The chivalric romances

We are talking, these days, about the headline that all newspapers, news programs, and news agencies have reproduced, and which says, more or less, this: "The first case in the world of a minor hospitalized for severe addiction to Fortnite." The headline was provided by the hospital, so all media outlets reproduced it. The psychiatrist who treated the boy has spoken with the agencies.

But then we learned that the boy suffered from other disorders and that perhaps this addiction was the catalyst. His most important problem, surely, is that he has lost his mother. Doing a Google search, you see that there have been several "cases" of Fortnite addiction in the world. Or several have been "documented."

It is evident that there are people who can become addicted to gaming and people who cannot. There are people who enjoy playing video games or casino machines. When I play video games, I get dizzy, and I have no skill in handling controllers; I don't understand most card games, and I don't find them fun because there's too much of a chance component. But I got married in Las Vegas, which I found hilarious. The show that T de Teatre with Dagoll Dagom and La Brutal are about to premiere, which is based on my stories, is set in a bingo hall.

I see the good in video games because there are players in my circle. The talent of their creators is undeniable. In The Godfather, players must enter (to engage in extortion) different party rooms. Well; the monologues of the characters you encounter are hilarious. There's another game starring samurai. You have to wage war and assassinate everyone you encounter, but at one point, to continue playing, you have to compose a haiku! Fortnite, like soccer, like tag, like Scrabble, has many good things. Addiction is bad, but not only to video games. Paracelsus's quote couldn't be truer: "All things are poison and nothing is without poison. It is only the dose that makes a thing a poison." Chivalric romances, video games, studying, sports, processed food, or low-calorie food. Everything can be bad if abused.

I understand that, with a game like Fortnite, half an hour is not even enough to start, but playing four hours a day cannot be. I understand that teenagers' schedules (for everything) should be restricted. I understand that before, TV was the alienating boogeyman (the Simpsons mask explained it very well) and now we would pay for the whole family to be, at least, watching the same program. I understand that all of us, adults, have become dependent on our phones and it is the device we always, always carry in our hand. That now, on the subway, when you see someone reading a book, what you think is not that they are reading a book, but that "they are not looking at their phone." But I would not blame Fortnite for the hospitalization of this teenager, just as I would not blame the movie Superman for the death of that child who jumped out the window to fly, after watching it.