Mentalechoes

I’ve been reading more and more articles in places where I get my news about the scourge of internet addiction! Yes apparently some very prominent - read: very fucking loud no nothing idiot - people in the addiction treatment circles are becoming worried that the internet is destroying lives just as surely as crack, heroin and Jerry Springer reruns. I normally laugh these types of things off, but wired news just ran an article about how one doctor is saying that internet addicts are most likely brain damaged with something akin to asperger’s syndrome!

Basically internet addiction, according to the experts , is something like this:

• Preoccupation with the Internet. (Thoughts about previous on-line activity or anticipation of the next on-line session.)
• Use of the Internet in increasing amounts of time in order to achieve satisfaction.
• Repeated, unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop Internet use.
• Feelings of restlessness, moodiness, depression or irritability when attempting to cut down use of the Internet.
• On-line longer than originally intended.
• Jeopardized or risked loss of significant relationships, job, educational or career opportunities because of Internet use.
• Lies to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet.
• Use of the Internet as a way to escape from problems or to relieve a dysphoric mood. (e.g., feelings of hopelessness, guilt, anxiety, depression.)

Which essentially is me fucked! Hell… I don’t even DO withdrawls anymore because I always have two of the four computers I own permanently online! It’s been this way for about 5 years, so it’s totally normal for me… and all my friends, and the majority of people living in Amsterdam! High speed, low cost bandwidth is as much a part of my life style as is cheap and easily available drugs.

Which makes me wonder who the fuck are these people anyway that decide that this generation of high end internet users are mentally ill? I walk past residential flats of an evening after grocery shopping and I see the same people watching the same mind numbingly boring television shows week in, week out. Now reality TV is socially acceptable and therefore normal. However I play two MMORPGs very regularly, and watch almost no TV (let alone absolute crap reality television), and yet I’m the one about get listed as having a mental disorder (in some Asian countries)!

Which all just makes me wonder, who the fuck decides who’s normal and who’s not anyway! Seriously this could all go like a scene out of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. At some point someone is going to strap me into a chair and give me electric shock therapy to cure me of my Age of Conan enjoyment problem!

Obviously the only reasonable response is for geeks to arm ourselves with military grade weaponry, and defend our homesteads and bandwidth with lethal force! Actually fuck guns, I reckon I could pretty much dual wield one hand axes now after playing my Barbarian character on AoC! The only way someone is going to take my servers away from me is from my cold dead hands! Who’s with me? WHO’S WITH ME?

*sigh*… You know I only got one phone call over the weekend to see if I was up to anything. Maybe I do spend too much time in front of the computer…maybe I should unplug for a while and get outside?

AoC anyone?

Andy.