In my recent post on How To Get Your Shit Together, I touched briefly on some of the things that young men who want to develop themselves should and should not do. The comments on that post were enlightening as to the biggest issue we have with under-developed men, or at least those who read this sub.

Not one person said, fuck you, I can do poorly in school and be just fine.

Not one person said, fuck you, I can have a messy room and be just fine.

A few people said, fuck you, caffeine can be just fine in moderation.

A metric buttload of people said, fuck you, I can play video games and be just fine.

It’s clear that there’s an uncomfortable truth that a lot of losers need to face, that there’s a delusion that might be on par with the Walt-Disney, fairy-tale, imma-find-my-one-true-love-and-treat-her-like-a-princess fantasy that is the entire raison d’être for this sub.

Here’s the hard truth: video games are preventing you from being a successful man.

I can hear you already… what do video games have to do with The Red Pill? Well… the red pill is an analogy from the Matrix, an analogy all about getting out of the computer-generated, make-believe world you’ve been spending all your time in and opening your real eyes for the first time.

Sound relevant?

Here are some of the reasons video games suck:

• They take up a tremendous amount of time.
• They cause you to sit on your ass for that tremendous amount of time, probably eating crap and drinking soda.
• They socially isolate you.
• They give you ever-increasing dopamine hits for meaningless accomplishments.
• They produce no tangible real-world result. At least jacking off causes you to produce a small puddle full of millions of cells capable of creating life.
• They can become your new frame of reference for processing information.
• They cause you to misallocate your discipline. A man only has so much grit he can muster in a given day, and even though you tell yourself that you play video games to relax, it doesn't seem very relaxing to grind out the same level over and over again until you finally unlock that last virtual achievement.

Here are some of the reasons video games are good:

• They can help you unwind.

There are a hell of a lot of other activities that can help you unwind that don’t have the negative effects that video games have.

I can already smell the downvotes and predict your responses. Elon Musk plays video games. You ain’t Elon Musk. Elon Musk doesn’t need to read posts about how to get his shit together. If reading my post provoked an emotional response in you, that should tell you something. Stuff that doesn’t have a kernel of truth doesn’t bother people. If I say your dad’s a drunk, and you get pissed at me and call me names, it’s a pretty safe bet that your dad is a drunk. If you’re pissed at me for telling you to cut the video games, same thing.

This is not me being like your parents who think video games are new and weird and can’t follow or understand them and “back in my day, kids played outside…” I understand that video games can be an art form, just like film. Video games are part and parcel of modern life. I have friends who compose music for video games. I go to parties where Super Smash Bros. gets played. I listen to the L.A. Noire soundtrack at work.

Here’s the difference between those art forms, though… nobody watches their favorite film for hours and hours, day after day after day.

Is it possible to enjoy video games responsibly and live a happy, productive life? You bet. But it’s also possible to live a happy, productive life with a snail fetish. That doesn’t make the snail fetish a positive thing.

Here are three things that are all true:

• Most of y’all motherfuckers spend too much time playing video games.
• It’s really easy for your general life happiness to be as high or higher than it is now playing 30 minutes at a time every few days.
• It’s really hard to build a successful life playing video games as often as you currently do.

Your parents weren’t being complete morons when they told you to switch off the console and play outside.

And speaking of your parents… how many of you have parents or grandparents who watch hours and hours of cable news or listen to hours and hours of sports radio? They get all worked up over things that don’t really matter in the long run at all. They have opinions about them. They post those opinions on social media. They get really invested in their side winning. It’s kind of embarrassing and pathetic.

Well, cable news is to old people what video games are to young men.

I’m not saying video games are evil… I’m saying your life is pathetic. And a big part of why it’s pathetic is the amount of time you spend playing Fortnite and FIFA.

You live in a society whose abundance means you have an amount of free time unimaginable in prior generations. You should use a decent chunk of that time to go work on something that will have a tangible benefit once the screen gets switched off.