Mentalechoes

Since I’ve been confined to my house with some kind of mutant strain of flu and bronchitus - a christmas present from one of the mates who stayed over during the new year break - I’ve been filling in the endless hours of snot filled days by playing a game called City of Heroes.

This is another one of these games commonly known as a MMORPG (pronounced MORE-PUH) to the utter computer game nerds that play them. (Sadly I would have to put myself in this category on a part-time/partly full-time basis). For those of you who don’t know, this is a game where you play online with lots of other people at the same time, so it’s very social actually. I’ve written about MMORPG’s in another post so I won’t go into detail here. I’ll get right to the main meat of this entry.

Basically, I’m a superhero!

Which reminds me of a funny story I will tell you. I remember I was about 10 at the time The Bionic Man was a current TV series being played in the country town where my family was living. I used to be totally fascinated with his bionic powers, and being the sort of kid that had a really big imagination, I started to believe that I could do all that stuff he did in the show. So one day while my mums careful eye had wandered, I stacked up a whole bunch of furniture with my bionic arm to make a platform for myself for a bionic jump. As I stood at the top of the pile, I hummed really loudly the bionic powers noise, and made a leap for the other side of the living room. As I did, my crappily stacked launch pad just toppled underneath me and I half leapt, half collapsed about 10 centimeters forward from where I started, with all this shit underneath me. A bionic scream of pain brought my mum running, where she found me tangled up in leg rests, kitchen chairs, cushions and a deck chair, much to her total and utter bewilderment. As it turns out, I was unhurt apart from the manhandling mum used to extract me from the rubble. I was banned from watching the bionic man for two weeks which hurt much more than the bruises of my super leap attempt. I feel sorry for mum now because what can you do with a kid that just gets totally sucked in to whatever he gets fascinated with. After that I stopped believing I was bionic, but after a few episodes of The Man From Atlantis, I believed I could breathe under water. I won’t go into the details here, but suffice to say, I’ve tried as a 10 year old, and you can’t (and that turning blue in the face is a sign that things are going fucked). Doesn’t matter what you see on TV!

So now as a grown up (there are some of you who are laughing at my saying that I bet) but still having that little boys imagination, after several days immersion in a city of heroes, I am totally convinced I am a super hero. Sure on some forwardly conscious level I know that myself I can’t leap from the top of a highrise. But the alter ego I play can, and he is me, as he is a persona inside of me! It’s kind of a double personalities syndrome, but in a cool way! Now when I wander around the house I find myself thinking like my alter ego, pondering what I would do if 25 villians lept out of my fridge to drag me away to the evil lord villian’s stronghold for some insidious plot!

Now before youse all start thinking, this guy is just a fucking fruitcake, I would say that every single one of us fantasises. It the nature of an imagination to do so. Maybe mine and the other MMORPG gamers fantasies are more nerdy and comical and commercial, but I would say all people fantasise in an attempt to live out a reality that just isn’t open them in the real world. Be it sex fantasies with an object of our lust; fantasies about adventuring as a spy in exotic locations; fantasies about being someone rich/famous/powerful. Doesn’t really matter. Now more than at any time in our cultural history whole industries are dedicated to the fulfilment of our fantasies.

It’s really ironic when you think about it; that so much effort and expense is spent in the real world to help people escape the real world! Is it because real life sucks for so many that there is such a market for fantasy fulfilling products? Or is it because we are more sophisticated technologically that we can mass produce more sophisticated fantasy entertainment, hence we do because we can? Well the answer is probably a big mix of these and a lot more. Either way I find it interesting that we have reached a point in society where no matter what you’re into, somewhere someone is catering for it. Maybe at some point in the future, you won’t even need to live a real world life, you can just live your fantasies 24/7 in some virtual place.

That is both an exciting, and scarey thought all at the same time!

Padwanna!