What happened to America?

First off I found this video very disturbing on many levels. The film was an inside view to the life of a video game and cyber world addict. Whenever someone logs 12-18 hrs at a time and also willing to spend vacation time just to play a game is wrong. The weirdest thing to me was the personal relationships these people create while playing these games. The film shared a stat that 1 in 3 female gamers will develop a relationship with a fellow gamer. For every female there is 10 single males. To me its strange to start a relationship off when the only thing you know about each other is the made up character. Wanting to fly that person out to you and let them stay with you is wrong.  They make movies and TV shows off of what happens when you meet people offline. Also anyone can lie and be whoever they want when a computer screen is what you really see. Yeah you can say its no different than meeting on an E-harmony or other dating site but these sites show the real person face, interest and push the personal aspect while these games just promote your fantasy cartoon.  When you spend most of your first date hundred of miles away bonding over slaying a dragon I feel could be done and more satisfying going to a movie face to face.  The book and the film hit upon a lot of the same  topics. When the father spoke at the end of a film and said hes a broke father of two but when he logs onto that game it doesn't matter hes not broke and no one  knows that.I feel a quote from the book sums up the future of this, "Eventually..there lies a world where most human beings are simply incapable of experiencing what life ought to evoke" pg46. People who spend all their time in these dream fantasy worlds lose their connection to the outside world. They all seem to not have many friends outside their game worlds, and most of their personal relationship fail because of these games make them use to showing or sharing their emotions through their fingers and not their mouths. Don't get me wrong i play my video games just like many other but I would never let it consume my life.

Another way the books and film linked together is through consuming. For the first 24 hrs of sales,WOW made $96 million and the for the top movie grossed only $60million. Annual WOW makes $1.2 billion. In the last two years video game sales  have gone out the roof. Call of Duty MW2 made a record $310 million in 24hr and $550 million in 5 days.  A year later Call of Duty Black-ops came out, almost the same game, made $360 million in the first 24hr of US and UK sales. Its just creepy how these companies can get us to buy the same product every year. A lot has to do with wanting the new crazies but these developers have discovered a way to keep our mind habituated for hours. From a psych view i wonder what future research shows us with people who suffer from living in a cyber world and will there be some of the same stresses that soldiers feel when they leave one hostile situation and head back to the real normal lives?

One of the lasting thoughts about the film other than the creepy cyber/ live wedding was when the addict talked how a gamer doesn't have to more or interact with anyone to get their fix and that at least a crack head has to socialize  to get their drugs.
Tosh.0 wow kid