The Price of Online

I probably play more games than I should, but these are my escape and where I choose to share my time is where all my online friends are. I only play one at a time, and I don’t have that much time during the week to settle in and make progression at any of these. I have given up playing the casino – like game of progression in these videogames these days, it just takes too long and too much effort to be worth the nothing you get out of it. It is a virtual good that will disappear when the company folds and you’ll be left with only memories. I logon to socialize and that is about it.

I did try and honest run at endgame content. I feel that calling it “content” is sort of meaningless these days, everything is “content” and cut up into tiny bits and pieces and sold you piecemeal. News is content, games are content, information is content, and anything we consume like gruel is content. The word has become as meaningless as connectivity and almost every other Internet buzzword thing it’s overused and eventually becomes a synonym for anything remotely connected to the concept.

In the last 24 hours I have had a fellow player I know pass away, and another I know well fall seriously ill. These all seem like blood pressure and heart conditions, and it highlights the danger of gaming and gaming culture. I sit here in a strange place and wonder if online gaming is as dangerous as some sports used to be, like the deaths in auto racing, where the traumatic life – changing injuries in football. Those sports have gotten a lot better today, while our brave new world of online gaming and E – sports seem strangely more dangerous than real sports, if you can call computer gaming a sport.

I pay for my time in my chair. My doctor told me to work out every other day a minimum of 30 minutes and I have been doing that for the last year. I watch my salt and my cholesterol. I am losing weight. I am very happy with my new body and love how I look, although I need to buy new clothes every couple months, so I don’t buy many when I do.

I can’t sit in a chair forever, and if I do, I probably will not be long for this earth. It is just a fact of life, and a recognition that the human body is a machine that is not meant to sit still. We have legs and arms, we have powerful muscles, and our body craves strenuous physical activity. We are designed and have evolved to be moving and dynamic creatures of this planet. We are meant to be outside and not tied to a screen like some sort of electronic slave wasting their life away for the want of changing pixels.

And I sit here and see the same diseases that struck my friend down at such an early age strike other friends down from lives of beautiful prosperity and generous companionship. I see us almost as humanity wasting away in chairs. It is almost as if humanity itself were confined to some sort of twisted retirement home where all the staff did was sit patience in chairs all day, fed them, and put them to bed at night. It is a gross feeling of mistreatment I cannot shake, what we do to ourselves as human beings in pursuit of flat screens with flashing colors, addictive subroutines, and experiences engineered to turn us into digital addicts.

Yes, I know I am here, I choose to spend my time here, and this sort of activity puts me at risk as well. I know there are some people who cannot choose the misfortunes which befall upon them, and some that do not have a choice in being forced to sit all day. I know how easy it is to become locked in this world, as my job forces me to sit all day and I must get up at times just walk around just to move. And then some nights I am sitting for more hours in a day, some days up to 16 hours in a chair. I know it is not healthy, and I tried mitigated through my workouts and exercise routines.

I am thankful that I see this, and I can lessen the impact of this behavior on my body by trying to do at least some good for it. But as I see friends pass away and fall ill I wonder. I wonder.

It is a vision of how sad and lonely our civilization has become.