Books, television, gaming and addiction

Every notice you've become addicted to a story (book, game or television based) and wonder why?

Did you actually think you were more than a complex, often contradictory animal capable of being brainwashed and manipulated just like any other animal? Sorry to pop the bubble.

Actually, no. I'm not.

It is always best to face the reality you're in even if you do like to escape to fantasy land every now and then and pretend you're more capable, whole, knowledgeable, empathetic and all-round wonderful than you actually are. Even our horror stories are often geared towards the 'flawed' protagonist making it through when really anyone would have been splattered physically and mentally at the first hurdle. Don't fool yourself, you will freeze, run, scream, cry, beg, scrounge, sell out, ignore, dish out and justify it all just so you will survive, which you likely wouldn't anyway in such situations. But we love our protagonists and dream with all our might that we could be like them, capable of dodging that bullet, knowing when danger will strike and intelligent enough to formulate a plan to save the day. If you think that you're above all this then you haven't really faced any particularly difficult situations or choices. The best people can do is to dream, imagine and work extraordinarily hard to come close to ideals. Hats off to those who fight to be good. It is much easier to give in and be bad. The only thing to worry about is the punishment systems and how to avoid them. Being good weighs on you so much more but it is worth the fight because some measure of happiness and peace comes because of it.

To the point, it is always best to face reality so that when someone tries to brainwashed and manipulated you're well aware of what's going on, whether you fight it or not.

So, why do we get addicted and how is this addiction forced on us?

Television

• Cliff hangers: Provide plenty of cliff hangers so the viewer has to return to find out more. They'll press that button to find out more, no matter the wait time. The greater the cliff hanger the longer they are willing to wait.
• Advertising, teasers and trailers: Saturate television with reminders of that cliff hanger or of the story so far. The little reminders set you straight back to where you were when the story was interrupted by jogging your memory.
• Sex symbols and the desirable: Use attractive people, places and views so that viewing the show is more attractive to the eye and mind than facing reality. The use of sex symbols helps create false connections by inducing emotional responses in the viewer. They aren't real. You know nothing of the person and they aren't by and large accessible to you.
• False connections: Create and build false connections by revealing snippets of the lives symbols, stars and intellects. Also, use 'personal' pleas from these actors to draw the viewer in and use the actor as part of the reward system by placing them in an accessible position: signings, back stage passes etc.
• Long plot lines: Carry the story over from one episode to another, leaving the viewer wanting more and more, trying to tie together the information and guess the answers. They will view to check their guesses and to find out what really happens. They will also become used to the complexities or particular characters and take their trials to heart as the character becomes real to them.
• Base in fact: Use grittiness and real emotions to heighten the realism and the connection between a viewer and an actor. If the character is rounded out well the actor is mistaken as the character, building those false connections, while also being mistaken as someone to support or obtain. This is how an actor is voted into politics... and it has happened more than once.
• Time slotting: Place the show in the appropriate time slot so as to catch the desired audience's attention. 
• Bright colours and sounds: These shock the viewer, creating adrenaline and focusing the attention on the source. Slow moving build up to horror heightens the adrenaline and emotional response. Fast light humour keeps the viewer engaged, not because of how funny it is or the plot but because of the instant reward of watching that couple of minutes more. Coming back is to return to gain a quick dose of instant rewards.
• Reward systems: Use the actors, give out prizes and freebies, create competition and anoint winners, 
• Learning by observation predisposition: Humans are predisposed to learning by observation so showing someone anything has great impact. Fantasy it may be but it holds a basis in reality that will allow the viewer to learn. Learning can also become addictive (but I'll leave that for another day).
• Hypnotism and mesmerism: The flow of movement, colour and sound can fix a viewer in place once the viewer is addicted enough to watch hour upon hour of television. It can become so bad that a viewer forgets social arrangements, chores, exercise, to eat and drink (or eat and drink the wrong thing) etc. At this point television is truly an addiction for the viewer.
• Identification and the use of jargon, setting, in-jokes etc: Use cultural, national, historical and personal references to build a connection and a familiar and acceptable world for the viewer, one they will want to return to as it provides validation, justification and identity. All things we crave as we prefer to congregate and socialise than to live alone.
• Small amounts at a time: Drip feed the stories on a weekly basis to increase the desire for a viewer to come back for more. This way several stories can be strung along at once during peak viewing, pulling in a steady audience number rather than losing numbers as viewers get up and move about their lives. The essential problem of any TV marathon is that viewers will need to get up and go about their lives at odd intervals unpredictable to television execs. They do their best with the scattering of advertising time (if you stay you get brainwashed but if you go you're back in time for a reward) but life can't always be conducted in five minute intervals.

