We are developing difficulty determining what is real and what is not.
It is possible that the Apache chopper video of the slaughter of Reuters journalists was an elaborate hoax. How can we be certain that happened?
We now must think: Who would benefit from that? Would they have the resources? Iraqis wouldn’t be getting spanked by the US if they could make propaganda like that, so we assume that it’s real. But we cannot know.
What happens when we can watch movies in visual surround, with headsets that put us within the action, to watch a film from the inside? When video games and films cross – what happens then? What happens when direct feeds into our central nervous system make us incapable of determining truth from fiction?
Even if we can tell the difference between reality and fantasy, for some the distinction has become immaterial.
We are already losing some of our brightest nerds to The World of Warcraft. When I used to play I met to a girl from America (in the WoWd). She lived in an apartment with her boyfriend who was on an identical terminal next to her, also playing WoW. They sat there for 14 hours every day, only going out to buy cigarettes after dueling (in game) to decide who would go.
I don't care, I think these shoulderpads look great.
A team of psychiatrists have been sent into the WoWd, with to treat gamer addicts like her.
As these games become more playable, more realistic and more engaging, players devote more and more time to them. Their meat-life suffers as their in-game character grows, until soon their flesh is neglected.
The player’s plump and putrid flesh becomes more pathetic and powerless and it becomes natural that he attempt to switch reality. Lee Seung Seop expired after playing StarCraft for 50 hours straight. Another jumped out the window to be united with his in game hero.
The lines between reality and role-play blur. We cannot call it fiction, for them it is important, and something is happening – it’s just not often unleashed into the real world…
But then the beast gets out. Daniel Petric shot both his parents in the face because they confiscated Halo 3. He thought they’d come back to life. In Russia, two rival clans had a real-life brawl, one man was beaten to death.
The meat world gets bleaker. I become disheartened that for all my grand ideas, the rational truth is that I will never amount to much. The odds against us are too great, my measurable effect so small. I won’t ever battle demons and save the world I sweat and vomit and shit and stink in.
