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MGTOW: I learned how to live my life from The Sims

I told you fireworks were a bad idea.

Over on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, one Redditor tells his comrades how he developed his philosophy of life:


I learned mgtow from the original Sims (self.MGTOW) submitted 4 days ago by onbakeplatinum Way back when the original Sims came out and I was 14, I tried to play as my actual family. That turned out to be a complete nightmare, trying to control multiple people, always being short on money, dealing with their moods and unwillingness to do anything, etc. Then I played as just a single Sim. The game became ridiculously easy. I only had to manage one person, could live in a small house, and train/go to work all the time. My Sim was extremely happy. She became rich and I pimped her small house (I tried to make the smallest house possible) with the highest quality items. I maxed out all her stats. I don't remember much else. But it occurred to me way back then that this was how I wanted to live my life. Alone and simple. I didn't NEED to have a family like everyone else and manage/deal with other people. I could live in a small (but nice) place because it's just me, and even though I don't make much money, it's only me I have to worry about.

This seems a bit weird to me. I also played the original Sims game when it came out, and that wasn’t the lesson I drew from it at all. The lessons I learned were a little, well, darker. Some that I remember:

  • If you place a bunch of people in a house with no bathrooms and no doors, they will be extremely unhappy, and will start leaving puddles on the floor.
  • If you place a bunch of people in a house with the only toilet in the middle of the living room, they will be nearly as unhappy as the first bunch of people.
  • If you build a house with no doors, chairs, couches or beds, the people trapped within it will also be really unhappy, and will ultimately try to sleep standing up or lying on the floor.
  • Building a fence around them while they’re out in the yard will do the trick as well.
  • If someone is swimming in your backyard pool, and you quickly build an insurmountable wall around it, they will eventually drown.
  • Actually, never mind, I think if you simply “forget” to put a ladder in the pool, they can’t get out either.

So I guess I mainly learned some very basic “don’ts” in home design, such as the importance of having a door. And in fact I have not designed any doorless — or bathroomless, or bedless — houses since then. Or any houses at all, actually.

I’m not the only one who learned lessons about the importance of doors, as the following videos I found on Youtube make abundently clear. Also, shooting off fireworks inside a doorless room is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.

Well, you get the idea.

Have you learned any important life lessons from the Sims, or any other videogames?

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tov01
tov01
9 years ago

Gipsz Jakab, I wasn’t sure you’d see it on the original post: You were asking about the girl who was nearly driven to suicide by Steven Universe “SJWs.” You may want to check out this link for more information: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/steven-universe-fanartist-bullied-controversy/

mockingbird
mockingbird
9 years ago
Ellesar
Ellesar
9 years ago

When I was a child (before gaming) I had a fantasy of adult life. I had a stationery shop and I would cycle to work, and for fun I would go on a boat down the river whilst a Shakespeare play was being performed! It was VERY solitary.

As an adult I am not solitary, as I have had children. When I was younger I was extremely sociable.

The description that this man gives of his childhood is of apparent only moderate dysfunction, so I wonder what it takes to opt out of human relationships entirely? Not even sharing a home with a close friend? Not talking about friend groups, or indeed any of your family with warmth, just as things that get in the way of a peaceful life.

And why assume that your life will be just like it was when you were a child?! My life has pretty much nothing in common with the adult life I saw when I was growing up. I made an effort NOT to give my kids the childhood I had, and I have succeeded! The only thing that is worse is the poverty – but my step father drank a lot of the money anyway.

I actually feel pretty sorry for this man – he sounds like he suffers a real lack of confidence in his ability to live life on his terms – the only way he can see that is to shut off from people as much as possible.

Luzbelitx
9 years ago

I learned from Monkey Island that you don’t win a swordfight by being very good with swords, instead you need to be very good at coming up with ways to insult your opponent.

