One of the best WOW Websites on the net is The Guild http://www.watchtheguild.com/ I've watched the episodes since the first one came out, & even my wife who won't even try WOW laughs hysterically at the antics of the six members of the Guild. Yet the commentary that the actors are making about real life issues mixing with online issues do strike a chord. Esp in the case of Clara, the stay at home mom with three kids who are being neglected while she plays her gnome toon all day.
In my wanderings on Fenris, I've met several stay @ home moms who play wow ALL DAY. And when I say ALL DAY, (in bold & caps to make the point) I mean it. I've broken my wow game day into five phases (see below)
Phase I is the early morning phase. This is the part of the day when I check on Auctions, level my alt's professions, maybe finish 1-2 dailies on my main before I goto work. Phase I is limited to 30-45 minutes since I need to get up early for 3 reasons:
I. I am the dependable early guy at the office, this was thrust upon me years ago when my boss moved to south jersey & couldn't get in early anymore. Prior to that I was a night owl (and if my wife's reading this YES I was!), but having to be up @ 5am to be @ the office for 7am transformed me, (transmuted me if you will) into an early bird.
II. Since I have ADHD, my Ritalin needs time to spin up. This takes about 60 to 90 mins before the effects become apparent. If I don't get up early, interesting things & events have happened.
III. Our Pet chinchillas have been conditioned for their free time to be early am, since I'm up anyway due to items I & II. Since a good exercise time for my little puffs of attitude is 30-45 mins every other day, regardless of schedule I'm up letting them run around the living room.
Phase II. Is normal after work\early evening phase. This is when I do dailies, guild runs, raids, quests Etc.
Phase III. Is weekend phase; this early morning\late afternoon game time is rare now since I'm in full swing with teaching, but I value it above all since I can play unfettered with the need to get chores done, etc. etc. It's my quiet time to sip coffee & listen to the news
There's also the uber-rare Phase IV & V.
Phase IV: Sick Day, I attempt not to play wow but end up because I'm bored.
Phase V: Wife's away the husband will play. & Play & Play & Play. All major progression is done when my wife is away on business trips. Epic Flight Form (check), Tier Gear (check), level 70 (check) This is when I can play from the time I come home till the time I goto bed. It's a rare event & I enjoy it, but I am so glad that my wife returns else I become like the guy from Make Love Not Warcraft! Remember kids: Moderation in all things is key; Even the blues say so!
My point in this is that in all five phases, the stay @ home moms are online, either on a main, on a alt, doing the ah, crafting for a friend, running dailies, doing a dungeon run, doing a pug kara or za. They are always on. If your on vent, you can hear the kids in the background & once in a while they need to take care of one of them. What upsets me is that when you ask them about the kids, they seem to have an indifference to them, that I shouldn't have to change my life because they are around. That's not an exact quote but it's pretty close to what one woman said to me one time over party chat.
So how does this relate to online addiction? Well in my opinion, what these women are doing isn't the signs of an addict, but the signs of someone who's desperately lonely & looking for friendship and socialization.
In this day an age, the amount of women who stay at home with the kids is very small. This means that the systems that used to exist in the past to occupy a women's day while the husband & the rest of the family was gone & she was stuck at home with the babies & toddlers have dwindled down to a few possible choices. So what these women (and men I presume) have done is taken an MMORPG & hijacked it to fulfill their need for social contact.
The problem that I see is that WOW is a very poor substitute for real world social contact. First off the unwritten rules of ettiquite that we use to determine who are in the tribe & who isn't are not easy to apply. Secondly, the real world choice-bias of height, age, sex etc cannot be applied...yet. What this means for not just the stay at home mom's but anyone else who is @ home all the time is that they need to cast a wide net to meet their socialization needs. Which leads them to being online from the time to wake up to the time they goto bed.
The more I think about this the more I think of Harlow's monkey experiment's & the long term effects that it had on the monkeys that were raised by the wire\cloth substitutes. when they were introduced to the normal monkey's they were extremely anti-social & in the case of the females lacked the ability to raise their young. What I've noticed w the stay @ homes is something similar, since they are online all day, real world social skills are either missing, stunted or in the case of people that I've met who began using MMORPG's as a coping mechanism, atrophied. This still isn't addiction, but a survival mechanism, as my Sensei said to me when I went to California to train "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", these men & women have adapted to survive prosper & grow in an online world were the old laws of socialization are gone.
