I feel roughly the same about chess players as I feel about drunk drivers. That is, humanity clearly benefits from people willing to go out and drive while completely shitfaced, at least in the sense that when people are altruistic enough to kill themselves while driving drunk, the rest of us benefit by being able to look at their deaths statistically to create best-practices for the rest of us.[1]
In all seriousness though, if chess is your art then so be it, I certainly won't be the one to judge. On a personal level I think there are better mediums for self-expression. But clearly humanity as a whole gets stronger from diversity and randomness, and who knows what benefits us in the long run. And I agree with pessimizer that chess is ultimately more like math or music than cocaine or whatever.
Not the other poster, but I wouldn't be. In my semi-baseless opinion, chess playing pleasure is more like the pleasure you get from reading or doing math. Video game pleasure is more like television or cocaine.
What about the pleasure you get from playing a video game version of Chess? It just doesn't make sense to lump media as varied as video games, books and television into broad categories of pleasure. The content matters more than the medium.
