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A World of Warcraft World
An anonymous reader writes "On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG. This essay looks at the way more and more people are failing to draw a distinction between their real and online lives and takes it to its logical, yet utterly insane, conclusion." Amusing, and with more than a few ounces of truth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
ever consider the benefits of mmorpgs and computer games? ever compared the real violence rate and drug rates between nerds and jocks? jocks are the generally the ones beating peers, raping women and snorting coke. sh~t happens with anything. what doesn't influence people?
In addition to this, who is to say someone cannot get emotionally attached to something that isn't physical?
do.what.promptcmds
Absolutely right. If the time and effort required to obtain something is real, and the satisfaction derived from it is real, then why does it matter if the object itself is virtual?
The fact that people care so much about a silly game is, however, pathetic in my opinion.
Isn't the biggest reason of releasing something into the public to get acclaim or notice from it? It doesn't matter if this person was trying to get onto /. or not. What matters is if the article itself holds water, which imo it does.
do.what.promptcmds
I don't understand why people ridicule online life and view it as some trivial sideshow to "real" life. The history of human existence shows that people have a penchant for taking many things seriously. Many of these activities reside far outside the realm of pragmatic, utilitarian life. Whether it's being a sports fan, a serious gardener, a breeder of dogs, an avid golfer, a sailboat owner, or any of a thousand other activities, people can become quite immersed. If online gaming "doesn't count," then so many other activities that people invest time in do not count either.
Without these "hobbies," people would be little more than animals -- eating, sleeping, reproducing in the endless cycle of life that we share with even the lowliest bacteria. What distinguishes humans from animals (perhaps only quantitatively) is the extent that we can move beyond the mundane activities of "real" life and explore such a wide range of alternatives.
For the record, I, personally am not into online gaming or sports -- this post is not a personal rant -- but I can see how these activities can become a major part of a person's identity and daily life. As such, it is important to understand and respect (in a love-of-freedom sense, not a politically correct sense) the fact that different people value different things. Its not that some people go overboard on online life vs. real life, its that some people become immersed in a life that is different from the utilitarian vision of a standard life.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It really doesn't matter if it's WoW or something else--I dropped out from college because I was playing on this newfangled thing called the Internet, to the detriment of my studies. This was back in '95, and I got lucky that what I got involved with ended up being my job years later. Somehow though, unless you want to become a chinese gold farmer, I don't think this type of experience will carry over, but it points out that such passions have always occured, be it getting involved with drugs, sex, hobbies, etc. I don't really think this will change that much except the lack of both damage as a whole people do to themselves playing the games, and the lack of anything possibly long-lasting.
You dont need to be an obsessive gamer. Anything you put time and effort into has value. Someone stealing it has commited a true crime.
Yet in playing the game you must understand that everything within the game mechanics is fair play. Exploits are another story. And its even worse when you get exploited and the parent company does not admit the exploit exists and wont make you right. Or even worse when they deny it exists, then you see a fix in for it a month later, but no reimbursement.
I play eve-online.com and its a blast. But you can't forget its a game. But those unreimbursed exploits!
The comment that was made in the blurb/article about not being able to differentiate between a game and real life is ridiculous. It's inflammatory and biased and baseless. Nobody is making a mental disconnect between the two "places". It's just people with anger issues. Some people get seriously pissed off when someone cuts them off in traffic. They tail them until they can beat the crap out of them. Other people might let their anger get out of hand over a discussion on abortion or religion or the invasion of Iraq or a sports team or getting fouled in a basketball game. Otherwise might do so because they felt screwed over in a game that they'd invested a lot of time in.
This is nothing more than more of the same crap that surrounded Dungeons & Dragons in the late 70s and the 80s.
r iticism_and_controversies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons#C
These people behave irrationally not because of the game, but because they are irrational, sick, or sociopathic people.
If these same individuals were in a knitting club, they'd be stabbing each other's eyes out with knitting needles and paying stupid amounts of money for fancy-assed wool to turn into butt-ugly sweaters and scarves. But we don't hear people telling us that knitting is evil -- probably because other people outside the knitting community understand what it's all about.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
All I would say is that this level of feeling is not some unique nerd-loser quality. See "World Series", "Super Bowl", "Championship Belt", "Formula One", etc.
