What happened to Phil make him so bitter? Some really close friends of mine play games, and we enjoy taking some time each week to play stuff together. One of those activities we will do semi-regularly is playing various forms of content in Destiny, including raids. We all really enjoy it and see it as a chance to sit back and spend time together. I would think a lot of people can understand that. We live in an age where technology can make up for the problem of distance for friends and family, and can provide a chance for us to stay connected with people after work and life move people away from each other. When you sit and compare how much access people have to each other now versus 40 years ago, it's pretty damn remarkable.
I get that part of Phil's issue with this is an age thing. Kids staying inside all day glued to a screen is a somewhat-valid argument often posed by adults deemed out-of-touch. But it comes off as the ranting of a bitter old man who doesn't have anyone real connected to him. He's out there alone, and he's clearly unhappy about that. As a defense against this loneliness he himself created, he laughs to keep from crying.
Part of it is Phil having no friends whatsoever, but part of it is also Phil has been "forced" to play videogames for X amount of hours each day for the last however many years. His life pretty much revolves around it. It's one of the big risks with turning a hobby you do for entertainment into your main source of income. Playing games stopped being about fun for Phil years ago, now it's survival. That's why he plays games like Destiny 2 even though he was openly discussing how much he hates the game. He's too focused on things like day 1 views and what videos can get sweet ad revenue to actually enjoy what he is doing. I think the scheduled nature makes it harder too, since even someone like Phil isn't always in a mood to game.
I actually think that's why he acts so proud whenever he does anything nongaming. For normal people (and even autists like us) going grocery shopping or watering plans or doing basic cleaning is nothing special because we're constantly doing that. But for Phil, his life revolves around gaming, so these basic tasks are a refreshing break for him and he thinks they're revolutionary events and not something everyone constantly does.
Basically, he's made himself incredibly jaded, and he has no self awareness so he just keeps repeating that same behavior over and over again and making himself miserable. It's one of his best cow tendencies, because it provides us with an unending source of entertainment. Not only him being jaded and miserable, but we also get to laugh at his random instagram cooking posts or him bragging about cleaning a room, or how grocery shopping is strenuous exercise.
While I sincerely doubt young Phil's life was as involved as he claims, I do believe he was more social. I mean, if nothing else he was attending school and at least being around people, and we know that he somehow managed to have a couple of friends. I guess the drinking thing is believable too, given what we know about Phil. But I think the big thing is he's so lonely because of this pit he's dug himself in that now he's reminiscing on his early days just because there were other people besides himself. As others have pointed out, it's why his prestream crap keeps getting longer and longer, it's pretty much his only source of social interaction. He doesn't want to play games, so he drags it out as long as he can to get that social validation he craves. He's even shown a few moments of self awareness when he mentions that he's so busy he never gets to see people...he just doesn't realize that he's only "busy" because of his own self created dumbass schedule followed by staying up all night playing mobile games and watching wrestling or whatever to try and ease the stress of said dumbass schedule.
Basically, Phil is a glorious human trainwreck.