Games

• Behavioural and brain sciences: From the desk of Microsoft comes this, "Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity, and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players." - Behavioral Game Design by John Hopson. Remember the rat in the maze, mouse in the cage etc. with the reward and punishment system of learning? Consider yourself the rat or mouse.
• To create the hours upon hours of entertainment, instead of thinking of more plots and ideas they simply punish you and send you back to the start. Because you're determined and want that reward you restart instead of getting annoyed and dropping the game.
• Use fact based or instinctual based drives in creating the game: eating, obtaining cool items (fantasy swords, wands and goblets) etc. When you take time, use effort and build your skills to obtain an item it means the item has value, no matter what the item is or if it is real or not. Your brain is tricked into thinking it is important and will keep trying to obtain it when it isn't important at all to gain anything or even play the game. It is a game. Oh, and the playing hours can also be extended indefinitely by having you run after items of no importance to the actual game, leaving you even more addicted and counting scores like a gambling addict.
• Drop in rewards at random indeterminate intervals so that the addiction to pressing the button to see if you get that reward increases. You will press the buttons faster as only by doing so will you potentially shorten the period of time between rewards.
• Overpower real rewards in real life by initially giving large numbers of rewards fast (easy levels) so that you get used to rewards and will be willing to fight harder (harder levels) for them when needed.
• Making each step small or easy enough to keep the player from balking completely. But include all the previous steps. This way there is no real reason to say no, is there.
• Punishment is given for not playing at all through peer pressure, encouraged by advertising. Also, punishment is given if you stop hitting the button by your collected rewards disappearing and your status lowering. Two cages to run around in, both geared on punishment unless you do as you're told. The reason you care about the loss at all is because of that time and effort that went into the collecting.
• Make the game more fun, challenging, relaxing and rewarding than everyday life in a job or school. To do this, give autonomy, create complexity and provide 'proof' of the rewards of your toil. You will be more satisfied with the life provided by games than your real life and you will return to the gaming world over and over, buying more and more (games and systems) so that you can continue to delve into the gaming world.

All I can say is phew! I've missed the gaming and gambling addictions. I'll stick to books thanks. Why? It doesn't seem to mess with my mind so much.

Books

• Escapism: Provide a world in which it is possible to escape the monotonous daily routines a reader generally goes through. The world provided takes you from the world you know while highlighting who and what we are.
• Dopamine works for pleasure but it also causes us to want, desire, seek and search.  We can do this in active life or we can do this through delving into the recorded stories, history and lives of others. After a while the want and desire builds out of the search and eventually turns to like or a heightened desire for more and addiction. The flood of dopamine is addictive so you return to the behaviour that will create it. If reading was fun or pleasant, searching for information rewarding, then a reader will return to either the series or reading in general. If a particular read creates this response then anything by that author will likely succeed until the author really disappoints beyond forgiveness or fails to teach anything new.
• Seeking information and answers: The need to know is a deep instinct for humans living in a social situation and books often provide those answers. We record information simply for this purpose and seek books to alleviate the need.
• Anticipation: The length between books is often too great for mass anticipation but if an author is publicised enough, with old books reissued and new books advertised, sections are released and interviews are released, and throughout the gap between publications then anticipation can be built.
• Peer pressure: This is one of the greatest ways of making any particular book popular. Make it appear a bad thing that someone hasn't tried reading a book or approved of it. Never underestimate peer pressure. It is a menace and the publishing industry can use it to squash free thinking, ironic considering the publishing industry often brands itself as the bastion of free thinking and intellectualism. Just think Harry Potter...
• Small amounts at a time: Releasing sections, freebies and short stories to keep a reader interested can keep then interested in a particular series or publishing company. This needs to be done on a constant basis to create addiction.
• Conversion to pop culture via other media: Addiction to a story can be created by having it converted to another medium, namely television, movies or games as these are far more addictive in nature.

Suffice it to say, there is much the book publishing industry has to learn before books become as addictive as television and gaming. It explains the publishing industries loss of market share in the entertainment world. So, if there is much to learn then research what is being done using other mediums and adapt what can be to the publishing industry, though I wouldn't encourage negative reinforcement.

