"You Can't Do It" - Professional Esports Team is Hosting "Esports Dissuasion Classes" to Scare Children Who Think They Can Make it as Professional Gamers Straight
Oddity Central – To discourage young gamers from becoming addicted to video games with the dream of becoming professional esports competitors, a Chinese esports team holds ‘esports dissuasion classes’.
With esports becoming increasingly popular internationally and world-class competitors finally being able to support themselves with their earnings, more and more young gamers dream of one day becoming esports stars and use this as an excuse to play video games. Seeing many parents complain about their children focusing more on video games than their education, one Chinese esports organization decided to hold ‘esports dissuasion classes’ to show young gamers the amount of work and time professional esports athletes put in to make it in this highly competitive scene.
What a novel idea from our friends across the Pacific. Much like a bowl of peanut butter noodles, reality is a dish best served cold. "What's that, kid? You want to play video games for a living? Well why don't you smoke this WHOLE PACK of cigarettes."
Becoming a professional gamer has become a new career dream for many children, but making a living from video games isn’t as easy as it sounds, and one esports organization in Shijiazhuang, China’s Hebei Province, has come up with a way to show wannabe esports players the harsh reality of competitive gaming at the highest level. Its new “Esports Dissuasion Class” not only simulates the high-pressure environment of professional esports, allowing children to experience the intensity and psychological pressure of professional players, but also invites real professional players to share their experiences to help kids understand that the barriers to entry are far higher than they might imagine.
The Esports dissuasion class begins at 9 a.m. and ends around midnight, during which time attendees are virtually glued to their keyboards and monitors, with only short breaks for eating, exercise, and going to the bathroom. The 22-day course costs 40,000 yuan ($5,580), but it’s incredibly popular with parents wanting to wean their children off video games. It’s incredibly effective, too, as, according to The Paper, some children break down and ask to go home after the first day.
I like the cut of his esports team's jib. I especially appreciate how starting this "scared straight" video game camp was never even their intention. They originally set out to start an esports school that would identify potential talent.
According to Su Chenhao, the program director, since 2018, nearly 4,000 young people have joined the organization, 85% of whom “wanted to become a professional gamer” or “believed they have a talent for gaming.” However, many children simply seek to escape reality, and the truly talented esports talent is a rare find.
“Our original idea was to select potential e-sports talents, but we didn’t expect that more and more children would be persuaded to quit,” Su said.
But once their program got going, they seemingly realized, "Oh, shit. 99% of these kids actually suck. Maybe we should focus on doing what's best for the 99%, instead of the 1% of kids who might be worth a damn to our video game team some day."
And if one of the kids is actually talented enough, and seems to thrive sitting in front of a screen for 15 hours straight, I'd imagine this esports team would tell them that. But I'd also imagine that's not often the case.
When I read this story, I couldn't help but wonder, "Could this work with professional sports-sports in the United States?"
Do we need "Professional Athlete Dissuasion" classes in the United States? I say yes. Hear me out. I don't think we need it for the kids themselves. For the most part, I think kids who want to dedicate their childhood to sports because they aspire to be professional athletes is a great thing. That's so much better than so many of the alternatives. It certainly rears more real-world benefits than things like smoking weed, smoking crack, or spending all of your time in front of a screen kicking LeBron James' ass with the Powder Puff Girls.
But America could 100% benefit from, "Your Kid Is Not Good Enough To Be A Professional Athlete" classes for the hardo youth sports parents out there. The one's who make sports not fun for their kids. If every professional sports team in America ran one of these camps in the off-season… camps geared towards showing overbearing parents exactly how "not good enough" their child is… think of all the father-son relationships that could save?
Getting the right parent-kid combos to sign up would be like shooting fish in a barrel. Say you're the Pittsburgh Steelers. You host an invite only camp for "youth football prospects" at Heinz Field (I know it's Acrisure Stadium now, but c'mon…). Tell the parents that their kids are being invited because one of their coaches recognized his unbelievable potential. Since these parents are delusional about their kid's ability, they're obviously going to believe it. But in reality, the nominations will come from coaches who recognize that a kid on their team has parents in need of a reality check. Ideally, a parent who the coach can tell is making his kid's life hell.
Naturally, during the camp, the delusional & overly-involved parents will be sitting in the stands watching all week long. So the Steelers might also want to invite a handful of kids who legitimately do have pro potential, just to give the parents an additional point of reference to show exactly how "not good enough" their kid is. At the end of the camp, Mike Tomlin would sit down with each parent (or parents) for a face-to-face meeting where he tells them point blank, "Your kid is not a special talent. I'm not even sure if he has eyes. Or hands. No college coach will recruit him in a million years. It doesn't matter how hard you work him. It's not because he isn't trying hard enough. He's simply not gifted enough. Just let him be a kid."
Maybe hearing it straight from an NFL coaches mouth will serve as the reality check the parent needs to ease up on the reins, and let his kid actually have fun playing sports without the the weight of impossible expectations on their shoulders.
I'm not exactly sure what the right age for this would be. Maybe middle school? There would obviously be some kinks to work out. But if they get it right, then years from now when that kid is an adult, it could be the difference between a loving father-son relationship, and a son who resents his dad because he stole his childhood. Or feels like a disappointment because he was never able to fulfill his father's dream. I can name multiple kids I played sports with or against growing up who would have loved nothing more than a well-respected sports figure tempering his parents expectations.
Or maybe this would just have the opposite effect and the parents would hear Mike Tomlin words and think, "I'll show him", and then really ramp up the insanity. Who fucking knows. But I think there's something to it.