Mr. H. wore a leather jacket that reeked of cigarette smoke, had mangy hair, didn’t shower, and had long fingernails. “During the first and most severe year, he remained within a walk-in closet, ate only-ready-to-eat food, did not bathe, and urinated and defecated in jars and bottles,” Teo would later write in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry. “He passed the time surfing the internet and playing video games.” Tests run on Mr. H showed seemingly conflicting results. While he exhibited traits consistent with obsessive compulsive and schizoid personality disorders, various scales and inventories concluded he had neither. Mr. H. claimed his reclusiveness was based on something pretty simple: He just didn’t want to be a part of the world, which is both what hikikomori in Japan had long said and basically what Luca told me.
“We have a large number of people [in the United States] in their early 20s living in the basement bedroom,” Teo told me. “Often times it is younger men. Struggling with work. Struggling with launching. There is some element of still being stuck in an earlier developmental stage, like that of an adolescent, even though their physical age is that of an adult.”
Statistics certainly suggest that there’s an underemployment crisis among young people in the United States: The Economic Policy Institute put that rate among recent college graduates at 12.6 percent. Some researchers have suggested that recreational computer use — including increasingly life-consuming video games — accounts for somewhere between 23 and 46 percent of the decrease in young men’s participation in the labor force. (Others regard that finding with skepticism.) One could convincingly argue that NEETdom is a logical response to the fact that the average college graduate in 2016 came out of school about $37,172 in debt — something that may be impossible to pay off with menial labor at, say, a local fast-food place. If you’re slated for a life of crippling debt, and you can get all of your social needs met online, then why even bother working? For his part, Luca thinks: “I refuse to work for $8 at Taco Bell and be another’s lackey when I am my own god.”
According to a 2015 Pew study, about 10 million NEETs exist in the United States, though statistics break down when you try to get much more granular than that in terms of maladjusted men — Carnegie Mellon University professor Simon DeDeo did some back-of-the-napkin math using U.S. census data to put the number of incels (the self-chosen name for “involuntary celibates,” young misogynists who gather online to commiserate at their lack of romantic or sexual attachment) at an estimated 700,000. Teo can’t come up with a number of how many hikikomori there might be in the United States, though he’s personally assessed ten Americans he believes suffer from it as part of his formal research and says that he hears from someone “almost like clockwork every month” who is concerned that they or their family member fits the definition.
Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence that people are, at least, choosing to identify as hikikomori abounds online. There are, for instance, subreddits, such as r/hikikomori, where roughly 2,000 people gather to discuss anime and gaming, as well as ways to obtain money from the government without leaving their rooms. YouTube videos with names like Top 10 Ways to Make Money as a Hikikomori rack up comments, and sections of 4chan, such as R9K, are notorious posting grounds for English-speaking, anime-obsessed, socially incompetent NEETS.
It’s difficult to medically classify hikikomori — though it’s not in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual — it’s probably best to think about it as a folk illness like evil eye. After all, hikikomori definitionally can’t exist in everywhere: An illness that causes you to lock yourself in your own bedroom makes sense in Japan or America — or even a developing nation like Oman, where there’s been at least one documented case — but it’s much harder to imagine it happening to many people in, say, certain nomadic areas of Mongolia where people live in communal tents.
The basic principle of having kick-proof, batter-ram proof doors is this:
1) A solid (not hollow) wooden door with steel plating covering both sides (many doors sold intended to be front doors have this qualification, but not all). Preferably no glass window on the door. If it does, you can board that glass window up by mounting thick plywood around it with bolts and nuts.
2) The door jambs are the frames all along the door. Typically you have 1 or 2 2x4s side to side, and then the 1" pine wood (which is very weak). You must reinforce your whole door jambs with either another 2x4 pressed and screwed against the original (each side) or by utilizing long galvanized steel plates to cover each side of the door jamb (you may need a drill press to make holes for the galvanized steel screws you'll be using to secure this plating into place reinforcing the door jambs). Either option will do, both would be very tough, enough to mitigate about 1,000 pounds of pressure.
But that is NOT enough….
