Love in the Time of Pixels

The Escapist has piece, on this Valentine's Day, highlighting a relationship begun in a Virtual World that lead to the real life marriage of the players. From the article: "We think of these places most often as games, but there is much more going on in them than simply play. What we often forget is that any place in which two or more people can interact, whatever else it is, is a communications medium of a certain sort. Connecting via an online world - whether it's Second Life, World of Warcraft, EverQuest or any other - is not different from connecting via a chat room, via Friendster, via telephone or even in the time-honored way people sometimes connect at a party." Have you had any successful online experiences of the online variety (that you're willing to share)?

Comments

Marriage is a scam

[amliebsch]

Unless you're planning to have children, there is no good reason to get married, especially if you are a man. Why would you? You only expose yourself to huge liabilities and risk financial ruin. If you are happy together, that ought to be enough.

Re:Marriage is a scam

[gknoy]

Why be married? You mean, aside from meeting someone and feeling you want to livetherest of your life with them?

http://www.psychpage.com/family/library/brwaitgall igher.html

Married people live longer.
Married people have stronger finances.
Married people have better mental health.
Married people (statisically) have more and better sex than single people.

And, interestingly, several of these did not really apply to couples that were merely cohabiting.

Re:Marriage is a scam

[radish]

It is not a rational commitment, and acting in accordance with a tradition that has become illogical is also irrational

Why on earth are you trying to apply a logic test to human relationships? That's completly irrational. If people applied economics to relationships they'd never date (bad risk/reward), never have kids (18 years+ of unrewarded expense) and only ever sleep with prostitutes (and cheap ones at that). However, most people have emotional needs which are worth far more to them than money. You're worried that you'll lose some portion of your wealth in a few years if your relationship goes south - I'd be perfectly willing to give it all up right now to be with my SO. YMMV and all that...

Re:but MMORPG

[the_tsi]

Uh huh. And why not? Should people also be encouraged/forced to play their own species, race, and career in games? Am I some sort of deviate because my main character is a 300-pound orc who's probably too dumb to memorize an alphabet? Then why should it be a problem for someone to role play a gender they're not? The whole point of RPGs is pretending to be something different for a little while.

Success Story

[Utoxin]

I met my wife in a text-based RPG called TowerMUSH. Many of my friends warned be to be extremely cautious, and even told me that it was a huge mistake. But we've been married for 7 years this June, and it's been great.

A few pieces of advice for others who are getting into internet relationships: Don't treat them any differently from a real relationship, with one exception: Be especially wary of being lied too. The internet makes it so much easier. Also, NEVER RUSH. Me and my wife knew eachother for 4 or 5 months before we met in person for the first time. And then it was another 14 months past that before we got married. And that was 14 months of her living in the same apartment building as me while we dated and got to know eachother.

So yes, it can work. It can be wonderful. But please, be careful. There are many real horror stories out there. My wife actually went through one before she met me. She had been engaged once before, and the guy cheated on her and used her, destroyed her credit, and then dumped her. The aftermath of that still hasn't gone away, though we're working on it slowly.

Re:Success Story

[Mur!]

I'll chime in to being another MUSH success story. Pre-graphical RPGs, we had text RPGs that meant a lot of typing and a lot of reading. The great thing about these is that you *know* the person on the other end of the character is being a character, but the longer you play with them, the better a feel you get for the kind of person they are (through grammar, language, etc). I think a lot of this gets lost in graphical RPGs.

My husband and I met online and it was 2 years of casual chatting before we met in real life. It was 1 year of long distance dating and 2 years of living together before we actually got married. It wasn't easy or perfect, but we're coming up on our 9 year anniversary and I don't think I could have made such a good match any way else. I got to know *who* he was well before we met, and I think that strengthened our bond immensely.

Re:If Marriage is a scam, then I'm a sucker for sc

[Knara]

Except that marriage is a legal concept that has, in the last 100 years or so, been quickly transformed into a marketing transport which utilizes the idea of a centuries old tradition of marriage for love. When in actuality, the real reason for getting married is the gaining of legal priviledges and obligations. "living together forever" doesn't necessitate marriage, but living a fantasy implanted in our collective social matrix in order to sell any variety of goods and services is a brilliant idea.

My main beef, really, is against large, expensive, fantastical weddings. If people wanna elope, I'm all for it.

But never make the mistake of thinking that marriage is an institution based on love. It is, has been, and always will be steeped in laws and legality.