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It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient r

It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient rewards relative to one's efforts. I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. Even as a relatively successful adult who doesn't game (no time for it, and I avoid things I know are addictive) I felt the game is rigged. Most of us have gotten to the point that we literally never expect to retire (though we will literally run into some physical constraints at some point when our bodies and minds begin to fail us). So we grind through work, pay our bills, and hope to God we don't get cancer or Alzheimer's. When life seems so unrewarding, it's unsurprising that many seek refuge in games and other entertainment (Netflix, social media, news feeds, etc)... Any way you slice it this is not going to end well. Essentially we're in a Great Depression of an entirely new sort.

yehi 10y ago
I have to disagree. Apart from maybe post WW2 in America, the average person has always had to work much harder than the elite. There were sweatshops, Kings, slavery, and colonialism. If we look at American now, even with all of its issues, it is much better for the middle and lower class than it was 100 years ago.
- datatan 10y ago
  Not sure how you come to that conclusion when the middle class is almost gone in this country.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - jpatokal 10y ago
    Not quite: https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2930990/Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States_2012.0.png https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2930990/D...
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    Compared to 1917? The middle class was in its infancy at that point. Workers were still fighting for basic safety protections and one day off per week.
vlunkr 10y ago
The trick is to stop caring about the 1%. There isn't limited wealth or happiness. I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time Unless, of course your planning counts on government sponsored health insurance or even Social Security since in today's political climate, there's no guarantee that either will be around for your retirement.
  - researcher11 10y ago
    Pensions are the first to go. They already are in many places. Taxpayers will be unable to bail them out. If you think being 20 with a shitty job is bad then consider being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever.
    - Danihan 10y ago
      If you're 65 and have no savings or income you really lived your life wrong. I mean, even if you bought a house at 35 and just made minimum payments, at least that would be paid off. And I'm sure taxes could be paid by renting out one room..
      - researcher11 10y ago
        This thread is in the context of a major economic downturn. Many @ 65 are not set up as defensively to survive one. Counters to your example would be modern day Detroit, modern day Greece, and the Weimar Republic.
    - darpa_escapee 10y ago
      > being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever. I'm watching this happen to my own and friends' parents. Pensions gutted in industries / jobs that are dying or dead and nest eggs drying up very quickly to pay for health insurance and living costs. Most of these people did everything "right" that was within their means when it came to planning ahead and they are fucked. If they were in an even lower economic rung of society, I would imagine what they are experiencing would be much worse. As in homelessness, malnutrition and death from easily treatable illnesses. This is not something anyone wants for their future.
hkmurakami 10y ago
It's like the world is catching up to Japan and its problems: slow growth, deep government debt, ballooning social entitlement spending, and un/under-employed youth. This is just like the Japanese Neets.
- api 10y ago
  I've been predicting "planet Japan" for years due to slowing population growth, resource constraints, and market saturation.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    Well at least I can look forward to better customer service and lower crime rates.
    - douche 10y ago
      You need to have the cultural homogeneity for that.
zxcvvcxz 10y ago
> I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, > but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. I've got news people: the top 1% is not forcing you to watch Netflix, consume social media, or strap a VR headset on. We live in a generation absolutely devoid of personal responsibility. And it's why ideas that would easily be dismissed as Marxist (which masquerade as "post-modern") 30+ years ago are on the rise today. Oh, you're just oppressed. Economic growth is over, we have to redistribute things now. It's not you're fault that you're addicted. Here, take this medication every day. Where's the hard work in today's generation? Where's the personal responsibility? Where's the discipline? Where's the can-do attitude? And let's get straight-to-the-point on the article in question. Nobody cares about men whining. It's just reality. Call it politically incorrect, whatever. If you're a man and don't work to get what you think you deserve, you won't get it. Instead, there's just gonna be more single women and more jobs available for those that do choose to compete.
- nunez 10y ago
  I completely agree with this. My immediate family and I came from having next to nothing. We busted ass and have money now. We aren't rich, but we're enjoying life in ways we couldn't growing up. If we, instead, believed the rhetoric that life is screwed unless you came out of a "lucky vagina," we would still be broke, in Brooklyn, trying to make ends meet, and I would be another socially-inept dude that spends way too much time on games and "computers." It's not just us either. I graduated with a bunch of people who came from similar situations and are now doing great. Life is what you make of it.
  - coliveira 10y ago
    It is too easy for people who have "made it" to say this. I have kind of made it too, so I could have the same attitude. The problem however is that anecdotes don't proof a point. You have to look at numbers. Numbers say that the majority of Americans are losing purchasing power year after year, and there are fewer middle class jobs. Somehow, the 1% have more privileges each passing day, they pay close to nothing in taxes and corporations can dodge taxes any way they want. As a result, there is less money to invest in people, and the same pattern is repeating itself in most countries around the world (globalization, remember).
narrator 10y ago
