Article and illustration by Dylan C. Lathrop

I have to come clean about something: I have been watching way too much Intervention. If you are unaware — why would you be? — the show centers around addicts being documented, BUT LITTLE DO THEY KNOW, they will soon face an intervention.

Enter Peter. He has all the symptoms of being an addict, which should enforce me to feel bad for him, but sadly I have been snickering about him since watching his episode of the show. He has wide, creepy eyes that pierce through the screen. He speaks in a rich, baritone voice that smacks of 'tude that BLOWS MY MIND. He refers to himself as Max Payne, feels that beating Shinobi was greater than his first kiss, and inexplicably has a pretty attractive girl pining for him. You will watch this clip and feel little to no sympathy for this guy, or maybe I'm just king jerk.



It's baffling, no? I mean, he and I (among many of my friends that play video games) share similar traits, in that we enjoy games, we will sometimes make awful references to Ace Ventura at inopportune times ("Alrighty then," at 8:05 in the clip) and probably think we are smarter than those around us. But how is there such divergence in how we live? I'm not a pariah lording over my Halos and my Katamaris all the live long day, my eyes squirreling about like I just snorted some aderol. I can set down a controller pretty easily. Yet this guy and I, if side by side in Jr. High, probably weren't all that different. Yet there he is, needing tough talk Jeff Van Vonderan (my favorite Bond villain) and I'm deftly mocking him? Our streams, like in Ghostbusters, have not crossed.

Thanks mom and dad for buying me video game consoles my whole life, but also thank you for making me realize that when a girl is canoodling up to me it's time to put down the controller.

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