- Role-playing console games are phenomenally successful in Japan, but they haven't done as well in the United States, where VIDIOTS would rather twitch-and-shoot or fight hand to hand than explore and interact.
Vidiot
noun; blending and clipping
A person who plays video games frequently, probably excessively, and figuratively until he has become an idiot. The sense of the word "idiot" used here is "one incapable of normal processes of everyday life, especially social interactions." A vidiot can play his video game and nothing else; he lives more in his games than in reality. There's no accepted concise term for the video game fanatics the authors were describing. A long phrase would have slowed down the clause, not to mention being rather colorless. Thus, a very convenient blend was made between two words essential to the idea being expressed, and out pops vidiot.
Etymology : The word VIDIOT was assembled from the words VIDEO and IDIOT. Due to the similarity within those two words, it's hard to tell where the former ends and the latter begins. Further, the word VIDEO here was clipped from VIDEO GAME. Together, the phrase VIDEO GAME IDIOT gives the essential elements of the meaning of VIDIOT.
Source : Newsweek 9/15/97 'Cyberscope N'Gai Croal,' Mark Rambler
Last modified: 10 June 2008