever before.

Every home has consoles and both kids/adults that play them and if you don't have "something" that you do with gaming, you're the odd man out.

When I was growing up if you played games into your teens you were on the loser nerd team.
 
winjer

winjer

Gold Member
Games is a new thing.
There are entire generations that never played a single game.
But this also happened with cinema. For decades, it wasn't considered an art form.

Then there's journalists that only make news about all the bad things in society, because that's what sells.
This means that every single little problem that videogames might cause, it's going to get overblown, just to sell news.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
What year is this? Pretty much everyone plays games nowadays, even if it's just lol on a laptop or some sports game or COD on a console or net cafe type thing. On the other hand if you let any single hobby type thing define your whole existence it'll probably be judged negatively, not just games.
 
I

isoRhythm

Banned
German Hops said:
Like many guys from my generation, I love to play video games, yet it seemingly gets a worse rap about the negative effects.
There seems to be an underlying sentiment from society that men who play video games are somehow worse than any other addiction related vices.
Click to expand...
The idea of most dudes spending their time on a generally cheap hobby, having loads of fun at the same time 'not contributing to society', rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I think it's just envy.

6mCyQJl.jpg
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member
I think it is a stigma of today's society.

Like everything in life, addiction is bad, but it is a healthy hobby.

It is easy to blame video games, cinema or any other medium for human behavior.

I am a gamer, but I also dedicate my life to other things such as seeing the world, philosophizing, traveling, learn the world.

Have video games hurt me?

No, because I exercise daily, I am slim, I am surrounded by people.

I can say that I am a professional with a specialty, that I get to advance in life and even in my country they named me Hero Covid, because I risked my life to heal patients and stay with the patients at the time when the pandemic began.

So, video games hurt? If that were true, my destiny and my life would be totally different.
 
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U

unintelligent orange

Member
if someone is negatively stereotyping you directly for being a gamer without taking an accurate look of your life and realizing that this is a thing you do rather than something that defines your life, then that is a problem with them, not you.

if you match the stereotype pretty perfectly, then the judgement is accurate. stereotypes only exist for profiling you - if you dont like the way they apply to you, time to make some life changes. or simply accept that people will always stereotype people in general and do what you want to do with your life.

/thread
 
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Northeastmonk

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Steven Kent’s “Ultimate History of Video Games” points out that video games are easily associated with children. It is easy to write it off and without proper knowledge, the general public does this without batting an eye. I personally don’t think people respect games. A lot of this is exposure. It would be ok if a grown adult reads a book, watches a movie, or listens to an album. If they decide to play a video game, it’s seen as the childish thing to do or people compare them to basement dwellers (recluses).

I also think you have people who believe this, work in the industry. People want to make money. I’m reading “Console Wars” by Blake Harris and something stood out to me. Sega stood out by not having a target consumer, while Nintendo mostly geared towards children. I feel like Nintendo has changed that by the appeal of the Wii and the Switch in their marketing. When someone commits a crime or uses gaming as association of their behavior, the general public starts to assume gaming is part of the problem.

Recently my wife’s boss asked her “so do you allow your husband to play video games?”. She asked this because her boyfriend just started showing interest in playing. I feel like my next point of view is going to sound bad, but I feel like there’s a lot of spouses out there that force an anti gaming household. They want their spouse to not play video games. This adds up if you’re only associated with people like this just because they’re your spouses friends. People don’t respect video games because they decide they don’t want to care about it. It’s just something their kids do.
 
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Matt_Fox

Matt_Fox

Member
Gamers today never had it so good. Playing video games is socially accepted now as a 'normal' activity.

Take that from a guy who did the hard miles back in the 80s. We broke down the boundaries and wore down the naysayers, we walked into Mordor. And we did it so kids today can play games and be cool!
 
Bragr

Bragr

Banned
It's because it's an activity that is completely useless that makes you sit on your ass, get out of shape and develop anti-social tendencies and addictive behaviors, and you end up with nothing in return for your time spent.
 
Bragr

Bragr

Banned
Topher said:
They use to say the same thing about TV......movies.......radio......theater.
Click to expand...
Yeah, and they were right. Maybe not theater and radio, but certainly with TV and movies.