Things that can be used in book publishing (either by publisher or author):  

• Freebies
• Multi-media addiction
• Pop culture references
• Drip feeding
• Reward systems
• Identification
• Symbolising the author and marketing
• Effective advertising
• Meets
• Events
• Long plot lines
• False connections
• Cliff hangers
• Publication timing

Some of this is already in play but not all and definitely not for every book written. 

Writing and the imagination

Short note: Agreed but you have to gain knowledge to grow an excess of imagination. First things first.

Writers often joke about their imagination, saying it is like hearing voices, having imaginary friends or (in extreme cases of hyperbole) they say they must be a touch schizophrenic. This isn't the case at all as you can see from the medical definitions below. The jokes are just jokes and hyperbole, hyperbole.

Hearing voices
Auditory hallucinations are "Illusory auditory perception of strange nonverbal sounds. Illusory perception; a common symptom of severe mental disorder."

Imaginary friends

"Imaginary friends and imaginary companions are a psychological and social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than external physical reality. Imaginary friends are fictional characters created for improvisational role-playing. They often have elaborate personalities and behaviors. They seem real but are ultimately unreal to their creators, as shown by studies.

Imaginary friends are made often in childhood, sometimes in adolescence, and rarely in adulthood. They often function as tutelaries when played with by a child. They reveal, according to several theories of psychology, a child's anxieties, fears, goals and perceptions of the world through that child's conversations. They are, according to some children, physically indistinguishable from real people, while others say they see their imaginary friends only in their heads."

Schizophrenia
"Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder (or a group of disorders) marked by severely impaired thinking, emotions, and behaviours. Schizophrenic patients are typically unable to filter sensory stimuli and may have enhanced perceptions of sounds, colours, and other features of their environment. Most schizophrenics, if untreated, gradually withdraw from interactions with other people, and lose their ability to take care of personal needs and grooming."


All jokes aside, I do find cause to be interested in the level and type of imagination of anyone in the arts. Painting, sculpture, drawing, sewing, design, architecture, writing, choreography, fashion etc etc demand a level of imagination above what is required in your average office job. That is not to say imagination isn't required in most jobs, just that the level is different. I have experienced the deep seated boredom that comes from try to curb the imagination for routine and cannot conceive on anyone who simply has to follow their imagination being happy in such positions. Imagining potential results from a certain action but not imagining anything further is tedious and limited. Not day dreaming freely is impossible. Not day dreaming in brilliant colour, complexity and high emotion is like eating dry biscuits without topping or a drink. Blah.

So what do you call this excess of imagination and artfulness? What is it to create imaginary worlds and delve into them so much that returning to reality is a shock? What does it mean when a person without obvious mental disorders of any sort can easily joke that they do simply because of an excess of imagination?

So here is a start.

Imagination
"Etymology: L, imaginare, picture to oneself
1 the ability to form, or the act or process of forming, mental images or conscious concepts of things that are not immediately available to the senses.
2 (in psychology) the ability to reproduce images or ideas stored in the memory by the stimulation or suggestion of associated ideas or to regroup former ideas and concepts to form new images and ideas concerned with a particular goal or problem. See also fantasy."

Artistic
"1. Of or relating to art or artists: the artistic community.
2. Sensitive to or appreciative of art or beauty: an artistic temperament.
3. Showing imagination and skill: an artistic design."

Create
"tr.v. cre·at·ed, cre·at·ing, cre·ates
1. To cause to exist; bring into being. See Synonyms at found¹.
2. To give rise to; produce: That remark created a stir.
3. To invest with an office or title; appoint.
4. To produce through artistic or imaginative effort: create a poem; create a role."

Temperament
"1. a. The manner of thinking, behaving, or reacting characteristic of a specific person: a nervous temperament. See Synonyms at disposition.
b. The distinguishing mental and physical characteristics of a human according to medieval physiology, resulting from dominance of one of the four humors.
2. Excessive irritability or sensitiveness: an actor with too much temperament.
3. Music Equal temperament."

Disposition
"1. One's usual mood; temperament: a sweet disposition.
2. a. A habitual inclination; a tendency: a disposition to disagree.
b. A physical property or tendency: a swelling with a disposition to rupture.
3. Arrangement, positioning, or distribution: a cheerful disposition of colours and textures; a convoy oriented into a north-south disposition.
4. A final settlement: disposition of the deceased's property.
5. An act of disposing; a bestowal or transfer to another.
6. a. The power or liberty to control, direct, or dispose.
b. Management; control."