Working from home helps cut down on the money spent on gas now that the prices have become prohibitive.
Renting dvd's also tends to end up being cheaper. Cost of getting to the theater, $10+/ticket in a lot of places, and soda, popcorn, etc. by the time it's all said and done, if more than one person is going to see the movie, it's actually cheaper just to buy the bloody thing in the store when it comes out on dvd.
Avoiding rude people is just kind of an added bonus.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I do not believe that you can possibly identify a single country, except for perhaps Monaco and Vatican City, where someone has not been murdered for a sum of money less than 3000 USD. So I am not sure why gripe you have against the US that you feel the need to try and turn everything into a failing of the US "social experiment."
It's the end of evolution, and I welcome it. Some of what this guy is saying is interesting, at the very least, to think about. But, I don't think that last sentence is very true or convincing. Regardless of billions of people "escaping" to the metaverse as he talks about, reality will always catch up. Eventually, some real crisis WILL happen and threaten people's lives but only those who react, those who haven't delved completely into the whole MMORPG, will be the ones who survive. No matter how much a person immerses himself or herself, there are fundamentals of reality that are inescapable and will catch up the more a person runs. But, there is some truth in that we all want to be kings without the responsibility. Just as children are often happy because they enjoy life without many of its responsibilities. I think that, however, we all have to just grow up one day and be proud of the work we do. Otherwise, one day will come when mass death occurs from people's bone structures collapsing from their own weight, heart failure http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4137782.stm , or some random bacteria. In the end, natural selection chooses the strongest to survive. And the strongest do not have addictions.
I think the point the poster is making is that here in the US, violent crime is so common as to be generally un-news worthy, and that the US have a very high violent crime rate. Of course I am not going to quote you numbers, but I'm suggesting that this idea is not arguable.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
In That Hideous Strength , Merlin asks Ransom, "Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?"
In part, Ransom replies, "... the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place."
Lewis had modernism pegged way back in the '40s.
And the trolling and flamebait never ends.
GGP makes a statement. Thin skinned GP take offense at what he obviously believe to be an attack on the U.S. and P spouts inane trolling crap.
And here I am answering for some reason to that crap.
I'm not the GGP but I'll take the liberty to re-phrase what he said:
"A lot of people have been murdered for less than $3000 in almost every country in the world."
There. I believe it's still faithful to the spirit of GGP's post which was something like:
"The man wasn't killed just for an imaginary object in an imaginary world. That object had a value of about $3000 and that is why he died."
Disclaimer: I'm not american nor I live in the U.S. I don't hate America, tho I probably hate a few americans. I also hate people in several countries in all continents. I'm probably a very spiteful person. A country is an abstraction. I can't hate a country any more that I can hate the color blue. But that's just me.
No sig
"Real" money is just a fantasy substance that people barter for. Money is not a fancy piece of paper, it's a delusion, that we all politely buy into to make trading easier.
Like some third-world currency that suffers boutes of inflation and counterfeiting, MMRPG money is ephemeral and unstable, but from a mathematical standpoint, economics does not care if there the resources are real or imagined.
Markets have judged the supply and demand and the perception of inflation/permanence have assigned it a conversion rate. And because there are a great many unknowns in how a game will develop or be managed, the markets may from time to time exhibit irrational exhuberance, have pyramids and bubbles, just like the "real" world.
It's not entirely impossible that some day a court might rule that income tax will have to be charged on game money for the simple reason that there is a market for it - just as if it was money earned in another country.
People are playing World of Warcraft, EverQuest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. as a hobby or form of entertainment when they are away from work or school. And like every other hobby or form of entertainment, there will be some who do it way too much or way too seriously for their own well-being.
I work a regular, decent job like any other normal person. When I come home, my wife and I play World of Warcraft together. This is opposed to sitting ourselves down in front of the TV for 6 hours like many people do.
We have formed a guild with other working adults who treat WoW as a game, and not a replacement for life. We have a great deal of fun when we play without needing to be pressured by others to be involved in raiding or other activites every waking hour.