3) You need extra deadbolts installed into the door, preferably one six inches below the doorknob and one six inches above the doorknob. Keep them way apart from one another (that makes intruders need to break more of the doorjamb to get in). For those deadbolt locks, you need long strike plates with 3" to 4" stainless steel screws. The reason is twofold: a) you want the screws to be very tough to bust and b) you want them to penetrate very deep into the side of the doorjamb, going past the 1" pine wood into the 2x4 behind it.
4) Look into buying a katy bar and install it (NOTE: you may take that into consideration *BEFORE* you totally reinforce those doorjambs because you'll need to install those brackets for the katy bar.) Having all this done, plus the katy bar, there would be no way to get in unless the intruders were to wire up some explosives to blow it open (which would take around a TON of pressure or more).
Liam Robinson
I have NEVER met a socially integrated gamer
Caleb Rogers
If videogames had existed 1000 years ago, absolutely none of humanity's greatest achievements would have ever been accomplished, there would have been no battle victories, no leaders, no heroic endeavors, and the human race would have stopped procreating, and we would have ceased to exist due to the inherent homosexuality of video games.
Videogames are for faggots, and anybody who isn't a faggot will soon become one if they start playing video games…..
Josiah Richardson
YOU GUYS CONSIDER YOURSELVES TO BE 'ELITE' CUTTING-EDGE COMPUTER GENIUSES
bullshit………… 99.75% of you are the most inept, socially & sexually inexperienced, isolated, introverted, outcast, awkward, naive, stunted, unsuccessful, unaccomplished, complaining, lazy, bumbling weirdos in the history of the human race…..
what's so 'elite' about somebody who couldn't tell you how to initiate a casual conversation with a woman because they have spent their adult lives 'collecting magical twinkling coins in an enchanted forest' while mastering the next level of an effeminine little video game designed for children?…..
at this rate, I seriously doubt the human race will still exist in a thousand years
Jonathan Richardson
This is not an organic psychiatric disorder, nor is it a behavioral disorder….
It's a CHOICE…..
…….because you CHOSE to become a faggot…..
Dominic Hughes
It will, but the mindless masses and modern consumerist era will be a thing of the past, and likely the strongest will survive. Note this will be after the End Times and all the tribulations we face. We'll get another chance, but have to start all over on God's terms.
Landon Martin
You are calling 99% of modern Japan faggots. Which I agree with you, its pretty sad and pathetic. I hear their parents have to hire escorts for them, just so they leave the house. These aren't teens either, I'm talking about full grown bearded men.
Nolan Perez
EGG ZACK LEE
Adrian James
Uhhhhhhhh oh………
Japan is learning the hard way as they are trying desperately to fight off hyperinflation right now, along with an epidemic of young people who refuse to work or even leave their homes. Shit. The future looks bleak for both the US and Japan.
Oh hey, Johnny. These video gamers will die in their rooms at some point, when their parents can't afford to feed them due to mass hyperinflation and a crumbling supply chain (high unemployment rates can wreck the supply chain).
We are headed towards the End Times right now.
Gabriel Lopez
….and my opinions are not 'blind'……
I grew up in a time where I got to see the advent of the very first videogames (pong & tank battle) and had a front row seat to the de-evolution of masculinity as the processors and graphics got better.
I got to see men slowly change, to the point where they reverted to infancy and became fully grown adult FETUSES, sealed off in a womb of technology, completely incapable of the most basic masculine functionality.
But more importantly, I watched men LOSE THE ABILITY TO BE HAPPY.
voluntarily……..
you fucking weirdos
Nathaniel Richardson
yes….
but it's important to remember that the 'end of times' is a process, not an 'event', and we are already 3/4ths through the process.
Logan Jenkins
I agree that a lot of the technological advances are actually having an opposite effect, a lot of people seem to THINK this will create a more productive society and superiority but what I see is the exact opposite.
This is why many have warned about "the mark of the beast." Its NOT meant to empower you…. its meant to subjugate and enslave you!
Samuel Cooper
Well things will gradually get worse no doubt, the "End Times" are just a very fast acceleration that will almost wipe out humanity near an 'ending point', not necessarily leading to a total end, but bringing humanity back to the stone ages again.
Ian James
That is to say, if God wants it that way. He may decide this little test for us is over and we get completely wiped out of existence. That could happen too.
Landon Ramirez
you might not see the correlation, but:
This would actually be a very good time for me to remind everybody that the greatest threat to our future is NOT a group of central Americans who are willing to walk 3000 miles to find a better life….
the most detrimental emergency our nation faces has nothing to do with Mexico….