None of these really shed light on why such levels of imagination vary but they do highlight that there isn't any particular link to mental disorders in just having an excessive imagination.

So is it linked to intelligence? I have to ask as many would claim this to be so. Personally, although both are connected I don't think that imagination is limited to the arts alone or that it is the only aspect of the mind that indicates a person has high intelligence. Still, I must cover this too.

Intelligence
"1. a. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge.
b. The faculty of thought and reason.
c. Superior powers of mind. See Synonyms at mind.
2. An intelligent, incorporeal being, especially an angel.
3. Information; news. See Synonyms at news.
4. a. Secret information, especially about an actual or potential enemy.
b. An agency, staff, or office employed in gathering such information.
c. Espionage agents, organisations, and activities considered as a group: "Intelligence is nothing if not an institutionalised black market in perishable commodities" (John le Carré).""

As instructed, here is the mind definition

Mind
'1. The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.
2. The collective conscious and unconscious processes in a sentient organism that direct and influence mental and physical behaviour.
3. The principle of intelligence; the spirit of consciousness regarded as an aspect of reality.
4. The faculty of thinking, reasoning, and applying knowledge: Follow your mind, not your heart.
5. A person of great mental ability: the great minds of the century.
6. a. Individual consciousness, memory, or recollection: I'll bear the problem in mind.
b. A person or group that embodies certain mental qualities: the medical mind; the public mind.
c. The thought processes characteristic of a person or group; psychological makeup: the criminal mind.
7. Opinion or sentiment: He changed his mind when he heard all the facts.
8. Desire or inclination: She had a mind to spend her vacation in the desert.
9. Focus of thought; attention: I can't keep my mind on work.
10. A healthy mental state; sanity: losing one's mind."

Intelligence and the mind are defined without restrictions to excessive imagination but there is cause to link the two. To be imaginative you need a certain level of thought, perception, emotion, will, memory and imagination along with consciousness of your consciousness, reflectiveness, thinking, reasoning and application of knowledge. You can be imaginative in maths or any of the sciences as well as imaginative in writing or any of the other arts. To excel in any field requiring imagination to create and reform ideas of any sort requires an excess of imagination.

And still there is no answer, just a validation of why the imaginative choose the jobs they are often in.

Why is there ever an excess of imagination?
This likely comes down to evolution.

Evolution
1. A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form. See Synonyms at development.
2. a. The process of developing.
b. Gradual development.
3. Biology a. Change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, as a result of natural selection acting on the genetic variation among individuals, and resulting in the development of new species.
b. The historical development of a related group of organisms; phylogeny.
4. A movement that is part of a set of ordered movements.
5. Mathematics The extraction of a root of a quantity.

Very, very simply put:
We are creatures without deadly defences, a specific food source or any sort of instinctual hunting strategies. We are soft creatures who survive because we are adapted to constant adaption of our behaviour to our environment (so much so we often adapt the environment to our behaviour). To constantly adapt behaviour means to constantly think of new ways of doing things and then enacting them, some to fail and some to succeed. To fail to imagine a new way of doing things could lead a person to meet with death. The losses pare away some of the imaginative along with the unimaginative but not all. Sometimes the unimaginative restrict the imaginative leading to losses happening all round.

Build on that over thousands of years and imagination becomes a dominant trait, leaving most of us with some predisposition towards making up stuff on the fly. For those that don't, well, we are a pack animal remember. Within our close circles we love and care for our fellows and within the wide community we condemn acts of violence (not to say we don't often act violently, just that the vast majority of us try hard to suppress it and make sure we don't kill anyone, thus becoming natural selectors in evolution). There isn't much of a problem with not being imaginative at all (a rare condition indeed) as long as you are loved and are careful.

So imagination, intelligence, survival and evolution are all linked to various degrees to someone sitting down at a computer or scribbling on a pad of paper in the process of creating and recording fictitious worlds, characters and societies, which doesn't seem to benefit anyone much until you realise that this is one of the main ways ideas are transferred and recorded (no matter if the idea is couched in fiction or non-fiction). We could keep living without excessive imagination but I doubt we'd develop as nicely (evolve is too linked to progress and progress is too linked to betterment and that isn't always the case with imagination now is it). Excessive imagination allows us to develop and build/alter/pare away methods much quicker and is the reason behind why society is moving oh so very fast nowadays.