Viscaria
Viscaria
9 years ago

That’s all well and good, Luzbelix, except I’ve heard it said that you fight like a dairy farmer!

skiriki
9 years ago

More stuff learned:

Populous (1, Promised Lands expansion, 2):
– Gods are assholes and if you become a god, you’re no exception.
– The funniest way to watch little people die is to create swamps.
– Baptism pond creates a horrible urge of auto-dunking in people.
– Armageddon creates a “In the Hills, the Cities”/End of Evangelion effect, and then we duke it out.
– People are really happy in a Cray-1 cluster.
– Politics have been a part and parcel of games like forever, man. (If you played on Amiga, your enemies occupied Atari STs and similar; vice versa for Atari.)

Mr. Robot:
– Walking across a bomb sets the fuse going.

Lemmings (1, 2, all the –ing expansions):
– Sometimes, someone must sacrifice themselves so the rest can live.
– If you’re about to explode, stick your fingers into your ears and squat a bit, declare “Oh no!” in high-pitched voice, then you will go off in a colorful pop! I should try this in bed.
– You can carry only seven slates of stone. If your bridge needs to be longer, then you need to refresh them before you continue to walk into void.
– Everything conspires to kill you.
– You can’t dig through steel.
– You enter life through a door, and you exit life through a door.
– If you save an awesome number of lives before you leave, your score will be higher.

The Incredible Machine:
– Life is basically one ginormous Rube Goldberg machine.

Leisure Suit Larry I:
– No matter how alone you think you are when you get certain items, the shop is still full of eavesdropping people willing to judge you.
– There’s an incredible amount of condom styles.
– Always check your shoe before you walk out of the restroom.

Nethack:
– Do not eat everything.
– Some items need to be handled with gloves on.

Larn:
– Parents can really do anything they can to save their kid.

Dungeon Hack:
– There are sounds that can trigger a migraine. Learned this the hard way. (This is not a joke entry — effin’ Scaladars. I have to turn off sounds if I find a dungeon level with them, which will make things very inconvenient.)

tov01
tov01
9 years ago

From the Sims 2 I learned that:
Babies suck up all your free time. I’m on good authority (i.e. my parents) that this is accurate.
A town can have more than one mayor.
Be careful when stargazing.
You might see Count Dracula blehing at you on the dance floor.

anon
anon
9 years ago

Lessons learned from every sim game from sim city to the sims: Fire. That is all.

dslucia1
dslucia1
9 years ago

You can admit that something you like is flawed and STILL like it. (Sonic 2006)

Whoa now, there are some things that are just going too far. ;D

What I learned from games (and in many cases media in general) is that even if you have the power of a god, getting amnesia will cause you to lose everything. Even when your power is given to you by Space Magic and there’s no actual reason you shouldn’t be accidentally zapping everyone you meet.

Also, people tend to be horribly unprepared for things, and will often conveniently forget or misplace the things that ended up being incredibly helpful to them on their last adventure.

Robots will either be entirely passive and subservient, or will be genocidal and always two steps ahead of any humans who happen to be around. Except for that one robot who’s your buddy. They’re cool.

Aliens will almost exclusively be humanoid, and most will have humanoid reproductive systems as well, which conveniently happen to be compatible with human organs.

Most people don’t have names, and many might look identical to that person walking down the other way across the road. The people who do have names are nigh-invincible, and will frequently be able to make a getaway even when you’ve spent the last ten minutes wiping the floor with them.

numerobis
numerobis
9 years ago

From games I learned that two half-asses make an asshat.

Since then I’ve been a perfectionist. Or only working on one thing.

PsyConomics
PsyConomics
9 years ago

— Eating or drinking absolutely anything from anywhere might have profound, immediate, and deep consequences for my body and how I interact with the world (corruption of champions).

Actually, if all the MRA’s were playing that silly little (and I’m warning you now highly highly nsfw) game that might explain a lot… Then again maybe not. That game is pretty inclusive.

Chaos-Engineer
Chaos-Engineer
9 years ago

Did he use the “money cheat” to play the Sims? The story doesn’t make sense otherwise.

