In Popular Culture
- In the Step by Step episode "Video-Mania", Frank Lambert buys his son Mark video games to relieve his troubles of his "horrible" grades (which were A-averages instead of A-pluses). Quickly, he begins displaying indications of video game addiction. However, the conclusion was not as grisly as other examples. This would be the first showcase of video game addiction in popular culture.
- In the Boston Legal episode "Word Salad Days", a mother sues a video game company after her 15-year old son dies of a heart attack due to exhaustion from playing a game for two days straight.
- In L.A. 7 episode, Game Boy, Bradley becomes addicted to a game, forcing Tina, Hannah, and Paul to go look for Spike, the teen game designer who created the game.
- The South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" parodies many aspects of game addiction.
- The South Park episode "Guitar Queer-o" features a made-up game called "Heroin Hero", to which people develop a drug-like addiction.
- In The Simpsons episode "Marge Gamer", Marge suffers from overuse of an MMORPG.
- In The Simpsons episode "Lisa Gets an "A"", Lisa becomes addicted to a fictional video game called Dash Dingo (a parody of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back).
- In the CSI: Miami episode "Urban Hellraisers", a suspect is found dead after playing a game for seventy hours straight.
- The King of the Hill episode "Grand Theft Arlen" features Hank addicted to a game called Pro-Pain, A parody of Grand Theft Auto series.
- In the iCarly episode "iStage an Intervention", Spencer becomes addicted to a game called Pak-Rat (a parody of Pac-Man), forcing Carly to take extreme measures to get him to stop.
- In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Game", William Riker brings a video game from Risa. It stimulates specific parts of the brain, and almost all of the Enterprise crew become addicted to it.
- In The Big Bang Theory episode "The Barbarian Sublimation", Penny becomes addicted to Age of Conan.
- In The Suite Life of Zack & Cody episode "Tiptonline", Zack and Mr. Moseby are addicted to an MMORPG.
- In the Suite Life on Deck episode "Goin' Bananas", Woody becomes addicted to a game called Better Life, a parody of Second Life.
- In Pure Pwnage, Jeremy becomes addicted to World of Warcraft and plays it continuously for six days before passing out and being taken to a mental hospital. He explains his character in the game to a psychologist, who appears to believe that Jeremy is psychotic.
- In the Law & Order: SVU episode Bullseye, addiction to a fictitious MMO leads a mother and her boyfriend to completely neglect their daughter, while trying to protect their virtual online son.
- In the series Pair of Kings, Mason becomes addicted to a video-game with a warrior.
- In the Japanese manga and anime series NHK ni Youkoso, the main character Satou Tatsuhiro becomes severely addicted to the online role-playing game "Ultimate Fantasy".
Read more about this topic: Video Game Addiction
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator—the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)