Virtually Living

I’m sure many of you saw and have heard about the story of the woman who murdered her ‘husband’s avatar on Maple Story because earlier he had divorced her. Apparently being dumped by her online spouse was too much rejection for this bride-zilla to handle and she sought revenge by having him banned, effectively snuffing him out.

What is going on here people? How did this even make the news? How is it that our dysfunctional relationship baggage is now running amok in the land of bits and bytes?

The simple and poignant answer is because we’re human beings and we bring our relationship patterns, good or bad, everywhere we go. What showed up online was merely a digital extension of the crazy antics that these two lovebirds engage in within their real lives. The principle “how we do one thing, is how we do everything,” is what is at play here.

As human beings we’re creatures of habit and we tend to want to control our lives to reduce the level of chaos we experience. Over the course of our lives we develop ways of doing things, behaviours that serve to reduce the amount of pain we experience. Some of us run away, some of us tell secrets, some of us argue, others lie and cheat, and most of us seek to distract ourselves from a reality which is too difficult or challenging and, where we don’t feel great about who we are.

Enter the world of avatars. A world where I can create a version of me imbued with all of the ‘powers’ and abilities that I believe will make me a better me. My avatar can say and do things I wouldn’t be comfortable doing or saying in-person; my avatar can live a life that I believe for me is un-believable.

What screws with this idyllic picture however, is our unconscious; that nasty hitchhiker in our minds who actually does the driving of our life. Our unconscious is conditioned to respond in certain ways to help us avoid pain – whether that pain be real or imagined; reality or virtual. And this is why a host of problems or dysfunctions are now showing up in the virtual world.

I think this is only the beginning. In the next few years we’re going to see through our avatars all of the dysfunction that we bring to our real world relationships. Personally, I believe this is a good thing for humanity, as it will lead to us waking up our whole brains to the ways we behave. Once the whole brain is awake and attentive to what I am doing it suddenly realizes the insanity of myself and seeks to change it.

Then what is virtual becomes reality. What was once an escape now becomes the best therapy tool we’ve ever created. So here’s to more online divorce, murder, infidelity, and violent crime. Let yourselves go wild people. Play out all of your fantasies; desires and hurts through your avatars so they are no longer hidden in your mind and let the insane chaos of your unconscious reveal itself. Healing is just a click away.