The question I have though is as more and more of the real world enters the virtual world what will happen to these men & women? My gut tells me that it will not be good, though I don't know if it'll be a case of just looking for a new coping mechanism or turn to something more dangerous.
Phase I is the early morning phase. This is the part of the day when I check on Auctions, level my alt's professions, maybe finish 1-2 dailies on my main before I goto work. Phase I is limited to 30-45 minutes since I need to get up early for 3 reasons:
I. I am the dependable early guy at the office, this was thrust upon me years ago when my boss moved to south jersey & couldn't get in early anymore. Prior to that I was a night owl (and if my wife's reading this YES I was!), but having to be up @ 5am to be @ the office for 7am transformed me, (transmuted me if you will) into an early bird.
II. Since I have ADHD, my Ritalin needs time to spin up. This takes about 60 to 90 mins before the effects become apparent. If I don't get up early, interesting things & events have happened.
III. Our Pet chinchillas have been conditioned for their free time to be early am, since I'm up anyway due to items I & II. Since a good exercise time for my little puffs of attitude is 30-45 mins every other day, regardless of schedule I'm up letting them run around the living room.
Phase II. Is normal after work\early evening phase. This is when I do dailies, guild runs, raids, quests Etc.
Phase III. Is weekend phase; this early morning\late afternoon game time is rare now since I'm in full swing with teaching, but I value it above all since I can play unfettered with the need to get chores done, etc. etc. It's my quiet time to sip coffee & listen to the news
There's also the uber-rare Phase IV & V.
Phase IV: Sick Day, I attempt not to play wow but end up because I'm bored.
Phase V: Wife's away the husband will play. & Play & Play & Play. All major progression is done when my wife is away on business trips. Epic Flight Form (check), Tier Gear (check), level 70 (check) This is when I can play from the time I come home till the time I goto bed. It's a rare event & I enjoy it, but I am so glad that my wife returns else I become like the guy from Make Love Not Warcraft! Remember kids: Moderation in all things is key; Even the blues say so!
My point in this is that in all five phases, the stay @ home moms are online, either on a main, on a alt, doing the ah, crafting for a friend, running dailies, doing a dungeon run, doing a pug kara or za. They are always on. If your on vent, you can hear the kids in the background & once in a while they need to take care of one of them. What upsets me is that when you ask them about the kids, they seem to have an indifference to them, that I shouldn't have to change my life because they are around. That's not an exact quote but it's pretty close to what one woman said to me one time over party chat.
So how does this relate to online addiction? Well in my opinion, what these women are doing isn't the signs of an addict, but the signs of someone who's desperately lonely & looking for friendship and socialization.
In this day an age, the amount of women who stay at home with the kids is very small. This means that the systems that used to exist in the past to occupy a women's day while the husband & the rest of the family was gone & she was stuck at home with the babies & toddlers have dwindled down to a few possible choices. So what these women (and men I presume) have done is taken an MMORPG & hijacked it to fulfill their need for social contact.
The problem that I see is that WOW is a very poor substitute for real world social contact. First off the unwritten rules of ettiquite that we use to determine who are in the tribe & who isn't are not easy to apply. Secondly, the real world choice-bias of height, age, sex etc cannot be applied...yet. What this means for not just the stay at home mom's but anyone else who is @ home all the time is that they need to cast a wide net to meet their socialization needs. Which leads them to being online from the time to wake up to the time they goto bed.
The more I think about this the more I think of Harlow's monkey experiment's & the long term effects that it had on the monkeys that were raised by the wire\cloth substitutes. when they were introduced to the normal monkey's they were extremely anti-social & in the case of the females lacked the ability to raise their young. What I've noticed w the stay @ homes is something similar, since they are online all day, real world social skills are either missing, stunted or in the case of people that I've met who began using MMORPG's as a coping mechanism, atrophied. This still isn't addiction, but a survival mechanism, as my Sensei said to me when I went to California to train "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", these men & women have adapted to survive prosper & grow in an online world were the old laws of socialization are gone.
The question I have though is as more and more of the real world enters the virtual world what will happen to these men & women? My gut tells me that it will not be good, though I don't know if it'll be a case of just looking for a new coping mechanism or turn to something more dangerous.
Posts
