It’s another double week here at A Mind of Its Own headquarters, double martini’s, double espresso, double trouble and for our adoring fans that means you get double the awesomeness to get you through the weekend. We’ve searched high and low for another stellar topic to follow-up on the pampered pooches soft piece earlier in the week. It didn’t take the boffins down in the lab long to pull out a topic that I am sure strikes a chord with many of our female fans and one that this writer’s wife has voiced her opinion quite strongly about on several occasions.
We live in a world that is interconnected, we have mobile devices, instant message, video chat, you name it and it’s probably already there. We are still hanging out for a true hoverboard though like Marty McFly but give it a couple a years and we are sure we’ll be yelling at kids to slow down as the gravitate past at speed. So with all this technology you think we (Men) would be happy getting on a conference call and gossiping like a bunch of school kids behind the toilets at lunch while puffing on some stolen menthol cigarettes as we just aren’t quite prepared to go the full leaded option just yet.
Being male we can safely say that we are happy to chat but prefer to be doing something while we are chatting. Playing around of golf, some poker, shearing sheep, pretending to work at desk, sitting at your local watering hole, are just some of the examples of guys getting together and having a chat about life. So what do you do if you have a group of mates who want to catch up regularly but are all in different locations and have varying reasons as to why catching up face to face isn’t always possible. Distance being number one. Unlike our female counterparts who can sit on a call for hours, upon hours filling in friends on their week and how many cute guys or girls they saw at the gym while eating a whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream on their own, Men just can’t focus on the conversation for that amount of time.
We’ll give you an example, you promise your other half that you will take out the rubbish on your way to work one morning, however in your rush to get ready you spend way to long in the mirror trimming your wayward nasal hairs and forget. So upon your return after a hard days work at the office where you’ve stood around the water cooler filling your day talking to anyone who will listen so you don’t actually have to sit there and look at spreadsheets, you walk in the door and immediately get chewed out. What you will see is the nodding and agreeing coupled with an apology. What you don’t see is that we’ve gone on autopilot and are already wondering what is for dinner or to watch on TV, are there any beers left in the fridge?
The example is not that we aren’t listening, we are! We hear it all, it’s that we are already thinking about the next thing. This is what a conversation between males is like, we flit in an out of the conversation not always present. Hence this week’s topic is something that keeps us all focused. Allows us to catch up and spend our time wisely doing two things at once. We know shock horror! Men can do two things at once! When we really want to yes we can do multiple things at once without even thinking about it.
The late 80’s and early 90’s saw the beginning of trend that would dominate the home entertainment industry for years to come. No longer did you have to go to the Arcade to play your favourite machines they were now all available to play on your own console hooked up to the television in the safety of your own living room. It was around this time that obesity and the links to discovering the colonels eleven secret herbs and spices started to also began to grow. The video game console had emerged and those lucky enough to be able to afford one would slowly become fans of some of the biggest cult heroes of our generation.
As technology advanced so did consoles and along with these advancements over time came the ability to interact with people all around the globe. You could be racing cars with John from Delaware, or in the trenches of Normandy with Raj from India. It is just another way of connecting people around the world. For a group of 30 something males it made it possible to jump online and play video games while catching on what has transpired through the week or month. The wonder of it all is that you can be stretched across the globe but for that hour of two as you battle your way through Mordor or reenact the landing on Omaha beach you are all in the one location.
So what is it about this that automatically makes it Geeky and frustrates wives, partners, husbands etc? That’s a question we have asked on several occasion and like comics and anything that people don’t understand or want to understand it’s all make-believe and not reality. Correct and no one is deluding themselves that it is. Ok there are a few who live in fairyland but like all things in life there is always going to be those one or two people who take things too far. Yes video games and gamers used to be associated with the geeks however more and more these days you will find what used to be nerdy, geeky and weird is becoming more and more mainstream.
In a world full of stereotypes many people have always associated gaming as something that only the loner, disenfranchised, nerds, geeks or children do. It is however a multi-million dollar industry and is attracting people from all walks of life for various different reasons to various different games. With games now becoming more and more like chapters of books people often finish a game and play it over and over again to see what they have missed whilst they wait for the next installment.
It’s not an escape from reality it’s merely a virtual interaction between people across continents, around the globe and maybe one day out into the far reaches of the galaxy. A way in which to interact and often work together in teams to complete a common goal. Some companies have even gone as far to go online and find future employees who exhibit online the qualities they are looking for in their staff. So escape from reality or a way of interacting and doing something with friends near and far? You be the judge but for the team here at A Mind of Its Own we advocate interact with friends and family via video games just as long as it doesn’t take over your real live. We don’t need hermits there is already enough cranky people in this world.
For another week it’s over and out from the team. We hope you’ve enjoyed the double dose this week and we look forward to gracing your inbox, iPad or desktop some point next week. Peace out hombres!
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