Virtual Stupidity
I don’t know what you’d call it, Rednecks Meet Technology, or Eurotrash On-Line, but the Internet has turned lots of people into total idiots. There are worldwide Internet games, Second Life and Maple Story, where folks can create a virtual persona who lives and interacts in a virtual world. At any given time, as many as 38,000 people will simultaneously be on-line actively inhabiting one of these make believe worlds. All that sounds pretty innocent, weird but innocent, and for the most part it is. However, as would be expected, from just about anything human beings become involved with, things can get out of hand.
The first thing a person has to do to be a part of one of these virtual worlds is to create an avatar, their virtual character. Of course, that character certainly doesn’t have to look or act anything like its real world creator. Once the avatar is created it can now interact in its virtual world; socializing, making friends, working, making money, get married, have sex and, in some games, fight monsters. As would be expected, sometimes things go awry in the virtual world but you wouldn’t think it could impact the real world. However, it does, and that’s when some real world people go totally nuts.Sometimes people are so protective of their avatar, their virtual character, that issues in the virtual world flow over into their real world. In Japan, a women’s avatar met and married someone else’s avatar. Things were going along well in the virtual world until one morning this lady woke, signed into her virtual world and found out she was divorced. Not her but her avatar. The creator of her virtual husband had dissolved the marriage. No warning, just up and virtually divorced her avatar. She became so enraged she hacked into the computer of her virtual ex’s creator and terminated his virtual character. She’s now in jail for illegally accessing a computer, manipulating data and misusing password and identification information. She faces a possibly $5000 fine and up to five years in prison. That’s real world punishment, not a virtual penalty.
Even more amazing is the case in Amy Taylor in Cornwall, England. Not surprisingly Amy is married to someone she met through an on-line chat room. She and her real world husband, David Pollard, each created their own avatar for the interactive game Second Life. An interesting side note, Amy’s virtual character, Laura Sky, is described as six foot, 112 lbs and is a club DJ. Real Amy is 5’ 4”, 224 lbs and is unemployed. To coincide with their real marriage, Amy’s Second Life character, Laura Sky, and her husband’s character, Dave Barmy, were married at the same time. That’s when virtual things started to go wrong.
Shortly after both marriages, real and virtual, Amy discovered her husband’s avatar having sex with a computer-generated prostitute. Amy was so distraught she hired a virtual private investigator to keep an eye on Dave Barmy, her husband’s avatar. Recently, Barmy was discovered cuddling with an avatar named Modesty McDonnell. Well, that broke the virtual straw on the virtual camels back. Laura Sky and Dave Barmy were through and now Amy has filed for real world divorce claiming “unreasonable behavior” as her grounds. David, the real husband, claims everything was innocent; no cyber-sex occurred and his avatar’s wandering ways are justified by Amy’s addiction to World of Warcraft, a fantasy role-playing Internet game.
To add to this bizarreness, Amy has a new boyfriend, a guy she met playing World of Warcraft. Real world soon to be ex-husband David is engaged to a woman in Arkansas, Linda Brinkley, the creator of Modesty McDonnell, who started this whole mess.
Let’s get a couple things straight. If you give any regular guy a virtual character in a make believe world he’s going to hit on all the hot chicks. Then he’s going to run around in the make believe world doing crazy stuff just because it’s funny. That’s reality. Second, don’t believe for a second that any of these avatars look or act anything like their creators. Anyone that plays these games seriously is a no social skills geek, nerd, lonely want-a-be or a fourteen year old pre-pubescent boy that’s hormone gorged and looking to get sexually aroused with some on-line voyeurism.
People, it's make believe! If you really do know someone else playing this goofy stuff, try working on your real world relationship rather than some computer generated connection.
People, it's make believe! If you really do know someone else playing this goofy stuff, try working on your real world relationship rather than some computer generated connection.
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Just WTFO?????
# Posted By Redneck
| 11/25/08 3:01 PM
