I’ve always been alone, an anomalous nature, a quit wit, and a love for the fantastical, reality never quite made any true sense. Being as I was and time went on I gradually became more isolated from humanity and embraced a digital reality, rife with dazzling tales unseen worlds my solace and commitment lay in a world of lies more real than the true reality I left behind. In this place I discovered challenges to overcome that tested both skill and patience my ability to think through a problem and come up with a solution relying only on myself in stark contrast to the cold hard truth of life I endured just to ensure my mind had a place of solace to reside in between what was required to exist. Time goes on and the world changes both fantastical and real, before long I had friends and companions people who relied on me and my ability to help us progress, after a decade of isolation I was part of a community a living breathing world, one not divided by race, creed or nationality but one united by progress a common objective of what we could achieve by working together, this was the advent of the MMO.
During this time society still looked harshly at the gamer lifestyle, it was seen as something for children as a place of escape to not be a part of the real world that lay outward that a place where only freaks and losers who had no place resided. This in many ways was my golden era, technology ever changing advanced the medium in new exciting and unpredictable ways, the shared burden of the journey, times spent in utter tedium in a literal battle of attrition just to keep going and the penalty of death that resulted in real days of lost progress forged a bond from shared suffering and strife to its own digital brotherhood founded on the respect of mutual need and dependence, it also wrought a special sort of honesty, even if you were not liked you were respected because the steep penalties of this world would not have allowed you to progress if you didn’t hold the merit to get there.
Five years past the golden age the strangest thing occurred, comic books games, animation all of these mediums which were once reserved for the outcast, the geek, the nerd, became mainstays among the general public, now it was an era of cool “nerds” I truly laugh when I think about it as geek and nerd were both highly derogatory words thrown around were now terms of endearment. In this era games shifted an evolved with the culture everyone could play play and largely do well, subdivisions were made and claimed the hardcore vs the casual rifts developed between the two but were mostly civil, but more importantly than the vicarious reality which I loved a new trend began, the rise of social media. Through this medium things that had been previously relegated to the niche or obscure market received attention, there was a free flow of ideas, gamers even networked together to create a culture grounded in the real world with real identities not just proposed events behind forum channels.
Time rolls on and everything inevitably changes and evolves, still content living my falsehoods and fake lives but being aware of my idealized world of delusion, knowing the difference between it and reality the rest of the world blurs before me. Posts rack up nonstop from one board to another, bold statements from everyone’s mouth, post post post but no debate, like idea share idea follow idea, all a proposed image of what one should encompass but no real substance behind it, three word slogans and images of coffee shops, posting ones every meal and drink, competing for thumbs up and approval, the rest of the world was the same as me at last, living a faux existence in an online world, except they had no concept it.
Short Stories
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I’m a big believer in online games as a viable form of social interactions. It teaches teamwork, camaraderie, and communication. It feels like the stigma is starting to die out a bit tho