Word puzzles, you and your brain

Word puzzles come in a variety of formats. You have your basic crossword, Find A Word, Scrabble, various letter arrangement games like Jumble or Boggle, Hangman, Charades, Fictionary, Anagram, Spelling Bee, Spoonerisms and many more. Then there is the Wheel of Fortune and Countdown.

There are people out there who can play all these games quite well, easily pulling on a large base of trivia and knowledge of the English language.

Then there is the average person who is good at several of them but not so good at the others, finding competition hard, their knowledge a little less than desired or their grasp of English good but not fantastic.

And finally there are those who struggle with all of these games, likely due to English being their second language, learning difficulties or reading and writing difficulties, a disregard for general trivia and any number of other factors that impede a person's ability to engage and puzzle out the answers.

Now here is what I'm interested in. Not what level you're at if you always perform about the same when playing these games. No, what I'm interested in is why you could be classed as a mix of two or three of these levels, depending on the game you are playing.

The brain is an organ but its function isn't simple and its growth and maturing isn't ever going to occur in the same way for multiple people. On a macroscopic level it generally all looks about the same, except for size or growth stage. On a microscopic level you will find the connections made between neurons will be as individual as fingerprints (or so the saying goes). This does not mean your neurons have free reign in connecting however they want, basic brain structure be damned. This means that when the sections of the brain mature the neurons within each section create connections according to the information an individual needs to be processed, what that person perceives, how the person goes about developing motor control, what excites/aggravates the person, the person's developing urges/impulses and desires, how the person learns to regulate the environment and their own functions, as well as the need to remember and learn particular things in order to survive/pass tests/function in society. 

So if everyone is an individual, their brain and their knowledge base different then everyone's ability to access the language, recognise and decode patterns, experiment with patterns, recall and respond, analyse, compete or fight, remain calm when stressed, liken two or more items together, draw parallels, predict or even see, move or speak will be different.

You may find that while you are exceptionally good at hangman that you can't see words in a Find A Word because it all looks like scribbles swimming before your eyes. This could be because of your vision being poor or it could be because your brain isn't wired to 'see' the patterns, 'seeing' the texture or colour or blocks instead. You can train your brain to some extent but if it can't be done then it can't be done. You have to live with what you are, whether you like it or not. Best to try and like it.

That's just one example but the same principle applies for other combinations.

Why I'm interested in this is because I could be labelled one of the ones who fall into different categories depending on the game being played. This isn't because I'm of low intelligence, dysfunctional, have a learning difficulty or anything else. I'd be classed your average ordinary to intelligent person who functions well, though with some social problems re figuring out what to say in general conversations as opposed to arguments or discussions (does this explain something to some of you?), in the world and has a good practical knowledge of a lot of different subjects, if not so good on general trivia such as sports and other topics I consider completely irrelevant to living my life.

For me, who can read, write, speak and learn without an excuse as to why I might fail, I find it quite frustrating that my mind will not always do what I intend it to or hope it will. As a result, scrabble is daunting with live players but okay with computers, hangman has to be played with a person and always goes over well, I'm fantastic at Find A Word but my brain often stalls when searching for answers to crosswords (especially when I know I know the bleeding answer and it is just there but I can't spit it out) only to find the answer logged in my memory a day later, all trivia games are a waste of time unless they include a random challenge topic which I will find easy while the rest of the questions sound like random words stuck together. I can play Boggle but when the letters are written I suddenly struggle. Explain that one for me! Totally irrational.

And here I am stringing sentences using formulas drawn from repeated patterns I read over and over rather than by having someone sit me down and plug grammar into my brain. Spelling, yes. I had plenty of spelling lessons, just not any on grammar past “This is a full stop” and “This is a comma”.

But totally irrational isn't far from what the brain is at times. Well, the conscious part anyway. Well, the unconscious too. Yes, the brain can be just plain ridiculous at times. At least it isn't all the time.

Conclusion: We each learn, adopt, adapt and function in our own ways, saying that is what makes us individual. We accept that we each have our own skills and failings, some obvious and some not. We work hard to accept others as we are pack animals by nature and the need to belong to a group is strong. To belong we accept many things we otherwise might not. Please apply this acceptance of individuality to your own and others' ability to perform not just in such things as word games but also in everything. Try not to go calling people or yourself an idiot for not being able to do something no matter how hard you try. I bet you're good at something else instead.