Yes, there are some people we know who are in the game at least 18 hours a day and treat raiding Molten Core as if it were more important than life itself. Yes, it is pretty sad. But if it weren't WoW, they'd most likely be squandering all their time obsessing over some other activity.
This article is lame for so many reasons, but I'll just pick at the first sentence of the post:
"On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold."
No they aren't.
They're connecting to a virtual auction house (ebay) to exchange virtual money (credit card/paypal/whatever) for virtual goods (MMO junk).
I'm half inclined to go an about the value of various pieces of paper (greenbacks) vs. blank pieces of paper and the implication of the phrase "real money" - which is a lot like saying "real promises of value", or even "virtual wealth". But I'm not going to, because I've already put more thought into this comment than I think the author of the article or the post did.
You've got some serious relationship issues.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I don't know about murder, but people do suicide over it (a recent event in the stock exchange where I work confirmed this to me).
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of commonality between an MMORPG and the stock exchange. Hmm... you listening, Sony? I can imagine my level 63 Vah Shir warrior wandering into the main bank at PoK, right-clicking the banker and investing in the international equities market. All on the credit card. Corporate takeovers could be PvP raids. Thwack!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
between me and the internet me.
And we take offense to these remarks.
*DrugCheese rants*
Back when I actually gamed online, I recall that there was a character class... called THIEF!! They STOLE things... gold, items, equipment, you name it, if it wasn't bolted down, they stole it. From NPC's (non player bots) and PCS (player characters) alike.
Nowadays we have panzies who cry a river because their sword was stolen. I'm a hard core gamer (or was) but I've discovered that there is so much more I'd rather do than just play all day. This is the problem with most gamers. They do not know when to draw the line.
I personally prefer to build my body healthy than to let an interface make me think I'm healthy, because in the long run, being a fatass will kill you VERY unpleasantly. Most fat guys and girls aren't in the best of health. (Try bending over at 5'10" and 300+ lbs to pick up whatever you've spilled and you'll see what I mean.)
Most people are inherently lazy, so perhaps forcing them into a virtual world is a benefit. It will leave the REAL world open for those of us who like being outside in nature. (And yes I'd probably have a laptop with me, but I unplug a lot more than I used to nowadays.)
I love gaming, but I also like being able to know that I'm not just living for the benefit of having an alter ego, which once deleted, would leave me as a poor slob without any alternatives but to start over without a hope. (Hard core MMORPG beta testers will tell you how aggravating it is to build a character and have a server-wide character wipe at the next set of upgrades that invalidate half the items and skills youv'e "earned").
Oh, and when "thieves" loot items. Best choice is to kill them or get them killed. The reason "real life" is boring is because those with connections can usurp the law and use it to crush those without resources. In games, you can still appeal to the godlike Game Masters to change things for you if you're cheated. Removing thieves from a Dungeons and Dragons like world is like pulling someone's gums out, because you already got all their teeth in your pocket.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I saw someone addicted to MUDs at CMU (this was betweeen 1991-1993 (!)) they were in the computer lab, and still there when I returned the next day - they had never left!
Yeah, they had the Internet back then.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
OK.. all that said.. my points I want to mention are:
1. Most MMORPG players are average people. :p ) But mostly, NO.
2. A few news stories about someone commiting murder or having a heart attack in association to games makes it the games fault?
3. There is a REAL economy that directly impacts the in-game economy. Right now, companies like Sony are coming up with in-game auction systems using REAL money. (they want to bring it in game for 2 main reasons a) they can protect their customers from fraud b)they can charge a service fee to make a little extra $$$) Anything involving REAL money tends to increase the focus that a human being will put into that task.
4. Using online games can actualy be stimulating to the mind. Each game is a new peice of software . Each game provides puzzles and quests that the player must acomplish to succeed. And in the case of MMO's specificaly, it requires a certain amount of social skills to succeed. Unhealthy? only when used in excess, like anything else. (even forum trolling
I could (probably should) write a book devending gamers, but that's a whole different story.
(Oh yea, I also sold an online toon for aprox. $750US :p so while y'all bicker.. i've gotta get back to my game!)
-Quixxilver- "Where am I going?
