Video Gaming has come full circle. It began with kids feeding quarters into machines at the local arcade, honing their skills with an endless stream of silver. The occasional talent would rise above the rest and gain fame in the neighborhood for his (or her) mad skills. There were masters of Pac-man and Space Invaders. Then came the home versions of these games, which allowed you to train at home, for free. People got better, but they left the arcades, taking the show out of video gaming. In the mid- to late-90's, the show was back, as multi-player gaming took hold and allowed players to strut their mad skills once again---this time by directly "pwning" other players to prove superiority. Consoles got better and better, games attracted more and more players, with some games, like World of Warcraft, boasting tens of millions of players worldwide. Starcraft is nearly a state religion in South Korea, with at least two or three television channels devoted to showing games of the country's top players. In the States, things haven't come that far (yet), but the best players are crawling out of their living rooms and basements to once again strut their eerily well-honed skills in public. They have found a new home in the big-box electronics stores, like Best Buy, which set up little cathedrals for exactly this purpose: ostensibly to let people try out the console, but realistically to allow star players to showcase their talent. The game that best lends itself to this type of thing is Guitar Hero or Rock Star, where players cradle a miniature guitar controller with five buttons on it and match a stream of colored lights on an animated fretboard with furious taps of the appropriately colored button. It's exactly the same things as <i>Dance, Dance, Revolution</i> but without all the exercise and with the goal of becoming a rock god instead. To play well takes a lot of practice and no small amount of skill. As with all video games, the creators anticipated that people would invest dozens of hours in the mastery of their game and appropriately added songs that are so phenomenally hard that their inclusion looks like a joke to the casual player. Not only can a player showcase his or her talents<fn> in the local neighborhood again but, thanks to YouTube, can also upload agonizingly long and boring tributes to their prowess for the internet community as well. Whereas their prowess at playing fake guitar is clear, editing a video of what is essentially an unblinking person smashing five colored buttons for 8.5 minutes to a speed metal song that most people wouldn't ordinarily listen to if paid to do so is something that is clearly not within their power. Watching a somewhat blurry video (thanks YouTube and handheld phone cameras) tends to focus the viewer on just what a clacky racket the controller makes when pounded on.<fn> Watching a tremendous display of talent live is something else altogether. Articles like <a href="http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/36460" source="Gamers with Jobs" author="Julian Murdoch">Best Buy Bodhisattva</a> convey wonderfully the ass-clenching excitement of watching someone just <i>master</i> something difficult, live and in person. <bq>...3, 4, 5 minutes into the song. Kyle slips deeper into what is clearly a state of Samadhi; He no longer perceives a space between himself and the game. There is no him. There is no song. There is no guitar. ... At just over 6 minutes, the song becomes even more ludicrous. While actually playing it will ever remain for me an uncrossable gap, I am enough a student of the form to recognize the crux. He is Lance Armstrong approaching the bottom of Alpe D'Huez: Will he attack?</bq> The Lance Armstrong reference is pure gold. It must have been really something to watch this youth arrive with his posse, dominate with a burst of talent, then leave without a trace. It would be easy to say that it's nice to see that "kids these days" are good at <i>something</i>, but they always have been. It used to be skateboarding and its more physically demanding brethren---now it's Guitar Hero. The things they're interested in and spend ridiculous amounts of time on and becoming mind-bogglingly proficient at are just not guaranteed to be lucrative or make them successful or help them move out of your home, like, ever. It is this lack of applicability of nurtured talent that adult society has always had a problem with, as it watches sour-pussed as "kids waste their lives". The instinct to channel energy into societally useful work is an acquired taste; it takes years of brainwashing to eradicate the innately human desire to chase rainbows without regard to time or goals. On the other hand, the man who wrote the article is 40 and is part of perhaps the first generation that manages to somehow appreciate and respect things that the next generation does. As with so many time investments that seem futile when you're not deep within the obsession yourself, one wonders why these people don't just go learn how to play a real guitar instead. It's much harder, but they clearly have the interest and time. It's probably just too hard and most of the guys online look like they're just trying to avoid doing their history papers for whichever large state university they attend rather than trying to acquire a true skill or exercise a true passion. On a final note, South Park has already lampooned the genre in their usual exquisite manner, with an "audition" consisting of a kid tapping away accapella on the controller to show his chops as people gaze in wonder. <a href="http://www.southparkzone.com/episodes/1113/Guitar-Queer-o.html" source="South Park Zone">Guitar Queer-o</a> is available for free online. <hr> <ft>Aw, who am I kidding? Look at all the videos on YouTube: they're sausagefests. Not a female to be seen for miles.</ft> <ft>It is nice, however, to see that speed metal has---twenty years later---found a more public niche.</ft>