LOL...let's blame video games.
The reason that men are playing video games now, when they used to be the domain of young boys, is because the video-games made today are tailored and marketed toward older people.
Maybe we should be like the previous generation and use alcohol to distract us from our struggles, instead of video games. That's how "mature" people handle their problems, isn't it? (South Park would seem to agree, based on last night)
But maybe they're right. Our generation was raised on video games. We grew up in a world where our need to accomplish things was measured digitally, where whenever you couldn't surmount an obstacle, there was a Nintendo Power sitting there with a tip or cheat-code we could use, and if we got stuck in a bad situation, we could just "hit reset" and re-load from the last save point. If we didn't do well, we didn't have to GET good at anything through practice, we just had to find another game.
Who are the "great men" of our generation? You have to wonder if Bill Gates or Steve Jobs would have ever done such great things in the world of technology, for example, if they had had video games.
Women have it bad these days. We've seen it...they gravitate toward the jocks and the *ssholes in high school because at least these men are DRIVEN toward goals. That drive, that drama, gives women something to support and nurture. Unfortunately, these men are often "early-bloomers"...after school is over, many of them stop growing, stop aspiring, and just become "burn-outs", men without causes. Not all of them, fortunately, but a great many.
In previous generations, this is when the "nerds" started to come into their own. The ones who were busy studying or trying other creative pursuits. They start accomplishing things in society, creating value, aspiring toward a greatness of their own. REAL men, businessmen, engineers, blue-collar, white-collar, doesn't matter. Good hard-working inspired men, the kind a woman WANTS to have her children by.
This rise was fueled by developing interests in their young years, finding things to stimulate themselves while they were "social exiles", finding unique paths to greatness.
In our generation...we had video games.
I used to have He-Man action figures, then more Transformers than I could count. Toys with moving parts. Legos...I loved me some Legos. I NEVER followed the instruction booklets...I built my own stuff. I got out my space-set and built stuff that never existed...starships that bent space-time to traverse large distances, carrying gravity bombs and macronuclear doomsday weapons that could destroy entire planets. My little brothers would steal all the "good pieces" for their own creations.
Then came Nintendo. Soon all I wanted to DO was play Nintendo. There's little room for creativity in Nintendo...you just play the game as it's laid out for you.
Video games create an immersion environment where your hand is held through everything. You are directed along a certain path, given everything you need to solve every puzzle put in front of you, gratification is just given to you right there, on-screen. Problem? Reset, re-load, re-code.
It's like a drug...it really is. I used to think my parents were silly when they restricted the amount of time a day we could spend playing video games. They used to make us "go outside". We felt like we were being punished. We would sit outside on a picnic bench and wait the required amount of time before we would be let back in the house.
In hindsight...if I ever have kids, they won't have video games until at LEAST middle-school, if not high-school.
So-called "men" in this society are constantly drifting back and forth between being video-game nerds and being *ssholes. There are very few genuine "good men" any more...most "men" in our generation aspire to become a cubicle monkey somwhere, in a job that pays them enough to either satisfy their video-gaming or their woman-gaming.