Men Should Stop Playing Video Games

When I was in the 4^th grade, the Nintendo 64 made its grand debut and soon asserted itself as the new must-have console for every household with a child. Games like Mario Kart, Starfox 64, and The Legend of Zelda, too, became household names, and their respective characters were well recognized.

When I received the Nintendo 64 for my birthday, I could hardly think of anything else. I even faked a stomach ache one day at school, believing that if I were persuasive enough, the school nurse would send me home. Well, it worked, and I went home after lunch and spent the rest of the day pressing buttons wide-eyed and brain blistered by whatever game it was at the time.

When Nintendo released the James Bond themed GoldenEye, the only first-person shooter game on the market, it nearly broke people’s brains, mine included. There was nothing left in the world after that––the action and the shooting of that game drowned out all other cares.

Entire weekends were filled with shooting bad guys and racing through each level to get to the next. I believe there was also a new feature on the Nintendo 64 console, which allowed up to four players to compete at the same time. This made shooting and sports games even more addictive as an after-school activity at a friend’s house.

Those were simple times––there was no internet, no cell phones (not really), and even as addictive as these gaming consoles had become, it never really prevented us kids from going outside, riding our bikes in the sun, or jumping on a neighbor’s trampoline until we collapsed in exhaustion.

Of course, there is a lot of nostalgia-driven rhetoric about these earlier times, and the culture around videogaming is a big part of that. Because of the sweetness and innocence of those times, I can’t say I blame those who never gave up the activity of videogaming, but perhaps, they should.

I don’t know how or why it happened, but one day, I would guess around 12 or 13, I simply put the remote control down and never picked it up again. Soon, the console itself would be stored away in a closet to collect dust, then at some point, given away to a charity.

My guess is that girls became the priority, and the hours that I spent playing video games were traded for chatting with girls in my school over Instant Messenger. Additionally, music became a bigger part of my life as I started to discover artists like Bob Dylan, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones.

This timeline of events was so common that many people of my generation (especially men) will identify with that very evolution that I described above. But not everyone. For some adults, video games are a big part of their life, and the gamer personality is a full-blown, acceptable identity. And in my opinion, it is quite cringe. It is a real second-hand embarrassment that comes over me when entering the living room of a grown man to find Xbox controllers lying on the coffee table.

Even the look of a grown man with his eyes glazed over and his tongue wagging like Michael Jordan mid-dunk while going for a high score record is––well, I think you get me––buddy, do you see yourself? But am I really advocating for throwing away your games and never looking back? I think, within reason, games could be a stress reliever, or even better, a way to potentially learn a new subject, in the case of educational games, or even bond with a child whose interest in video games is absolutely normal.

But for those who have made gaming into an identity, where all other noise has been drowned out by fantasy, I would say, the less of that, the better. Gamer core and its associated aesthetics (neon lighting, gamer chairs, Mountain Dew Code Red, and the like) are not just embarrassing, but bear all the symbols of a personality that has not reached, nor is looking to find some semblance of maturity.

And there are plenty of other activities I would lump in with video game culture; Pokémon collectors, tennis shoe enthusiasts, Star Wars nutbags and the like are all guilty of the same crime; the abject shamelessness that they approach their life with. Some, however, are quite aware of their cringe-inducing hobbies, made apparent by their apoplectic nerd rage that gets directed at anyone who hints that they should grow up.

I think, broadly speaking, out of either neglect or politeness, culture at large has stopped much of its shunning, much of its shaming. I think we could occasionally use a few doses of shame––for that, too, is also a nostalgia many yearn for. I don’t have to tell anyone about the lowly state of the world. We are all too familiar with the problems facing the nation and humanity at large. For some, this driving force may lead them to slink off, ignore the world and its many problems, and engage in a fantasy-driven rescue mission of a galaxy far away.

But this planet still needs men, in the real world to solve real-world problems. So, perhaps, it would be better if some of them participated a bit more and finally, put away all those so very foolish things.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.