Giving meaning to meaningless virtual lives since 2003

Heartless has designed a slogan for this blog: "Tobold: Giving meaning to meaningless virtual lives since 2003". Not that I asked him to or needed one. But hey, it's a good opportunity to talk about the meaning of (virtual) life.

Lots of people are looking for a meaning in their virtual lives, and fail to find one. This is why you can find so many bitter veteran MMORPG players around. Other genres of videogames have fan sites, MMOGs mainly attract rant sites. The bitterness stems from the mistaken belief that a virtual life could be better than a real one, because it overcomes limitations of body, time, and space. This overlooks the fact that virtual worlds have even more limitations, and less possibilities, than the real world. Sure, a guy in a wheelchair can play WoW and run as fast as the other people there. But you can't climb a tree, or even a fence, in World of Warcraft, because that hasn't been programmed in.

Virtual worlds are no social utopias either. The players behind the characters are still as human as they are in the real world, and they rarely behave any better than in the real world. In fact they often behave worse, because they feel safer to do bad things shielded by internet anonymity and the impossibility to punch them in the face for what they said. Sartre's "Hell is other people" is very much true for virtual worlds.

The trick to find meaning in those meaningless virtual lives is to not be blinded by the mirages of great possibilities that don't really exist, but to take MMOGs as what they are: games. A form of entertainment. Leveling up to 70 and finding The Sword of a Thousand Truths in World of Warcraft has no deeper meaning whatsoever. But it *will* keep you entertained for hundreds, if not thousands of hours. Of course you could have used that time to do something much more meaningful. But face it, chances are that instead you would have watched TV or consumed some other form of modern entertainment. Which isn't likely to give any meaning to your life either.

What you should do is to accept that the meaning of life is still where it used to be: in caring for your family and doing a job that both puts bread on the table and gives you a certain fulfillment. Once you've done that, and there is still disposable time left over, you can relax. And what form of entertainment you chose in that free time isn't really important. For people who enjoy games and interactivity, a MMORPG is often a good choice. But if you prefer TV, books, movies, sports, long walks, or collecting stamps, all that is totally okay as well. Do whatever you enjoy in your free time, and don't look for a deeper meaning in it.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:02 AM Permanent Link