MMO Addiction
I was working late and played Brad Paisley’s "I’m gonna miss her." It made me laugh and I told Jaimie about it. There are people who act as if MMO players spending too much time on an activity deemed to be trivial is something new and horrifying. At best it’s a new coat of varnish on something old.
It is pretty much a given that people will spend time on activities that others sneer at as a waste of time. The problem comes when someone spends time and money on something to the extent of losing a greater good. In the song, Brad Paisley chooses fishing over his girl. For MMOs people choose to pursue virtual goods when they could easily be obtaining tangible goods with the same effort. Why choose a lesser good over a greater one?
I see two possible answers. First, the one who chooses wrongly is defective in some way (addict, sinner, short-term thinker). Second, the supposed greater good isn’t actually as good as it’s advertised to be.
If we take the first case, society’s goal should be to cure the defective person so they can choose rightly. This cure can run the gamut from attempting to gently show them the error of their ways to torture. Where do we draw the line and live with people making bad choices? In some ways, this view absolves the one who chooses wrongly. It’s not their fault - they’re victims of original sin, bad brain chemistry, or a poor upbringing.
In the second case it’s simply that different people value things differently. Is that purple sword worth the $50 you could have earned by putting in a little more overtime? Is that big walleye worth the weekend you could have spend with your lover? If you subscribe to an absolute value viewpoint (e.g. spending time with your sweetheart is ALWAYS better than catching that big fish), the judger can absolve themselves. "I was perfect for her, but she was addicted to shopping" rather than admitting that maybe you weren’t perfect for her (and maybe she spent so much time shopping to avoid you).
Given the way that I swing philosophically, I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between. There are some things that are simply more valuable than others. There are a lot of things whose value is relative, depending on the situation and the person doing the choosing. How much leeway we are to be allowed in our choices is a determination made by society, which in turn has to balance stability and growth. Now we need some genius to come up with a unified theory of humanity let us decide how many addicts (and of what kinds) should be tolerated.
"Warning: Effective immediately, everything is more complex than was previously thought. "