Alternatives to Living

"This, is living!", proclaims an undoubtedly cool voice on the radio. This bold statement must surely draw the attention of everyone who wants to know, just what living is. The irony here is that this exciting sentence is promoting the launch of the Playstation 3 games console.
           
Now why do we use get comfy in a chair and use game consoles, relax on the sofa and watch films, or even lie in bed and digest books? They all effectively do the same thing. Fiction offers humans a temporary substitute for life, a distraction from society, an alternative to living.

A young boy reading through "Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone" may imagine himself with magical abilities and proceed to recline in the cupboard under the stairs, awaiting an invititation to Hogwarts delivered via owl. A teenager bravely making his way through icy caves playing "Tomb Raider" may fancy himself, quite unsurprisingly, raiding tombs and shooting tigers who get in his way.

Day-dreams and fantasies are beneficial for the mind. Imagine, if you will, Daniel, the assistant bank manager with three children. He has a consistantly massive workload and he is paid a minimal amount to complete it. When he returns home at 5pm he must cook dinner and entertain his children whilst his wife goes off to stack shelves at the local supermarket. Now one Saturday,  he finds the time to sit down and enjoy "Casiono Royale". He pictures himself with Daniel Craig's physique and fantasises about getting off with Eva Green. Briefly, just briefly, he is relieved off his stress by living a different life.

A problem has arisen, as they often do. Habbo Hotel offers internet users the oppurtunity to purchase virtual furniture with real money. Over 80 Million people have registered with the website. World of Warcraft offers a far more exciting prospect of duelling with other players and completing quests. Over 8 million are part of the experience. Second Life is perhaps the scariest example. It literally is, a second life, manageable from your home computer.

Some unfortunate people are spending more time immersed in these pretend worlds then they do in reality, which is a serious issue. In Korea, June 2005, reports came of a child who died of neglect due to it's parents being addicted to World of Warcraft. Due to Second Life offering oppurtunity for ingame private transactions there have been several cases of child pornography deals. Events like these blur the margins between reality and fantasy. Huge numbers of children, teenagers and adults are addicted to these games, making their social lives and careers suffer. It is depressing, and I can only imagine people devoting so much of their time to their "second lives" because their real lives are not good enough.

Escapes from society are fantastic, even necessary to a healthy lifestyle. However we must limit our visits to alternate lives, and faceup to the truths and realities of the World.