We've seen this in many ways throughout many periods of the world. Fads have become a social construct that spreads like wildfire. The latest thread among males: Fortnite.
Fortnite is a game that essentially idolizes survival skills. You're dropped from a battle bus and left to fend for yourself with 99 other individuals that are typically more than willing to eliminate your player.
Guys are spending more and more time on their gaming consoles than ever and have come to really draw a line of separation from the real world. You see it all over social media: college-aged guys are abandoning their girlfriends in order to meet up with their squad online to see who has the best survival skills. It's quite hilarious if you take a step back and really look into why this is such a huge deal.
Guys have always notoriously been about masculinity. (Obviously) But what's more masculine than being better than 99 other individuals at surviving on an island? Absolutely freaking nothing. Especially if you have a solid squad, it will cause you to become addicted to the very essence of the game.
Fortnite has also brought back classic online multiplayer gaming. Guys no longer want to just go play alone against a bunch of people they don't know without any sort of actual communication amongst your teammates. Guys would play Call of Duty and not talk to anyone they play with, solely to boost their Kill to Death Ratio. (KDR) They would then use this KDR to boast among their friends how good they were at the latest war game.
Now, guys are teaming up in groups of four and taking on 96 other people and actually focussing on teamwork for the first time since some of the original Call of Duty's came out.
Most guys struggle to text their girl in descriptive ways to tell them about their day, but as soon as they see a player in Fortnite in an odd location that's difficult to explain, their communication abilities become intensified and very specific.
This tells most people two things: in order to get a guy to communicate, you need to either be in a video game, or you need to trigger a sense of survival in him in order to really get him to open up and talk to you. Which is actually quite hilarious.
With these negative influences on the relationship level, there are actually quite a few positive things that have come from Fortnite.
Fortnite has brought back the old friendships from when guys were in their teens. I, for one, have connected with quite a few of my old friends that I'm no longer in contact with on a regular basis. It's also helping us maintain friendships even after different life changes that occur. I'm have just graduated from college and still am able to talk to my buddies that I no longer see now that they have big-kid jobs elsewhere.
Probably the most positive impact that Fortnite has created is the lives and donations of the highly touted and ranked players in the world.
One of the most famous faces of Fortnite is that of a gamer named Tyler Blevins, otherwise known as "Ninja." Ninja plays Fortnite for hours at a time practically every day and streams his gameplay for the thousands of viewers that tune in every day. With those thousands of viewers, he has created quite a comfortable life for himself. He makes nearly a half-million dollars every month and loves what he does.
But why is that a benefit? Because most of the money he makes, he donates to charities with great causes. On top of it all, he actually appears to be a rather genuine and good-natured person. He epitomizes his loyalty to his wife, he shows his dedication to his fans, and he donates a lot of money he makes from his streams to help those that are less fortunate than he is.
