"They cannot inspire. They cannot make us better people. They cannot feed the starving." Unless you count Feed Starvin' Marvin (a 600K download from the Videogames are Cool site, and elsewhere) but that's just being facetious.

All right Simon, you can have those three, but we're talking about a pastime here, not a reason to live. We all do lots of stuff that's idle, useless and not to the benefit of the world, but that doesn't make us bad.

"They cannot reverse the inexorable march of capitalism." Well, on a semantic point, if the march of capitalism is truly inexorable then it's logically impossible for anything to reverse it, but I fail to see why computer games need to be associated with capitalism to any extent further than anything else in our depraved society.

What's New, Stoopid?
"Videogames are another aspect of dumbing down." That may be true of the majority of Nintendo and PlayStation titles, but there are a number of PC games that would challenge the most adept of logical minds. You could even consider them to be training in lateral thinking. Like crosswords, which are also stupid and meaningless.

So videogames aren't all that bad after all. Let's keep them in context; they're a pastime for empty moments when we don't want to do anything marvellous, when we just want to kick back and be lazy for a while. There's nothing wrong with that and it may even be good for you. It may not be as good for you as Tai-Chi but it's not exactly harmful either. Like with anything, obviously, it comes down to a question of how much time you spend kicking back. Spending your entire youth in front of a videogame console is undeniably stupid, as you'll find out when you get to middle age.