=WE ARE OUR OWN GREATEST THREAT==
Jaxon Perez
I respect everybody's right to believe in whatever Hocus pocus occult nonsense that they choose (and YES Christianity is a cult)
……….but the unraveling of the human race is just as legitimate from my perspective as it is from yours, and I don't believe in any form of God or religion whatsoever…….
Gabriel Bailey
The problem with allowing illegals to flood in is you bring in all the drugs, cartels and riff raff as well. Along with human traffickers. Not all these people coming in are innocent. There are murders and rapists as well who would take a big shit on the border towns in this country. Thats why so much crime is rampant around the border.
Ethan Gutierrez
The complacency and willingness to cave in and create our own self-imposed cocoon of failure and refusal to participate = the exact video game culture we are talking about…..
The complacency and willingness to cave in and create our own self-imposed cocoon of failure and refusal to participate = the national emergency nobody is talking about, and exactly why we have sat back and allowed our nation to become unrecognizably corrupt and malfeasant.
(and no illegal immigrant did this to us)
WE ARE OUR OWN GREATEST THREAT
Oliver Gray
Q: exactly WHY are they smuggling drugs into America?……………….
A: because Americans want the drugs
I've never seen anybody put a gun to somebody else's head and force them into doing drugs, or buying their drugs.
You are intentionally ignoring the fact that AMERICA created the drug problem, not the suppliers.
Lucas Howard
The criminal banking cabal that hijacked our monetary system IS the root of all this evil, they are heavily connected to a lot of other criminal networks and corruption in this country as well. Remember: this is all about DELIBERATE DESTABILIZATION. These enriched criminals want the US to become a third world nation, disarmed and fully subjugated. And YES, they are technocrats who desire dumbed down brainwashed tech-addicted zombies who are totally dependent on their corrupt system. This crime and subversion of our traditional culture is very well organized!
Hudson Wilson
Big Pharma to Big Tech…. from the Military Industrial Complex to the Prison Industrial Complex…. even down to the video game industry….. who do you think profits from these corporate mergers and acquisitions?
THE ROTHSCHILD CENTRAL BANKING CABAL
Zachary Ramirez
RE: human trafficking
I know it's now ancient history, but do you remember a thing called backpage.com?
Human trafficking is a problem, and just like drugs, the supply is a reaction to the demand and NOT the other way around.
99% of human trafficking in America is committed by American citizens… Not Mexican cartels.
99% of American human traffickers ARE NIGGERS
You already know this oh, but you intentionally ignored the truth so you can push your agenda
(And ironically, you are pushing Trump's agenda, not yours… You fell for his low-level amateur brainwashing bullshit)
WE ARE OUR OWN BIGGEST THREAT
AND PAY ATTENTION: *turning a blind eye to our own complicity to shift the blame on others and denying the truth about the topic is symptomatic of how we got into this mess to begin with*
Owen Mitchell
IM OK WITH THIS, THE RICH AND POWERFUL ARE CHILD BABY RAPISTS AND SUCK OFF 4 YR OLD BABY DICKS
Juan Peterson
hahahaha you're an idiot……
Adam Brown
Well yes, "we" do have our hands in this. Well not so much us, but the central bankers who make massive amounts of profits to launder into the ESF, which funds a lot of the government's "black budgets" which INCLUDE human trafficking, arms trafficking and drug trafficking to consolidate even more profits and then they feed off this whole corrupt system. The politicians are bought and paid for by these same corrupted syndicates.
kinda like the HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN CITIZENS WHO COMMIT RAPES AND MURDERS AND HAVE BEEN TAKING A SHIT ON EVERY TOWN IN AMERICA?
Illegal immigrants represent less than 1% of violent crimes committed in our country
Again. You already know this is true but you are intentionally ignoring it because it doesn't fit your agenda
Ayden Flores
RE: perhaps
Perhaps is an answer, but I never asked a question
This country is a mess, and its not just an open border problem (thats only part of the problem)… we have faced mass outsourcing of our industries since the 1980s, we have massive debt insolvency which are connected to the central banks and government deficits, we have moral decline in America, we have the Big Tech industry automating everything and creating dumb down mindless consumers, the Prison Industrial Complex profiting from crimes, the Military Industrial Complex profiting from wars, the Big Pharma industry profiting from sickness and cancer, the open borders help cartels smuggle arms, sex slaves and drugs into the country (this makes for higher ESF volume which is where a lot of these cartels get their funding covertly)…….. all of this is leading us into epic decline.
