If this article is accurate, it paints a bleak picture. I don't much care about the not working part, if you are smart enough to figure out how not to work and get by, you deserve it. The part where these guys are on a screen all day long is really bad though. I mean, you have to go out and try to have friends or get a girl, sitting at home on a server all day doesn't fill that need. I am worried this is actually making a vast psychologically damaged class of people.
Anecdata based on the men in this situation I'm familiar with: They do have mental health issues, but I'm not sure they're more than what the average employed man is afflicted by. I detect a general life fulfillment malaise, but in exchange they avoid all of the stress the rest of us deal with every day.
For this reason, I'm reluctant to call their lifestyle choice irrational since by their own measure, they seem to think they're taking the best path. They take stock of their options in various areas (relationships with women, career prospects, engaging in social activity, and so on) and say, "No thanks, I'll just play video games all day." There are virtual world substitutes for a lot of what they'd get out there in the real world now too, and though they'd probably agree it's not as good as the real thing, they can get a 50% solution for 0% of the effort. That might sound like a good deal to some, and apparently it is.
I would argue this is pre-conscious or an intuitive evaluation rather than an actual rationalization and that online gaming is not necessarily a universal result. Absconding to the internet and social media (not always "social" necessarily as Reddit and HN constitute social media) in general seems to be but there is a general inclination towards escapism given the lack of incentives or hope for anything better that they can realistically access in their present context.
Feel the same way myself. I definitely didn't need to sit down and do a pro/cons list and really philosophize about the diminished returns on my labour. I don't even think its necessarily the optimal route but like in Alice and Wonderland, (I'm paraphrasing and adapting) "when you have nowhere to go, it doesn't matter what you do". You end up at the same place and if that place is less stressfull than putting yourself out there and increasing your travel/food/exertion/social efforts for nominal gain relative to "doing nothing", it makes sense.
If people can afford to give themselves ad hoc sabbaticals, I would advise it for no other reason than it gives you the chance to slow down and reassess. Even if you don't spend the time doing self-improvement and building new skills/habits/coping mechs, the subconcious can cook up some amazing things when it has time out in the yard to run around without judgement or artificial constraints that otherwise suppress its agency.
The world depends on people with mortgages and debts who can't take a day (or longer) off and really think about what they are/aren't doing and about what they actually need and to whom their efforts truly benefit.
It _is_ irrational, because they are further destroying their (apparently already not amazing) employment prospects and destroying their future when they will need money to address aging. As you get into your 40-50-60..., people who are letting you ride for free will start dying or ditching you, and then your own health turns to shit, and then what? this approach is borrowing from and irreversibly destroying your own future.
Civilization has largely been built by traumatized, unwell people. This is a sad but true fact. Probably the kind of fucked up you get smoking weed and posting is less bad than the kind of fucked up you get marching to the edge of the known world on starvation rations to kill people and watch your friends killed. Anyway we can hope it is.
