Controlled. Altered. Deleted. Dead!
How valuable can an online avatar be? In the real world where most of us live a game is just a game and the content of that game has a limited lifespan. However, we have reached a point in the twenty-first century that it could be reasonably believed that at least half of the population in modernized areas of the world live vicariously through electronic devices of one kind or another. Worldwide role-playing games, social media, forums, blogs, etc. new forms of life consuming electronic garbage is invented faster than the existing stuff can become old. Yet still I ask, how much can a piece of useless electronic data be worth?
Two people meet in an online game. This relationship goes from simple typed text inside the game, to simple typed text outside the game. Then it progresses to social media where both parties have profile pictures that were taken more than ten years ago and just more typed text is added to the relationship on top of all the previously typed text. Somehow, unknown to the world at large these two people actually temporarily exit their lairs and manage to meet each other in person. This leads to one of these persons packing up their belongings and moving across country to live with someone that they only know through a few lines of text. Life goes on inside the game, the real world keeps spinning, and the data flows through the airwaves like every single person’s life depends on it.
SPOILER ALERT!!! This relationship that consisted only of pixelated letters has soured and spun out of control, both person’s life has been altered by the fallout and now one of the two has to be deleted.
Is it possible that a virtual reality avatar that you do not even own (due to the end user license agreement you agree to when you purchase a game) is worth your life? Unfortunately I am afraid to say that this is true. People have lost or even taken their own lives due to events that have happened inside a virtual reality. This is hard for some of us to believe, but not all of us. The games are just a small portion of the huge worldwide social media experiment that has caused more deaths than two decades of wars around the world. Teenagers and adults alike are caught up in the media frenzy and the pixelated predators swim in and out of the data flowing in and out of your own home and you will not even know about it until it is too late.
Death by data has become a common occurrence in the world we live in today. Two strangers who once held a very strong passion for an online video game end up dead in a tiny one room apartment in the most bloody of crime scenes imaginable and it does not even make the afternoon news. Oddly though their deaths do make it to the video games forum page; where rumors abound and the dead person’s virtual life continues on for a short while until some juicer new rumor is uploaded. The cycle rinses and repeats over and over and yet the naive think that the worst thing that can happen with a computer is a virus.
How valuable can an online avatar be? In the real world where most of us live a game is just a game and the content of that game has a limited lifespan. However, we have reached a point in the twenty-first century that it could be reasonably believed that at least half of the population in modernized areas of the world live vicariously through electronic devices of one kind or another. Worldwide role-playing games, social media, forums, blogs, etc. new forms of life consuming electronic garbage is invented faster than the existing stuff can become old. Yet still I ask, how much can a piece of useless electronic data be worth?
Two people meet in an online game. This relationship goes from simple typed text inside the game, to simple typed text outside the game. Then it progresses to social media where both parties have profile pictures that were taken more than ten years ago and just more typed text is added to the relationship on top of all the previously typed text. Somehow, unknown to the world at large these two people actually temporarily exit their lairs and manage to meet each other in person. This leads to one of these persons packing up their belongings and moving across country to live with someone that they only know through a few lines of text. Life goes on inside the game, the real world keeps spinning, and the data flows through the airwaves like every single person’s life depends on it.
SPOILER ALERT!!! This relationship that consisted only of pixelated letters has soured and spun out of control, both person’s life has been altered by the fallout and now one of the two has to be deleted.
Is it possible that a virtual reality avatar that you do not even own (due to the end user license agreement you agree to when you purchase a game) is worth your life? Unfortunately I am afraid to say that this is true. People have lost or even taken their own lives due to events that have happened inside a virtual reality. This is hard for some of us to believe, but not all of us. The games are just a small portion of the huge worldwide social media experiment that has caused more deaths than two decades of wars around the world. Teenagers and adults alike are caught up in the media frenzy and the pixelated predators swim in and out of the data flowing in and out of your own home and you will not even know about it until it is too late.
Death by data has become a common occurrence in the world we live in today. Two strangers who once held a very strong passion for an online video game end up dead in a tiny one room apartment in the most bloody of crime scenes imaginable and it does not even make the afternoon news. Oddly though their deaths do make it to the video games forum page; where rumors abound and the dead person’s virtual life continues on for a short while until some juicer new rumor is uploaded. The cycle rinses and repeats over and over and yet the naive think that the worst thing that can happen with a computer is a virus.