Feel naked without your cell phone? Well…

The pain you’re about to watch this kid go through is different only in degree; not in kind. The setup is this: kid’s mother takes away his gaming privileges, kid’s brother quickly plants video camera in brother’s room, and we get to watch him flip over no longer being able to play World of Warcraft. Watch before reading on.

So, what I want to point out here is this: once we get past the hilarity of someone absolutely losing it over a video game and take a real look at what’s going on, we’ll see that this kid is experiencing a loss so deep and intense that it’s maddening. The way he behaves is hilarious at first because of how inappropriately extreme it is, but when you consider that very fact, you have to see that the dude has really built a lot on this game, a lot of himself. So, when he loses it, he reacts with the sort of insane grief people experience when they lose a child. Parents react this way to the death of children because their children are the most important thing to them, and this is how we react when our most important thing is snatched suddenly. This kid is going through that and at first it’s hilarious, but it’s hilarity is telling. Not only does it tell us how extreme we think it is (and that extremity turns out to be disturbing), but it tells us that we understand it, that it sort of makes sense to us. Otherwise it couldn’t be hilarious; it could only be confusing. So, this kids extreme-yet-comprehendible behavior is evidence of the shift we’re making: a transplanting of values as we step into a new world.

Note: The video Josh posted below, as should probably be expected, contains some naughty words. So turn your speakers down if you need to.