Pornography and videogames are pretty much the same thing, according to a sensational and terrifying editorial published on CNN today called ‘ The Demise of Guys: How Videogames and Porn are Ruining a Generation ’. Games and porn are not only equal, they are equally damaging to young men, destroying their ability to connect with women, and therefore threatening the future of our entire species.

This is fascinating stuff. The fate of humanity is at stake.The article, by psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo and Nikita Duncan argues that young men are “hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz”.It goes on to acknowledge that games and porn “are different” before restating the central argument that both pastimes are having much the same effect - rewiring the feeble synapses of young men so that they are compelled to seek out short-term images of satisfaction at the expense of real-life pursuits, like getting an education or finding a job or a mate.It is, of course, a horrible vision of a future in which grossly over-worked women are forced to run the entire world of human affairs, while men busy themselves between the twin joys of Brazzers and Battlenet.When these pale haggard creatures are forced to venture out into the real world, perhaps to purchase some tissues, they find a place that is much less interesting than ‘MILF Lesbo Honeys’ and Call of Duty had led them to believe, and so they shrink back into their sordid little dens for more epic self-gratification frenziesAnyone who cares a shred about humanity must be deeply concerned about this state of affairs. It is right and proper that media outlets such as CNN are making us aware of the peril facing our species. After all, what is the point of worrying about poverty, disease, global warming, famine and inequality? These things will soon go away, as homo sapiens fall prey to the creeping menace of shooting games and too much fapping.The world will return to a state of nature, vines slowly growing among billions of corpses, slouched in front of computer screens, their skulls set forever in a strange grin.Zimbardo, has danced this jig before. At the Long Beach TED conference last year he told a delighted audience that “guys are wiping out socially with girls and sexually with women.” He added that young men have been so zombiefied by games and porn that they are unable to function in basic human interactions. “It’s a social awkwardness like a stranger in a foreign land”, he said. “They don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do.”Despite his formidable record of throwing around vague statistics and mentioning the word research every 20 words or so, this part of the Doctor’s argument doesn’t hold water. After all, both porn AND games are filled with handy tips for the socially-retarded, on how to engage members of the opposite sex. Zimbardo argues that men “don’t know the difference between making love and porn”, therefore, it follows logically that men would behave in real life as they see other men behaving in the pornographic entertainments that are so easily accessible in today’s world of entertainment magicalness.If Zimbardo is correct, if games and porn are dominating the minds of men, then surely men would become more like the figures they watch so avidly on their screens. So, in fact, it must follow that men of the very near future will be highly skilled in the arts of seduction, as well as the fixing of washing machines and other plumbing-based appliances. Men in the future will become much more confident in the sort of nimble, sexually suggestive word-play that peppers gaming dialogue and which separates Homo Patheticus from Homo Awesomeness.If anything, the marriage of gaming and porn, two things which many people might attempt to insist are entirely different entertainment experiences consumed for entirely different reasons, might just produce a superhuman generation of men that would make Nietzsche himself swoon. Perhaps this might make a thrilling subject for Mr. Zimbardo’s next book on popular psychology.