One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. This has been changing for the worse with all the pay to win stuff, but there's still a fair amount of cheap gaming out there. With a gaming addiction, never leaving the house and a minimal food budget I wonder how much the average gamer subsists on each month. I had a friend whose brother would go to work and come home and play video games every day. That was literally it. Work, pay rent, game, eat sleep. I watched him repeat this cycle when we were hanging out. He didn't even have much to say most days. The hikomori in Japan are already adopting this terminal frugality en masse.
- rgun 10y ago
  *hikikomori
- fmihaila 10y ago
  > One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. It can be extremely expensive in opportunity costs, unfortunately.
  - sonthonax 10y ago
    As with all addictions.
    - fmihaila 10y ago
      Well, it depends. Some other addictions, while they may consume parts of you, can on balance be more contained (if they don't kill you first). Video games, on the other hand, are sure to eat away inordinate amounts of that which you can never get back: time.
      - kordless 10y ago
        I would propose two counter conjectures: 1. There is no you. 2. There is no time.
      - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hyperpallium 10y ago
I've been thinking about gradients in evolution, what directions are fruitful for an organism to evolve in. The acceleration in intelligence in our line would seem to require an ongoing survival-advantage gradient for intelligence (that somehow, wasn't available to other apes...). It also relates to the brain-body ratio for species, because investing in intelligence works for them - it says something about that species' environment/niche, and not just the species itself. If games now provide the best gradient of reward for effort... Another solution is to change the problem: what if games did provide a survival or reproductive advantage? Quite possibly, social media already is, being better connected has long been an advantage ("it's who you know, not what you know").
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  I doubt we're more intelligent than apes. We just have some specialized language machinery that allowed a new parasitic species (memes) to evolve on top of us. We're just apes with a "copy" button in our brains. We look intelligent, but that's just because we're being farmed by memes. The memes aren't smart either, but the 2-layer system is smarter than any 1-layer system.
  - hyperpallium 10y ago
    Our brains are much larger than apes' (IIRC about 4x), but survival advantage based on memes could well have provided the gradient. BTW yes, I have read The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins coined the term and concept.
  - marknutter 10y ago
    But you and Dawkins.. oh yes, you're much more intelligent than apes..
mozumder 10y ago
> and soon, VR, to the equation, I can guarantee you that VR will never be part of the equation. There are far too many safety-related user-experience problems with it.
kordless 10y ago
> I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. This is well put and I would only add that the wealth trapping is occurring in a viral way, which means there should be some type of inoculation for the more harmful effects of it.
api 10y ago
It's already not ending well. A seemingly sizable and growing fraction of these disaffected largely male unemployed or under-employed people are embracing full-blown fascism and other equally unhinged ideologies. Look into the intersection between online alt-right / neo-Nazi trolldom and the gamer/4chan/etc. orbit. Humans don't like to live in zoos and alternate realities are ultimately unfulfilling. I agree about your causal analysis too: the top of the pyramid have become so good at locking down wealth and power that they're closing the world down for everyone else. If this continues it will end very badly. We have nuclear weapons, drones, AI, and total surveillance, all of which are waiting for a truly unhinged demagogue to come to power. World War III. Now there's a way to get out from under your student loans.
- intended 10y ago
  World war 3 is the dream for the disenfranchised. The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead.
  - Danihan 10y ago
    >The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead. That's the status quo, sure. But nothing says that will remain stable.
pabloski 10y ago
"I felt the game is rigged", you nailed it in this simple phrase. In fact http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyman-unveils-bill-suppress-non-government-approved-free-speech http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyma... They ( the oligarchs through their politicians ) change the rules every day, but they say to us that the system is fair. Obviously it is lapalissian that the system isn't fair at all but it is massively rigged. In the past centuries people would have revolted, now they imprison themselves in the virtual world.
- jondubois 10y ago
  Yeah, you don't see them in the streets, they're "out of sight, out of mind". Even if they understood what happened to them, they wouldn't have the confidence to do anything about it. The brilliance of this terrible system is that it makes the victims accept the full the responsibility of their failed lives upon themselves. It's natural selection. People who need to feel short term rewards in their lives will be wiped out from the gene pool. People who can operate without any rewards (contentment/happiness) in their lives; basically, people who seek status over happiness will strive.
  - mattmanser 10y ago
    The Occupy protests around the world? Arab spring? 2011 UK riots? Black lives matter? There's a definite undercurrent that politicians are barely keeping a lid on, the latest manifestations being Brexit and Trump.
    - beaconstudios 10y ago
      the only way they keep the ongoing strife from really effecting the political system is by keeping the left and right wings fighting each other over often minor disagreements.
      - midgetjones 10y ago
        And a new iPhone every year
jdhe 10y ago
I think this is the most cogent synthesis of these issues that I've read. https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-ca...
complexmango 10y ago
This is a particularly ironic comment on HackerNews. While there indeed is a depression underway (as has been the case every 50-80 years in recorded history), opportunities have accrued to tech in an unprecedented fashion. Anybody can learn to code in their bedroom and open up options that require no connections or wealth (e.g. freelancing online). Combine that with unprecedented global mobility, and all of a sudden being an American programmer living and working in South America, Eastern Europe, SouthEast Asia etc means life is better than its ever been in history. Sorry man - I'm an immigrant to the US, and this strikes me as a very classic first-world-problems type sentiment.