Of course, the bottom kinda dropped out of the sports card business, so maybe that's not a good example. :)
"It is the time, that you've wasted for your rose, that makes your rose so important" (Saint-Exupery)
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I believe that parent posters point was that the poor bastard that got murdered didn't get murdered for a virtual sword that's worth nothing; he got murdered for a virtual sword that's worth $3000, with emotional attachments likely upping the value for the other party.
In other words, whether the sword was made of 1's and 0's or solid gold is completely irrelevant. It was valuable to the people in question. It is no more or less insane to kill over a virtual object than a real one. Not that that's going to matter to the politicians and busybodies who will no doubt be using this incident to try to prove that games are the root of all evil in the world...
Anyway, quite a few people, americans or otherwise, have been murdered over whatever pocket change they happen to be carrying - which, I assume, usually amounts to a lot less than $3000.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If you say, "but the Bonebiter doesn't even exist," I'll say it exists in exactly the same way that the songs and software I download off Bittorrent exist. And yet stealing them is a crime. The only difference is that when I steal a song, nobody else is deprived of the song. When that guy stole John's Bonebiter, he was left unarmed and forced to go find a replacement. That theft actually hurts more, not less.
"Stealing" digital music is illegal because you break the copyright-law, which is quite different from stealing a physical object in the real world. I would therefore say that this comparison is pretty bad.
But concerning theft of virtual objects in a virtual world, it would be perfectly OK if it was punishable in the virtual world. If not, why would it even be possible to steal objects in the virtual world? Or to kill someone? In a similar sense, if you think that someone did you injustice in a computer-game, wasn't it actually because he played by the rules of the game, and you do not think that those rules are fair. Then perhaps you should find another game.
To sum it up: Killing a virtual character in a game to get revenge is nothing new, but trying to revenge injustice in a game by acting in the real world makes no sense to me.
Weed makes you lazy, not a pederass. ...
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;-)
Weed rots your brain, especially on those who are using it alot, yes. The absolute worst cases you see on the street is in fact due to HEAVY use of harshis, not the harder stuff. But it also has diverse effects on people, not everyone reacts to it the same.
Do you smoke crack?
I tried harshis a handful of times, but on me it had worse and worse effect. Sometimes I got vibration in my chest from it that really scared me since it felt like it was the heart. Now I know better what it is, and it - along with nervous heart - is gone since I started doing yoga and breathing exercises. I was poisoning my body, now it is cleaning.
Tell Your friend to SEEK THERAPY. She should have ceased contact with this 'friend' of hers. It had nothing to do with 'dope'; he is a sexual predator! If he was also 6. It's not because of the dope. He was also molested. But the fact that she thinks it was dope, makes me believe it was an older sexual predator.
This you can state without having talked to the girl or anything.. Way to go making generalizations. She knows the guy, he was also young. You may be right he was also molested, but isn't that beyond the point? He did this one time in a trance from drugs.
Read a book. Your conclusions are based on dilusions and rationalizations of a 6 year old; not reality.
I prefer to deal with reality, not books and generalizations. I also don't claim to own the truth, I just share my experience. My experience was that her pain in the time from she was 6 years old was REAL, and she said this would not have happened if he hadn't taken that smoke. He wasn't himself.
Maybe she should have figured out how to deal with this at 6 years old without tornmenting herself, but things turned up this way no matter how much you try to excuse drugs.
Drugs, accept alcohol, do not make people do things they weren't already going to do. It makes them have more fun doing it.
Taken from somebody promoting drugs.. Do we really need advertisement for it?
People take drugs because they need a excuse for doing fun things in their lives. The drugs lowers the artificial high bars we have in our so-called "modern society" to let go, relax and just do what we feel like, not what others expect us to do. We live our entire lives on the expectations of others, even sometimes when we do the opposite! But when we drink, we have an excuse to drop all that. The sad thing is that is another social acceptable thing to do, so we're not really free even we do this!
There's no need to drink yourself up to talking with that girl. When you do, you're not really doing it anyways, the booze is doing it for you, you're not quite yourself. In fact people become quite stupid in the effect of booze.
