Blog Post #5

The article, “Extra Lives” by Tom Bissell, describes how video games have overtaken this man’s life. He opens up the article by discussing how he wrote several books and published a mass amount of magazine journalism but that was “Once upon a time” ago. He begins to explain how once upon a time was a time that occurred a few years back where he would write and read books and have physical activity, but now he is in a place where he lost all of that and instead devotes all of his time to playing video games. He is answering the question of what the negative effects of gaming is. People care about this article because he is detailing how gaming, supposed to be entertaining and harmless, is actually affecting people’s lives negatively. Bissell describes his downfall and how he went from being a productive and avid reader/writer to spending all of his time to playing video games. He says he struggles to find the ability to concentrate and actively do work for a time of more than three hours at a time. This is showing how technology is decreasing one’s ability to focus and is reducing their attention span. Also, a negative effect of gaming is the pure addiction to it. Bissell describes how GTA has a sort of openness and control that no other game has. It gives you adrenaline rushes and allows you to experience things that you can’t do in the real world. It is addicting and distracting, and he is still struggling to find out who he is and who he once was. Some techniques that the author uses is flashbacks of personal experiences. By providing examples of things that actually happened to him personally, allows him to establish the reality of the issue to the audience. People are more inclined to listen when they have a real-life example and they know that it is true. Another strategy used by Bissell was his repetition of “Once upon a time” in the introduction. He is establishing the fact that all of the things he is saying is once upon a time, meaning in the past, and that is not who he is anymore. He is showing the good, dedicated person he once was but is no longer and how video games have changed him. I think these would be good strategies for me to incorporate into my own writing in order to have stronger and more valid arguments.