yehi 10y ago

I have to disagree. Apart from maybe post WW2 in America, the average person has always had to work much harder than the elite. There were sweatshops, Kings, slavery, and colonialism. If we look at American now, even with all of its issues, it is much better for the middle and lower class than it was 100 years ago.

datatan 10y ago
Not sure how you come to that conclusion when the middle class is almost gone in this country.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jpatokal 10y ago
  Not quite: https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2930990/Distribution_of_Annual_Household_Income_in_the_United_States_2012.0.png https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2930990/D...
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Compared to 1917? The middle class was in its infancy at that point. Workers were still fighting for basic safety protections and one day off per week.

vlunkr 10y ago

The trick is to stop caring about the 1%. There isn't limited wealth or happiness. I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time.

Johnny555 10y ago
I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time Unless, of course your planning counts on government sponsored health insurance or even Social Security since in today's political climate, there's no guarantee that either will be around for your retirement.
- researcher11 10y ago
  Pensions are the first to go. They already are in many places. Taxpayers will be unable to bail them out. If you think being 20 with a shitty job is bad then consider being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever.
  - Danihan 10y ago
    If you're 65 and have no savings or income you really lived your life wrong. I mean, even if you bought a house at 35 and just made minimum payments, at least that would be paid off. And I'm sure taxes could be paid by renting out one room..
    - researcher11 10y ago
      This thread is in the context of a major economic downturn. Many @ 65 are not set up as defensively to survive one. Counters to your example would be modern day Detroit, modern day Greece, and the Weimar Republic.
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    > being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever. I'm watching this happen to my own and friends' parents. Pensions gutted in industries / jobs that are dying or dead and nest eggs drying up very quickly to pay for health insurance and living costs. Most of these people did everything "right" that was within their means when it came to planning ahead and they are fucked. If they were in an even lower economic rung of society, I would imagine what they are experiencing would be much worse. As in homelessness, malnutrition and death from easily treatable illnesses. This is not something anyone wants for their future.

