Is this forum just another virtual reality game?

[LOL!]

Is This Man Cheating on His Wife? - WSJ.com
discusses online virtual reality multiplayer worlds. Complete with long-haired types, motorcycle riders, well-wishers after hernia surgery, etc.

This forum is just another one of these multiplayer virtual reality games, right?

[Martha]

The Early Retirement Forum, where the women are strong, the men good looking, and the children above average.

From the article:
Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers

[bssc]

It is interesting that people don't have any problems running around and killing each other but are freaked out by public displays of affection online (both married and unmarried).

The article also reminded me of Oscar Wilde's quote that the penalty for Bigamy is two mother in laws.

[LOL!]

Originally Posted by bssc

The article also reminded me of Oscar Wilde's quote that the penalty for Bigamy is two mother in laws.

Unless you marry sisters (perhaps twins)!

[BigMoneyJim]

I've been playing Second Life--the game in the article--for a week or two. I heard about it a while ago but wasn't interested. I finally tried it because I'm curious about the increasing corporate interest in establishing a virtual presence in Second Life. (My conclusion is that they are just trying to establish brand recognition to a particular demographic.) The fact that it's free to play was also a factor. (You have to pay $10 per month for an account that can "own" property, and you can pay money to buy in-game money, but you can do plenty without paying a dime...not counting your expensive computer and high-speed internet connection, of course.)

It did occur to me more than once that the social aspect of online games are simply another analog of this forum.

Even though I started back in the early '80s with dial-up BBS'es and have met people via those BBS'es and later online dating, I don't take the virtual world seriously. It is sometimes a surrogate social life, but it is not real or lasting to me. I don't like online dating because I feel like you have to meet the person twice...once virtually and once in person, and I believe that's really two different people as far as I'm concerned, and liking one doesn't mean liking the other.

However I don't imagine everyone feels the same way. I expect each person is different in how they relate to and what the take away from the online world, be it this forum, Second Life or another venue.

My guess is that people who spend too much time in Second Life or Everquest or online chat rooms would have found another way to take themselves out of the real world.

By the way, I initially created my avatar (in-game appearance representing me) much in the same way the man in the story did. I made him look like me only younger, thinner and more muscular. Later I realized there's no reason in a virtual world to limit myself to human appearance so I started hanging out with the virtual furries and made my avatar into a anthropomorphic racoon, then later other animals. I'll attach a screenshot of my fox avatar dancing and someone else's unicorn avatar watching me dance for your amusement.

[Rich_in_Tampa]

[curmudgeon]
One of the topics that most makes me feel like an old fart (and there are several) is this whole game thing. Not the games themselves, but the extent to which kids all the way up through 30-somethings get engaged in them.

I try to reassure myself that it's like a hobby - you know, like golf, or bridge, or whatever. But from what I can tell, something's different for lots of these kids. It's like they have trouble differentiating real life from game life.

We used to admit people like that, back when I was an intern.
[/curmudgeon]

I think games are good, clean fun. Enjoy!

BTW, I agree with BMJ - it's escapism and can be a great diversion (forums or games) as long as you remember which one is real and which one is a game.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You had better up that age level to 46.

[clifp]

I finally kicked the multiplayer on-line game habit a few years ago. What finally did it for me was realizing I was spending more time cooking in the game than I was in real-life, and I actually enjoy cooking in real life.

More than 1/2 my friends in the mainland are seriously hooked, and couldn't help noticing in our last get together that most of them are seriously obese and in bad health.

So now I just hang out reading and posting to discussion forums

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hows that working out for you?

I have a buddy hooked on evercrack that nobody's heard from for a couple of years. I got an email out of him after my 15th voicemail. I guess I'll have to pack gabe up in the car sometime this week and go kick his door in.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

Originally Posted by Martha

their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers

what is illusion; what is real? after i lost the love of my life, personal computers began kicking in. i never made a long lasting friend from bulletin boards but when aol began, i cranked up a m4m spirituality room where i wound up meeting a guy who would become my best friend.

i lived in florida; he in california. though i made my living in media & half my family was from the "biz", i was mostly media unsavvy. i frankly still don't know the difference between mel brooks, brooke shields and shields and yarnell. yet i would become best friends with a guy who was not only a television (supposedly str8 ) heart throb, but who was at one time, i later learned, proclaimed by "insider" magazines to be the highest paid actor on daytime t.v.

how else would i ever have gotten to meet this guy? a gay bar? the party of a mutual friend?

did you ever enter a chat room and how often do you see people saying the most horrible things? sometimes it is as if they are just typing into a machine rather than speaking to another sentient being.

as i walk through life, i consider even the consciousness of trees and stones. as much as i see all of life as a series of constructs and illusion, none of this is virtual; all of this, to me, is--as far as it gets for all practical and immediate purposes--real.

so to my mind, we should behave accordingly.

[Moemg]

Everwhere on the internet there are people pretending to be something else .Married guys pretending to be single .Women pretending to be younger and thinner and even on this forum there are probably people pretending to be richer or cheaper .So basically to some people the internet is one big game anyway so you might as well dress up for it .