It has come from my experience that addiction can be the death of things. For instance, a good book. (I know dramatic title for rubbish story, made you read it though right?) But whenever I get into a book, I end up not eating, not sleeping, and totally forgetting everything like home work and chores just to read the next chapter. This is the sort of manipulating and cunning writing skills that some authors are lucky enough to process. And no matter how much you try to put down the book you always find yourself turning the next page. Your life has been taken over by addiction.
It can be found in video games, DVD’s and any other pass time. And when addiction strikes, it leads to obsession, for example reaching the end of an amazing series of books. Take Twilight, (ok just hear me out guys) but once the series ok BOOKS finished, teenage girls all round the world put down the stories and turned on the movies, and once they had seen all of them, posters, fan art, fan music, fan fiction, fan clubs. Rip off collectable items, like t-shirts, buttons, bags, anything and everything possible was taken over by the fan waves all around the world.
And soon it became impossible just to like it, either you were a twi-hard or twi-hater. You couldn’t just like the originality of the story and the romance. You HAD to own the latest merchandize; you HAD to see the next movie when it came out. You HAD to belong to a team. You couldn’t just read it, you had to be obsessed. And ok, it took a literally genius to make it possible. But then it became big, and people who like originality hated Twilight because everyone was starting to become obsessed. And no one saw that the story was original when it came out. Addiction can lead to an international civil war between teens everywhere.
Maybe this has all been put a bit dramatic. That is only one example, look at the Harry Potter Books, Disney, or even just Sci-Fi. You can’t like Sci-Fi and be popular, because apparently only nerds like Sci-Fi. Which isn’t true, not all nerds like Science Fiction, and not all popular/sporty people don’t like it. Our society should stop classing people, and judging people from their likes and dislikes that all start from a simple phenomenon. As individuals we are allowed to have our own opinions, and our own style, and we are allowed to have our addictions. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing, it can show your passionate about something, or that a certain book can speak and relate to you. Of course it must be hard to find a video game that can speak to you. But again it’s possible; say if your ambition is to become a professional singer, sing star could very well be the game to you.
My point is that addiction has its highs, and its lows. But addictions turns into obsession, there is not healthy obsession unless you can admit that you are obsessed. I’m obsessed with my own writing and if that makes me selfish and annoying, so be it. But at least I’m passionate about something I believe in. Of course there will come a point when an obsession is taken too far, and everything will become uncontrolled, and that is the point we need to realise that it’s not the end of the world to put down the fan stuff and get a life, because having one thing rule your world, is bound to have nasty side effects.
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