My experience in the original game was that it was hard to run a one-person household – you’d just barely have enough time and energy to take care of everything.

If you wanted to maximize your standard of living, the game pushed you towards a 1950’s-style two-person household, where one person went off to work and the other stayed home and took care of all the cooking, cleaning, and socializing. (Socializing was very important because you needed to have a lot of household friends to qualify for high-level promotions at work.)

kiki
kiki
9 years ago

There’s one game that I actually learned a lot of non-comedy things from: Victoria 2.

Well, it probably doesn’t speak too well for my education, but I learned a fair bit about history from Assassin’s Creed. By which I mean, I learnt of the existence of interesting historical things that I could then go and Google to find out more about. I don’t mean I ‘learned’ that Pope Alexander had a magical alien staff and so on.

And then there’s geography and architecture; I still know next to nothing about either, but I can at least tell you what Hagia Sophia or the Roman Pantheon looks like, or point out the rough location of major landmarks in Paris (I learned what a transept is trying to solve one of the riddles in Unity). Hell, playing Syndicate, I’m becoming more familiar with the layout of my own fucking city, London – yes, I really need to get out more.

In fact, a cool thing about Syndicate for me is that about 200 yards off the bottom of the map, south of Lambeth bridge, is the pub where I had my wedding reception. So while I can’t quite reach the actual location, I can more or less see a Victorian version of the view that’s in the background of some of my wedding photos. Has anyone else got any personal connection to, or even lived in, the real-life version of a specific video game location?

childrenofthebroccoli
childrenofthebroccoli
9 years ago

Minecraft: building a portal to hell will result in no worse consequences than having a zombie pigman or two wandering around your vegetable garden.

katz
katz
9 years ago

Wasteland taught me that literally anything can fit into a toaster.

freemage
freemage
9 years ago

Civilization, all of them: Ghandi was an ass.

Monzach
Monzach
9 years ago

@Numerobis

Is that a reference to the Kingdom of Loathing I see? 😀

yutolia
yutolia
9 years ago

The Sims and my parents together taught me the importance of keeping loads of rocks and dried food in my inventory at all times.

Vetarnias
Vetarnias
9 years ago

After MGTOW games reviewing, how about some MGTOW film criticism?:

(Seriously, what’s wrong with these people?)

Vetarnias
Vetarnias
9 years ago

Uh, did the system just gobble up my post?

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

megpie71 | October 29, 2015 at 8:57 pm
What I’ve learned from Video & Computer Games
[…]
* Sulking in a coffin for thirty years doesn’t help anything. (Final Fantasy VII again).

*snerk*

Oh, and something else I’ve learned from video games:

The wait for a new bit of DLC can be well-worth it, but it might come along and delete your entire goddamned save file that you worked so hard on and unlocked so many items and characters, including that one fucking character you can only unlock by not taking any damage for two whole goddamned floors.

In other news, guess who got the Afterbirth DLC for The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth?

(Hint: It’s me, and I’m about to do my first run. Pray for me.)

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

UPDATE: I just realized I had to import my save files.

Whoopsie. I rage-flailed too soon.

Shadow
Shadow
9 years ago

@Viscaria

That’s all well and good, Luzbelix, except I’ve heard it said that you fight like a dairy farmer!

Oh yeah! Well, Luzbelitx is rubber and you’re glue!

Re: OP

Sims 2 actually taught me that romantic relationships are super easy to maintain. A quick bout of woohoo every two days is more than enough to satisfy all your partner’s needs. Kids and friends, on the other hand, are the greatest time sucks you’ll ever encounter. Also, if you really want to roll in the dough, mass produce a bunch of clown paintings.

This post has also convinced me to delve back into the black hole that is Sims 3, so cheers for that

Andrea Nemerson
Andrea Nemerson
9 years ago

What I learned from the original Sims: You’d better actually meet someone and get to know them before you move in together. Otherwise they will completely freak out when you try to get in bed with them.

Moggie
Moggie
9 years ago

I am likely to be eaten by a grue.