hkmurakami 10y ago

It's like the world is catching up to Japan and its problems: slow growth, deep government debt, ballooning social entitlement spending, and un/under-employed youth. This is just like the Japanese Neets.

api 10y ago
I've been predicting "planet Japan" for years due to slowing population growth, resource constraints, and market saturation.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Well at least I can look forward to better customer service and lower crime rates.
  - douche 10y ago
    You need to have the cultural homogeneity for that.

zxcvvcxz 10y ago

> I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, > but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. I've got news people: the top 1% is not forcing you to watch Netflix, consume social media, or strap a VR headset on. We live in a generation absolutely devoid of personal responsibility. And it's why ideas that would easily be dismissed as Marxist (which masquerade as "post-modern") 30+ years ago are on the rise today. Oh, you're just oppressed. Economic growth is over, we have to redistribute things now. It's not you're fault that you're addicted. Here, take this medication every day. Where's the hard work in today's generation? Where's the personal responsibility? Where's the discipline? Where's the can-do attitude? And let's get straight-to-the-point on the article in question. Nobody cares about men whining. It's just reality. Call it politically incorrect, whatever. If you're a man and don't work to get what you think you deserve, you won't get it. Instead, there's just gonna be more single women and more jobs available for those that do choose to compete.

nunez 10y ago
I completely agree with this. My immediate family and I came from having next to nothing. We busted ass and have money now. We aren't rich, but we're enjoying life in ways we couldn't growing up. If we, instead, believed the rhetoric that life is screwed unless you came out of a "lucky vagina," we would still be broke, in Brooklyn, trying to make ends meet, and I would be another socially-inept dude that spends way too much time on games and "computers." It's not just us either. I graduated with a bunch of people who came from similar situations and are now doing great. Life is what you make of it.
- coliveira 10y ago
  It is too easy for people who have "made it" to say this. I have kind of made it too, so I could have the same attitude. The problem however is that anecdotes don't proof a point. You have to look at numbers. Numbers say that the majority of Americans are losing purchasing power year after year, and there are fewer middle class jobs. Somehow, the 1% have more privileges each passing day, they pay close to nothing in taxes and corporations can dodge taxes any way they want. As a result, there is less money to invest in people, and the same pattern is repeating itself in most countries around the world (globalization, remember).

narrator 10y ago

One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. This has been changing for the worse with all the pay to win stuff, but there's still a fair amount of cheap gaming out there. With a gaming addiction, never leaving the house and a minimal food budget I wonder how much the average gamer subsists on each month. I had a friend whose brother would go to work and come home and play video games every day. That was literally it. Work, pay rent, game, eat sleep. I watched him repeat this cycle when we were hanging out. He didn't even have much to say most days. The hikomori in Japan are already adopting this terminal frugality en masse.

rgun 10y ago
*hikikomori
fmihaila 10y ago
> One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. It can be extremely expensive in opportunity costs, unfortunately.
- sonthonax 10y ago
  As with all addictions.
  - fmihaila 10y ago
    Well, it depends. Some other addictions, while they may consume parts of you, can on balance be more contained (if they don't kill you first). Video games, on the other hand, are sure to eat away inordinate amounts of that which you can never get back: time.
    - kordless 10y ago
      I would propose two counter conjectures: 1. There is no you. 2. There is no time.
    - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

hyperpallium 10y ago

I've been thinking about gradients in evolution, what directions are fruitful for an organism to evolve in. The acceleration in intelligence in our line would seem to require an ongoing survival-advantage gradient for intelligence (that somehow, wasn't available to other apes...). It also relates to the brain-body ratio for species, because investing in intelligence works for them - it says something about that species' environment/niche, and not just the species itself. If games now provide the best gradient of reward for effort... Another solution is to change the problem: what if games did provide a survival or reproductive advantage? Quite possibly, social media already is, being better connected has long been an advantage ("it's who you know, not what you know").

