The Case for Being Extremely Weird
While you still can.
A few years ago, this one bro adjacent self-help writer—something of an arch nemesisof mine—got super heavy into a computer game. He posted an article about how it almost destroyed his life. It disrupted his work routine. He spent several hundred bucks on a new graphics card. Then he got nervous about it taking over his life, so he quit cold turkey. His big takeaway was that he needed to find a “healthier” hobby, something he didn’t enjoy as much.
Can you guess my reaction?
Leave it to Americans to invent things like computer games and apps to entertain us all and then immediately chase it with a big shot of judgment. For what it’s worth, my dives into psychology over the years have led me to the opposite conclusions. As a society, our various addictions often have very little to do with personal failings or indiscipline. They have everything to do with a culture that shames and stigmatizes normal, healthy behaviors that simply look “weird.”
Since we’re o…