Why use drugs to artificially lower personal inhibitions, when you can do the same in a drug-free state and really meet yourself and reality? You then also have more control, thought-processes intact and don't risk dropping those inhibitions that SHOULD NOT be dropped.
You can have as much fun as you like. Just do it, but you also have to go beyond your own fears, and be able to take ridicule and fear from others.
PS: NO ONE WANTS TO JOIN YOUR CULT.
That's okay, I don't want to join your cult either
What I'm arguing is that you can have a drug-free living with a much better and long-lasting high from doing yoga, meditation and service to the world. It is totally natural, have been practiced in the East for thousands of years and this is what everybody is seeking in drugs and other escapes from reality.
PPS: Maybe you should get some therapy too.
Way to go Mr. ad hominem attack.
What can I say after this?
I can only direct you to an article about being a fool I once read and now Google'd up for
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
That's precisely what I'm always trying to point out to people. That this "new wave" of crime is the same old garbage, brought to a new medium by the same psychos who'd kill you for saying their baseball team sucks. Although I have no hard facts to backup this second idea, I speculate that the violent outbreaks over video games isn't even perpetuated by the geeks and nerds, it's a result of video games/PC Games becoming easier and popular enough that the same sick people who kill people over a football game are now playing video games. People weren't killing each other when games were BBS style and you had to be a true nerd to even figure out how to connect, play them, and appreciate the ASCII art. Most maniacs who are prone to kill people just don't have the patience, desire, and intelligence to do all that, but now that the technical knowledge required to play games is so little, your average joe-psycho can hop in and get pissed off in record time.
In fact you "own" only a limited amount of time in your life.
Time that you spent for other people is often regarded with money, normally we call this our work.
Time you don't get money for ist your leisure time, you can freely decide what to do with it.
Many people spend some of their leisure time to play games, may it virtually or may it boardgames.
Most games do cost money, be it the money for the box with the boardgame in it, or the CD-ROM for a computer game. For many boardgames there exist extensions, that can be bought to increase the fun while playing the game. Virtual gold or a virtual sword in an online-game is such an extension.
People like spending money for such "worthless" things, it makes them happy. There is nothing bad about spending money to increase the fun you have in your leisure time even if it is a virual sword, you are spending your money for.
Prohibitive? In Europe, folks pay $5-6/gallon (Adjusted from Euros/litres) which is far more prohibitive than $2.50-3/gallon. In the US, we are used to a subsidised (Our energy bills pander to the petroleum industry) fuel delivery system. Well, the fantasy is coming to an end, oil man President or not.
I'm totally for renting videos. I pay Blockbuster $25/mo. and get probably 20 or so rentals out. I don't even rip/burn the discs. I just watch one every other evening or so.
Well, not totally. I'm still going to see a few movies in theater. Tops on this list is Serenity.
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
In the USA, we pay higher taxes elsewhere to support the roads, rather than paying high taxes on fuel to support the roads. It's not more subsidized here, it's just taxed differently in the two places. A barrel of oil costs [roughly] the same in either place.
Then again, even if I'm totally wrong, where in the heck do you think the government gets the money for subsidies? That's right - from the taxes the citizens pay. My taxes haven't gone down recently, but the price of gas sure has gone up (mostly due to lack of refinement capacity in this great price-fixing-industry-supporting nation of ours).
Not to mention that lots of Europe is a bike ride / public transportation ride from work, that many parts of Europe have sane health care systems from a price point of view, and that there's enough other differences that directly comparing Europe's and USA's fuel costs alone is effectively pointless...
It's like somebody getting murdered over a $3000 baseball card. The card, in reality, isn't worth much more than the paper it is printed on. But to the people buying and selling cards, it is worth that much.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Actually people have been murdered for a pair of shoes... Instead of blaming the obsession, look at the person... It takes someone with some real issues to kill someone... Almost sounds like people are trying to drudge up the old Dungeon And Dragons causes people to kill people again... When the demented will always be demented... And it doesn't matter what medium you put them in...
That sword is no less real than the money in your bank account. Both exist only as bits on a disk drive at some server farm.