And now you can add video games to the list. But video games are more insidious than all of those put together because of the time it takes.
 
Topher

Topher

Gold Member
Bragr said:
Yeah, and they were right. Maybe not theater and radio, but certainly with TV and movies.

And now you can add video games to the list. But video games are more insidious than all of those put together because of the time it takes.
Click to expand...

Then make yourself "better". Quit gaming, TV, and movies.

Then what?
 
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MikeM

MikeM

Member
My mother in law: “i’m not a gamer.”
Also mother in law: plays hours of free casino games on her couch with her ipad.

The people I know that identify gamers as “bad” or “unproductive” are all boomers. Yet they all play some sort of video game. 🤷‍♂️
 
Dick Jones

Dick Jones

Gold Member
We can point to other places but even here, we saw a meltdown recently over a game that came out in 2020 not being on a 2021 list. We had posters who love their own console so much they slandered its management repeatedly
Bryank75 Bryank75
pouring snoop dogg GIF
 
W

Woggleman

Member
To be fair I used to be involved with the 90s New York punk scene and some people outside of that were just insufferable. You like one song that gets the radio play and all of a sudden you are a sellout and not a real punk. Hardcore gamers sometimes remind me of that. They are people who think they are the authority on who is and is not a real gamer and who should be welcome.
 
Ailike

Ailike

Member
Woggleman said:
To be fair I used to be involved with the 90s New York punk scene and some people outside of that were just insufferable. You like one song that gets the radio play and all of a sudden you are a sellout and not a real punk. Hardcore gamers sometimes remind me of that. They are people who think they are the authority on who is and is not a real gamer and who should be welcome.
Click to expand...
You're not a real gamer unless you play on a $2500 tv. Anything else is unplayable.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Woggleman said:
To be fair I used to be involved with the 90s New York punk scene and some people outside of that were just insufferable. You like one song that gets the radio play and all of a sudden you are a sellout and not a real punk. Hardcore gamers sometimes remind me of that. They are people who think they are the authority on who is and is not a real gamer and who should be welcome.
Click to expand...
Well, wouldn't you say it's different to, for example, like a punk song or two, occasionally, on the radio or whatever, vs being, uh, as you say a punk so into it you get involved with the punk scene or whatever? Without trying to make anyone in either category stop listening to what they like naturally.

Same goes for playing a game or two, occasionally. Everyone into this hobby also has friends who aren't but still got down for some fighting game trashing or sports game or fps or dota or br type game nowadays I suppose. The distinction is clear, without any negative connotations of course 🤷‍♂️
 
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Bragr

Bragr

Banned
nush said:
Binge watching Netflix though? A OK!
Click to expand...
Both are bad. The advent of streaming TV services is an issue too. People are getting more and more attached to cheap fun. I am too, it's never going away, but I'm not gonna pretend it's not making people weaker, more susceptible to marketing, and more likely to never get anywhere in life and not really understanding why until they look back and notice that they don't give a shit about 99% of the games and TV shows they watched.

Then you will get a better picture of how entertainment marketing affected you since you were a kid and got hooked on it, and how much time you really spent on this shit.
 
ProgenitorCastle

ProgenitorCastle

Banned
-The association with it being childish as others mentioned.
-The money factor. Buying systems controllers and the games themselves have some surprised at me irl like "you spent that much...on a video game?!"

Those are the general 2 major reasons I can think of...I'm jealous of people whose entire families can get into gaming, parents included. It'd be my dream to have others irl who care about gaming as much as I do...but that's a whole different discussion lol
 
W

Woggleman

Member
Alexios said:
Well, wouldn't you say it's different to, for example, like a punk song or two, occasionally, on the radio or whatever, vs being, uh, as you say a punk so into it you get involved with the punk scene or whatever? Without trying to make anyone in either category stop listening to what they like naturally.
Click to expand...
At this point I am like enjoy what you like. I grew out of the snobbery before I hit 30.

Games can also be different genres as well and some of the people I ran with seriously were mad that all music on the radio was not what they liked. It's the same way people complain about the existence of open world or cinematic or turned based RPG or FPS like they are somehow being forced to play these games. Many people enjoy those kinds of games so let them.

A lot of gamers think that what they like is the one and true standard of gaming and everybody else is a casual.
 
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