CORRUPTION. Fiat currency and debt insolvency is fueling corruption.
Bentley Scott
The way you tell it, American citizens are innocent and pure, with our innocence and purity being threatened by dark evil external forces, who are pushing drugs and prostitution on us, forcing us to participate against our will.
grow up, dude
Thomas Davis
Organized crime does exist, its too bad you blame everyone for that. The fact is this country would be a lot safer and a better place to live without all this organized crime. Closing the borders is a FIRST STEP to fixing this whole mess.
Joseph Torres
hahaha sure it is, dude….. sure it is
James Phillips
Yes, organized crime DOES exist. Its like any mafia really, the dangerous thing is that now the banks and governments are in on the take, and the central bakers are consolidating more and more for themselves.
You are going to see how this ends, and it will not be pretty at all!
Landon Price
The Russian mob has replaced la cosa nostra as the most problematic organized crime in America
lol @ you thinking the Mexican border is going to affect organized crime in America
AGAIN: either you are intentionally ignoring the truth, or you are completely naive….
I choose test to believe you are intentionally ignoring the truth, because I would hate to think that you are a fucking moron
Jaxon Hall
So the propaganda machine tells us, but its not the case. The real deal criminals are internationals connected to the central banking systems all over the world. Sure there is a Russian mafia, there is an Italian mafia, there is a Jewish mafia, all of them are middle men…. the ROOT is the Rothschild central banking cabal which also runs the IMF, World Bank and Bank of International Settlements. All these other cartels and mafias? MIDDLE MEN.
Josiah Wood
as if any 'organized crime' was responsible for an entire generation of young adult makes throwing their lives away to sit on their asses and play videogames and watch anime.
Jace Bell
heard it all before
but Naomi Prins does a MUCH better job of explaining it than you do.
Caleb Watson
maybe that's because Naomi Prins doesn't sit and play videogames and watch anime
William Perry
Its an industry, isn't it? SURE IT IS. Its called the video game industry $$$. Who do you think owns shares in this? Same ones who own shares in Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agriculture like Monsanto, MIC to MPC…. and where is this money created? Debt. Who owns our monetary system and creates debt? Central banks. Who do the central bankers own as pawns? Politicians. Who feeds this corrupt system and increases this debt insolvency? Politicians. Where does a lot of the debts actually end up? The ESF! Who benefits from the ESF? Those that receive 'black budgets' covertly. Narco trafficking, arms trafficking, drugs trafficking, the MIC for covert regime change operations to install more of their Rothschild puppets into power…….. on an on… and they consolidate the markets, mergers and acquisitions baby! They monopolize. They fuel the corruption…… and they screw everyone else while doing it!!
Landon Robinson
Look, why are we in Syria right now? Because Assad is NOT bowing down to the Rothschild interests! So we want him and his government replaced! Regime change. All of this is relative to this internationalist central banking cabal!
Blake Russell
Kinda like the way the Alcoa Corporation is raking in billions of dollars selling hats to you ?
David Cruz
Again, it's really just a matter of supply and demand.
No, not all industry is bad. I'm not saying that. I'm saying many industry is compromised and has been hijacked by criminal syndicates and they are working hand-in-hand with the Rothschild central banking cabal.
Caleb Richardson
For example: manufacturing hats and T-shirts is not bad, manufacturing cars is not bad, construction projects are not bad…. what IS bad is when industries are hijacked and profit off the demise of society, profit off wars and death, profit off brainwashing and imprisoning people, profiting off crimes and drugs….. there is a difference. Every time the Rothschilds hijack an industry it is used to profit off very corrupt nefarious activities, exploit consumers and consolidate wealth into the hands of the international central banking cabal.
James Stewart
Alcoa is your hat manufacturer?
Jordan Lewis
What I'm saying is capitalism itself is not bad…. monopolization and the hijacking of our monetary and foreign policies by criminal syndicates who buy off our politicians IS bad and criminal.
Connor Roberts
...
