Please come back to RL

Recently in October I finally reached the golden age of 21. I now have the power to go somewhere and get ridiculously drunk legally, very exciting stuff. But, as each Friday and Saturday night passes I have a much smaller and smaller friend pool to come out with me because of a little game called World of Warcraft. It is becoming an all too familiar scene where I call my friend and see if he wants to go out and he tells me to come pick him up. I then get to his house and he tells me that we'll go out in a minute but he first needs to finish his "raid" or he needs to "down this boss." That minute turns into hours of me sitting on the couch watching Family Guy DVD's and him saying "hold up dude, it'll be just one more minute." World of Warcraft has now passed 9 million users and doesn't seem to show any sign of slowing down.

This game has in large been a contributor to internet addiction. The first signs of internet addiction were really seen with the game Everquest where there were people who were actually killing themselves if they died in the game or even getting married in the game and in real life or RL. The game consumes hours of time and people begin to change their lives around the game. My friends will set aside an entire night starting at 9PM to start a raid with their group until 2 or 3 in the morning and after that they may continue to play the game more. Some people begin to neglect other aspects of their lives and quit work or school. Their sleeping patterns change so that they go to bed at 5AM and don't wake up to 1 or 2 in the afternoon. This is a huge epidemic because as I stated before there are now over 9 million users.

There have been attempts in other countries to aid in internet addiction. In countries like China people are being put into rehab for internet addiction. Now not all internet addiction is caused just from video games. Some addictions can be erotica, shopping on-line, chat rooms or simply surfing the net for hours trying to find information. The internet is no doubt an amazing tool and great communicator but with anything there is too much of a good thing.

Now my plea for my friends and those of you who spend hours on-line is to please come back to RL. I'm not going to say that I'm perfect either because I have found myself spending hours on the computer playing games or downloading music, but lucky enough for me I never made it a habit.

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