Let's have a look at WSJ's comments. Just for fun. "You need to get out and walk, and get a job. You have too much time on your hands..." ----

Let's have a look at WSJ's comments. Just for fun. "You need to get out and walk, and get a job. You have too much time on your hands..." ---- "Bet Daigo is a supporter of Universal Income." ---- "Pathetic." ---- "I bet the girls are just lining up for this guy." ---- "These folks should be pitied, not celebrated. Shame on the WSJ for giving him airtime." ---- "I bet the girls are just lining up for this guy." ---- "1. He isn't a man if he spends most of his time playing a video game. 2. If this is our future generation... we are all screwed. 3. Where did he steal the 70k?" ---- "The guy's brain is just going to be oatmeal in 10 years..." ---- "Guy's lucky my parents aren't his. He'd be out on the street so fast his butt would be burning from road rash." And people are puzzled by the hikikomori phenomenon in Japanese society. I think hikikomori exist in any nation/society where self-important "humans" react to another individual human being's life choices like this. Ironically, these "humans" probably think the completion of daily sudoku puzzles, perhaps the occasional game of something well-regarded like chess, and just doing their jobs, will preserve the integrity of their precious brains. These video game addicts are doing the same thing with "rare characters" i.e. solving puzzles etc. The automatic assumption that the man is unemployed and leeching his parents' money is also amusing. I have met some of these "whales" that play gacha video games. Many of them have well-paid jobs and simply choose to divert their money towards what may seem to many to be a frivolous and silly, even ephemeral thing like the acquisition of video game characters. I'm not saying this guy has got it figured out, he's probably neurotic on some level, but these comments are symptomatic of a society that will cause people to go in these directions of neurotic escapism. They're also demonstrative of a society that is itself scared or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of problems that drive people to such extremes, and indicates at a rotten core and an emptiness to the people who are so quick to cast judgement. There were comments about how the money has been wasted and the man will wake up later in his life and regret everything. What do these people think they will do with their savings, assets and so on? Do they think that they can buy their way into an eternal afterlife? I don't think these people have acknowledged the possibility that when they're dead, that's it, and all the wealth they accumulated is meaningless when you're in the ground. I'm not defending this person's behaviour. I'm not a video game addict or mentally ill (I smoke, but I don't see myself in this guy, so I don't think I'm biased). I just think there's a problem in any discourse where there isn't a single person playing Devil's Advocate, and I think it's hilarious that the people leaving such comments are so utterly blind to the fact that their attitudes are precisely the reasons why many people end up mentally ill.