I flail my fists at it and make "OOOGAAAH" sounds and the keyboard smashes and eventually flips off the desk so I'm not allowed in the library anymore.

I watched the first one, and I guess it was ok.

Like, ok, this guy believes that things in life have some value beyond what you prescribe them. Well, good for him. I think I've already covered a few times that I don't think that. The only thing that constitutes value is how good it makes you feel.

The second guy though?

He started out ok.

Then it was "DUDE WHO IS THREE TIMES MY WEIGHT TELLING ME HOW NOT TO BE FAT" and he suddenly lost all integrity.

Then he listed people like Ayn Rand and Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald as authors everyone should read.

Man, Ayn Rand sucks. Steinbeck sucks harder. And... well I don't really have an issue with F. Scott Fitzgerald, but he wasn't amazing or anything.

His movie list wasn't much better but I can't be arsed to go back and look for specific examples, and it left me wondering... what's the difference if I spend 2-4 hours sitting on my ass eating cheetos, drinking Mt. Dew, and playing Final Fantasy XXXVII or watching oh fuck I don't know... Logan's Run (I lied, I went back and found one), which isn't even a good movie. It doesn't speak to pertinent social issues in any real way, and the issues it does handle it handles in such a hamfisted and cartoony way as to completely destroy any validity the observations may have otherwise had.

Like, he had a point. It was a pretty decent/good point, but then he ruined it through healthy doses of hypocrisy and shitty taste.

Know who read Ayn Rand?

The people who made Bioshock 1 & 2.

Great games. Greeeeaaaat games.

Have you read Ayn Rand?

I've read Ayn Rand.

She sucks.

Edit: Though basing a villain on her is pretty cool, because she was basically an insanely hypocritical psychobitch. If she had made herself the villains in her books I'd have liked them more.

I think his main point gets a little better near the end. What he's suggesting isn't that we should be hyper fit but we should work towards fulfilling our lives with different projects. I may not agree with every point, but I did find that a few of the authors he listed (Fitzgerald) might be some to look into.

He didn't even list Edgar Rice Burroughs. The man has no taste.

Also, I stand by my, "a dude who is 3x my size shouldn't be telling me how to lose weight," point. If he told me how much being fat sucked, and that I maybe shouldn't do the same thing, I would listen. And if Susan Summers told me how to not be fat I would listen.

I, however, wouldn't listen if Susan Summers told me how much being fat sucks--'cause bitch don't know--and I'm not going to listen to him on how to not be fat, again, 'cause bitch don't know. If bitch knew, he wouldn't be so fat.

To be fair, he pointed this out.

Also, he wasn't talking directly to you. He was talking to the thousands of kids who have to roll to the fridge so they can get some Pizza Pockets for breakfast every morning.

And... well, these are all well-known things. "Stop eating shitty food" and "Work out once in a while" aren't exactly secret methods to earning a healthy lifestyle. Doesn't matter who they're coming from - whether you listen or not should depend on the quality of the message, not necessarily the source.

(I mean, you don't really need weight loss tips unless you've let yourself go since that picture of you in the miniskirt. *whistles* You go girl!)

While I actually agree with you entirely (Fuck Fitzgerald, in fact, Great Gatsby was absolutely useless) I would like to say that it's still important to be FAMILIAR with them. They're (arguably) important parts of modern culture, and at the very least people should read them to decide for themselves whether or not they're worth worrying about.

You're nitpicking.

His point was that gamers have to learn to integrate socially with non-gamers. Just because this person you're meeting has never played a game of Starcraft doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to find a common thread - knowing the classics from other forms of entertainment is useful in that sense. And again, while I agree that some of those choices were pretty bad (IMO a lot of those movies were made before the human race learned the art of "acting") the point is that they're well-known and people should at least be familiar with them.


I agree that the first video is more... hard-hitting though. The guy's speaking from experience and... well, to be honest, it's come to me at the absolute perfect time. Speaking of which, I'm gonna go finish my homework that's due tomorrow. And the assignment that was due today. And hey, maybe I'll catch up on the notes for the class I failed a midterm in because I was too busy playing Final Fantasy 13 and Starcraft 2.

Or maybe I'll do some of that in the morning. It's 2am, I've spent far too long on Red Alert 3. Regardless... helpful points.

Kerensky I was with you up until you said Gatsby was useless and then I thought "Well, it looks like the rest of that post and all his future posts aren't worth reading."

Why? What makes them worth bothering with beyond their popularity? How is reading Ayn Rand and then deciding that Ayn Rand is an idiot going to enhance someone beyond getting them to steer clear of Ayn Rand? While it doesn't hurt to have some experience with the really bad stuff, you don't need to read every piece of sociopolitical philosophy tripe anyone ever wrote in order to form valid opinions.

But he IS one of those kids. It's purely hypocritical for him to talk to those kids like that, when he, himself, is that over weight.

My mother has thyroid issues, nervous system issues, respiratory issues, narcolepsy, and is BASICALLY falling apart at the seams. She literally can not exercise because it makes her sick, and eating healthier/less will never make her thin because of her thyroid. She still manages to be smaller than this guy.

Once he, himself, makes the life changes that he is suggesting that all of us make, once he loses that weight? THEN, and ONLY THEN, is he allowed to tell others about it.

You want to talk about culture, and pieces of culture gamers should know about? Here's one just for him: Aesop.

Don't tell someone else how to live or act unless you're willing to live up to those same standards yourself.





They are important because people assign value and importance to them.

If we'd quit jerking off shitty authors like Herman Melville we could move past them and stop forcing students to read one of the most ham-fisted and clumsily terrible attempts at purposefully creating a 'masterpiece' that has ever been seen.



If this was really his point?

He'd have told us to watch FRIENDS and Seinfeld, and I don't know, Two and Half Men, Scrubs.

You try starting a conversation with someone at work about 2001: A Space Odyssey and let me know how that goes for you. When you're done mention how much you like Chandler.

What he's really doing is trying to make value judgments on what movies--what pieces of art in the visual medium--are worth watching. And he's failing. Horribly. This goes back to the above.

If we'd, as a culture, quit talking about how 'awesome' shitty movies of the past are, they'd no longer be 'classics'. The only worth they have is that which we as humans assign them.

I mean--I'm not even defensive here. I obviously don't fall into any of these things he's criticizing. I'm thinner than him, I'm healthy as shit, I drink flavored vitamin enriched waters over soda when I can, I usually avoid chips and pizza and stuff (though I've been bad the last few weeks), I eat decent serving sizes, I have seen most of his movies, I have read works by most of those authors (and hated them, EDIT: fuck Hunter S. Thompson fuck the works of, etc. etc. while we're at it--I can't hate on a dude who got high and rode with the hell's angels just to write a book... doesn't mean I have to like the book, though).

I just patently disagree with the way he is choosing to present his message, and the hypocrisy with which he does it.

This is a guy called the 'game overthinker' complaining about people knowing more about games than anything else. He's a bigger 'loser' than all of us combined by his own standards. He is NOT the person who should be making these kinds of judgment calls on others.