Computers are real, as are the people using them. I don't know why they should be considered less 'real' than any other human activity.
people here seem to be talking about killing like if they had enough money from the murder then it's okay, that seems crazy to me
Nah, of course it isn't okay. What we're saying is, is that it is conceptually understandable.
If you say "some guy killed another guy for stealing his imaginary sword", the immediate response is "wtf?"
If you say "some guy killed another guy for stealing 3 grand from him", the response is more, "oh. one more murderer in this wonderful world of ours."
You don't condone it, but you can sort of see why he might want to do it.
He looks like bruce lee, but while growing up HE was the fatass.
:) Just that we figured out it takes moderation and a bit of thinking.
I agree that overworking is bad too, but exactly the point, most people DONT work out at all, don't jog, swim, etc. Then they eat fast food like it was handed to them by whatever god they worship as their only salvation.
Then, a year and 30 lbs later, they wonder "what happened?"
I know, I did that. I'm 10 lbs down this year alone and 20 to go. (I started at just around 215/220 last year when I left IT.)
Aiming for 160 lbs as a settling weight (for my 5'9" height) should be okay. The problem is that I was in good shape, and then I went into IT, worked my ass off, ate tons of junk food due to "no time" (I was lazy and stopped cooking my own meals at night, and you'd be amazed how quickly mc'donalds and burger king add up).
Then I quit IT and got into a different line of work (involves some labor, some driving and less stress, and somewhat more time off). Now I find the time to do everything, from gaming to dating and all that (okay very little dating, but I do get lucky occasionally).
The point is, staying fit isn't "a talent" or "genetics".
If one listens to those lazy bitches quoting "I'm genetically predisposed to...[name your malaise]" then, I'm prone to being fat, as is my brother, but with a healthy diet, and a bit of work, anyone can be in good shape. (And that helps one consume far less coffee trying to stay awake.) I'm not advertising any products, or taking any. And I do eat meat
As a side note: I can focus extremely well and suffer very little trouble in public speaking, despite having been "diagnosed" with ADHD and OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and social anxiety. Oh, and I don't take any drugs for it. But I do take responsability for my actions... which leads into:
I think the main issue we should discuss is that people are inherently lazy, ignorant (and often stupid) cowards in our country and wanting someone else to do everything for them. I was using myself as an example because I'm that "radical" libertarian type who thinks that if you are too lazy to do it yourself, you should probably go plug into some machine to breathe and eat for you and die of heart failure and stop leeching off the rest of us when you go on life support. I don't say "lets kill them" I simply say "lets give them what they want, put them on a farm where they'll never see the sun again except in VR, and let them get as fat as they want, until the veins in their brain burst and they die, of their own doing."
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I was talking to a couple, who are friends of my father's, and we were talking about video game addiction. When the subject came up the woman turned to her husband and said, "Oh God, remember how many times we stayed up all night playing Pac-Man and then had to go into work without any sleep or even call in occasionally."
I was floored. Pac-Man? But they explained that they would compete with each other, taking turns and getting higher and higher scores until they realized it was daybreak.
So, spending hours and hours playing a game to the detriment of your real world responsibilities is not something that can be attributed to MMORPGs.
I largely agree with your ideas about humanity's desire to escape reality, but I've also found from personal experience that it's possible to replace that escape from reality with reality that you truely enjoy. :)
During highschool and my first couple years of college, I played quite a few videogames, read books almost constantly, and went to movies frequently. But, for the past couple of years, I've replaced most of that with a girlfriend. We simply spent lots of time together, doing more "real" things, walking, talking, playing, - generally just being together.
During that time, my video game playing/book reading/movie watching was reduced by something like 3/4ths. But, now that we're seperated by an 18hour drive or $300 flight, I've noticed that I'm again reading lots of books, watching a couple movies a week, and, most disturbingly, playing WoW
I've found that the less enjoyable my reality is, the more I need to escape from it.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
Of course, maybe your girlfriend would rather not wait until the next night, but feels like actually watching it, you know, spontaneously. Of course, there may always be the option of perhaps NOT illegally downloading the film, but I suppose it's unacceptable her in the Slashdot crowd to imply that legality and ethics are somehow more important than FREE SHIZNIT, YO!
*sigh*