Landon Gonzalez
And we commit coups / regime change only against nations that refuse to go along with the Rothschild central banking cabal. It is all relative to central banking, and keeping their ZOG puppets in power as vassal states.
Nicholas Cook
And when the US can't do successful regime change, we sanction them and cut them off from using the global reserve currency (currently the US petrodollar).
Jaxon Watson
Its not the United States itself that is evil, our people are not evil…. our government is evil, our central bank is evil, our military industrial complex (which benefits the central bankers) is evil. That is what needs to be addressed today. We need to end the Federal Reserve system, and we need to stop creating endless debts and go back to free trade and a sound monetary policy (which would be backed by gold/silver or another commodity of high value). We need to stop the ESF (Exchange Stabilization Funds which are actually very destabilizing), and we need to arrest and charge these crime syndicates for war crimes, crimes against humanity and fiscal TREASON.
Matthew Lewis
But…. and I must say this…. FUCK the "Paris climate agreement", that is one thing I will side with the US government on. That treaty is a fraud to rip more money off hardworking taxpayers.
Aaron Murphy
If the UN gave up on this draconian carbon taxation / climate scams / Agenda 21 / small arms (civil disarmament) treaties…. then I'd actually support the UN in its efforts. The way I see it is these bureaucrats are all sharks in for the take, fighting one another on who gets to exploit more of the masses. The whole world would be much better off if some military decided to take out these central bankers and their ilk, one by one.
Lincoln Kelly
I love the Hikikomoris. What better way to tell society, women and jews to go fuck themselves. Murder-suicide is a last resort. WAAAH, WAAAH, what's that? Some people after they were forcefully brought into the world are refusing to participate. WAAAH, WAAAH, we must make them do what we want. Our way is the only way. We are the majority and we're not tyrannical at all.
Landon Jones
The upside of rebelling against the system like that is that the corrupt system will crash. The downside is the total chaos and economic turmoil that will bring, and the masses would die out, that includes those "Hikikomoris" out there too.
I'd recommend being prepared for the End Times, or at the very least save a bullet for yourself so you won't have to live with the misery to come.
Liam Price
you don't need to. I've saved a talon just for you
Hunter Lopez
Debt, a shitty society, and the collapse of the family unit aren't all video games' fault, you botnet spamming turbo autist. There's a lot bigger things at play. The brainwashing inherent in a lot of modern video games is just ONE tool at work.
Daniel Barnes
A while back ago I thought video games were actually meant for kids, not grown adults. I bought my daughter a video game set when she was in her teens (maybe late 80s or early 90s), she grew out of it, put it away and my wife eventually sold it at a garage sale when she moved out on her own.
Video games are fine, but they should be meant for the kids as a virtual toy to play with.
BTW, you are right, video game addiction is only ONE problem. We have so many other problems now its hard keeping track of them all.
Dominic Wright
You seem to have completely misunderstood my point… I'm not blaming the video games for having brainwashing qualities….
I'm blaming the faggots literally flush their lives down the toilet voluntarily and replace any possibility of a healthy heterosexual interpersonal relationship with a lifelong continual INFANTILE REFUSAL TO GROW
Christopher Davis
Why would I blame an inanimate object on being a complete fucking failure?… It's not the video games fault that you guys down and excuse and allowed yourself 240 pound TODDLERS
Luis Campbell
Oops !! Typo
allowed yourselves to become* 240 pound TODDLERS
Ian Price
...
Austin Myers
twitch.com
There, faggot. All the normalfags you can eat.
Jordan Allen
Am I being fucking memed or is this the average >>>/r9k/ robot?
Gabriel Reed
but you say every day that video games are the reason for it
Brody Gray
i think that a large cause of this is the unreal set of expectations places upon today's youth, and the vicious social ridicule one faces when they fail to achieve these. they are expected to achieve the same success their parents' and grandparents' were able to with no education and only a willingness to work hard, and this is simply unattainable for the majority of the current generation of youth. a lot of them realize this, and i think they either crack under the stress of trying to meet these expectations while knowing they aren't able to think about how many college drop-outs you know that slowly withdrew from society during their education or they decide to remove themselves from society to shield themselves from this nasty paradox i dont think the internet or videogames are the cause of this phenomenon; they are simply the best options for most neets to occupy themselves with in absence of socializing
