I'm glad that you find satisfaction in picking nits rather than addressing the substance of the argument.
If it helps you to move beyond this asinine point, then disregard cable tv as an example and replace it with, I don't know, going to a movie with a friend or girlfriend.
here let me address both examples at once
Can somebody find for me some examples of people addicted to cable TV or to going to movies?
Could you miss the fucking point any harder? I'm not arguing that wow addiction is not a bad thing. I'm not arguing that wow addiction is something that does not exist. I'm arguing that defining wow addiction as playing far fewer hours a week than the typical person watches TV is ridiculous.
And my point was that watching TV and playing a video game are two separate, sort of incomparable things. You'd have to get into specifics of whether watching TV includes having it on in the background, being asleep in front of it, owning a TV, etc.
Maybe you don't know about it, but there is this field of study called "sociology" that actually takes into account the sort of factors you're alluding to here. They have eliminated the "on in the background" element, and it is those numbers I am obliquely referring to.
I gamble that if you tone it down to people who are just sitting in front of a TV, doing absolutely nothing else, the rates of addiction - addiction in this case meaning to a degree of self-destruction - would be negligible at best. And even then, that's assuming that every case of obesity in North America is directly related to TV watching and has nothing to do with general lack of exercize or the invention of the deep fried Twinkie.
It is good that you don't gamble for a living. Guess what? The levels of wow addiction, even by the most ridiculously hyperbolic commentators and unreasonable standards, are not some sort of epidemic unexampled in modern times.
My response to this is that WoW is still a pretty bad game. Somebody is going to make some piddly argument about how what they like defines good and how the ideas of bad taste and quality don't actually, but that's to be expected.
Your taste in music sucks.
Also how much does Comcast charge for an internet package? Does it come with a free computer, too? I should hope so, or the whole 'cable costs more' argument falls apart pretty quickly.
I had hoped that we could all agree that
bootstrapping any reasonable standard of living required internet access and a computer, but if we need to assume that we also need to assume the cost of housing, and the provision of electricity. Unfortunately, I am forced to recognize the reality: WoW costs $500 a month, minimum!
I love how both Paco and I took some pains to say that we're not saying people should spend every waking hour digging coal, but that the replies in the thread accuse us of saying just that.
Let me tell you why we're responding in that way: arguing that $15 a month is an unreasonable expenditure is effectively saying just that. If a person is allowed to have any leisure money at all, what they spend it on is wholly irrelevant. Consequently, your argument only makes sense if you are moralizing about the fact that someone is
spending time PISSING THEIR LIFE AND MONEY AWAY on something frivolous instead of "finding work" or "bettering their situation."