erikpukinskis 10y ago
I doubt we're more intelligent than apes. We just have some specialized language machinery that allowed a new parasitic species (memes) to evolve on top of us. We're just apes with a "copy" button in our brains. We look intelligent, but that's just because we're being farmed by memes. The memes aren't smart either, but the 2-layer system is smarter than any 1-layer system.
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  Our brains are much larger than apes' (IIRC about 4x), but survival advantage based on memes could well have provided the gradient. BTW yes, I have read The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins coined the term and concept.
- marknutter 10y ago
  But you and Dawkins.. oh yes, you're much more intelligent than apes..

mozumder 10y ago

> and soon, VR, to the equation, I can guarantee you that VR will never be part of the equation. There are far too many safety-related user-experience problems with it.

kordless 10y ago

> I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. This is well put and I would only add that the wealth trapping is occurring in a viral way, which means there should be some type of inoculation for the more harmful effects of it.

api 10y ago

It's already not ending well. A seemingly sizable and growing fraction of these disaffected largely male unemployed or under-employed people are embracing full-blown fascism and other equally unhinged ideologies. Look into the intersection between online alt-right / neo-Nazi trolldom and the gamer/4chan/etc. orbit. Humans don't like to live in zoos and alternate realities are ultimately unfulfilling. I agree about your causal analysis too: the top of the pyramid have become so good at locking down wealth and power that they're closing the world down for everyone else. If this continues it will end very badly. We have nuclear weapons, drones, AI, and total surveillance, all of which are waiting for a truly unhinged demagogue to come to power. World War III. Now there's a way to get out from under your student loans.

intended 10y ago
World war 3 is the dream for the disenfranchised. The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead.
- Danihan 10y ago
  >The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead. That's the status quo, sure. But nothing says that will remain stable.

pabloski 10y ago

"I felt the game is rigged", you nailed it in this simple phrase. In fact http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyman-unveils-bill-suppress-non-government-approved-free-speech http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyma... They ( the oligarchs through their politicians ) change the rules every day, but they say to us that the system is fair. Obviously it is lapalissian that the system isn't fair at all but it is massively rigged. In the past centuries people would have revolted, now they imprison themselves in the virtual world.

jondubois 10y ago
Yeah, you don't see them in the streets, they're "out of sight, out of mind". Even if they understood what happened to them, they wouldn't have the confidence to do anything about it. The brilliance of this terrible system is that it makes the victims accept the full the responsibility of their failed lives upon themselves. It's natural selection. People who need to feel short term rewards in their lives will be wiped out from the gene pool. People who can operate without any rewards (contentment/happiness) in their lives; basically, people who seek status over happiness will strive.
- mattmanser 10y ago
  The Occupy protests around the world? Arab spring? 2011 UK riots? Black lives matter? There's a definite undercurrent that politicians are barely keeping a lid on, the latest manifestations being Brexit and Trump.
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    the only way they keep the ongoing strife from really effecting the political system is by keeping the left and right wings fighting each other over often minor disagreements.
    - midgetjones 10y ago
      And a new iPhone every year

jdhe 10y ago

I think this is the most cogent synthesis of these issues that I've read. https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-capitalism-end https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-ca...

complexmango 10y ago

This is a particularly ironic comment on HackerNews. While there indeed is a depression underway (as has been the case every 50-80 years in recorded history), opportunities have accrued to tech in an unprecedented fashion. Anybody can learn to code in their bedroom and open up options that require no connections or wealth (e.g. freelancing online). Combine that with unprecedented global mobility, and all of a sudden being an American programmer living and working in South America, Eastern Europe, SouthEast Asia etc means life is better than its ever been in history. Sorry man - I'm an immigrant to the US, and this strikes me as a very classic first-world-problems type sentiment.