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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)?
Many Males Online role playing Girls!
and the reaction to one's words after a few slipped pixels is always a good sign.
... well ...
Now if they hadn't disabled the hack in Sims 2 with the latest patch
Let's just say that choosing an online avatar that actually corresponds to one's self is a good thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
But this isn't really all that special or new, is it?
I met my wife on a Counter-Strike server in 2000.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Some people point out that in MMORPGs the women are really men. Generally, this is as we all know true.
:)
But one thing I've noticed about "games" like There is that the more active female players generally really are female.
Well, at least they SOUND like women on the microphone anyway. Still, my point is generally that there seems to be a major difference in games like WoW and CoH from games like There and Second Life.
On the other hand, the pretty, skinny, barbi-like avatars of There.Com probably don't resemble the players controlling them.
So be careful if you fall in love with that Beauty Queen in There.Com. At least in WoW if you are in love with a cow they probably really are a cow.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
"I met my wife on a Counter-Strike server in 2000."
You downloaded your wife?
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
fak3r.com
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.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
I met my future wife online in 1985. We both ran local BBSs, spent long hours chatting and a relationship quickly developed.
We were married online in Dec. 1990. The pastor and both of us called a multi-line BBS and had several friend join as witnesses. The service was done and we were married. Later that night, we have a service IRL just to placate the family and all, but we all signed a document and had it notarized stating that our official wedding took place online.
Evidently someone saved a transcript for posterity's sake and it surfaced on the web a few years ago:
http://www.skepticfiles.org/aj/wed_b&c.htm
I think several of them resulted in pretty fast marragies and fast marriage endings (I can't spell marraige, sorry). In one case she deleted of one of the guys players.
Apparently she was somewhat cute and somewhat charming - not really devious, just a nut case.
Normally I wouldn't have cared at all, but I found it particularly disturbing that she had children and was dragging them through all of this with her.
Ok - not so great a V day story, but the other side of the coin I suppose.
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.
Yes. I couldn't help but notice they lifted my poem. ThinkGeek is connected with /.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So my friend was a pretty good Halo player. Good enough to win some local competitions. One night, his roommate's sister showed up with some of her friends. My friend and his roommate were playing, and after the round ended one of the girls asked if she could play against my friend. He patronizingly said, "Sure? You know how to play?"
"Well, it's been a while, but the controls should come back to me."
"Okay, I'll go easy on you for a bit."
Big mistake. I heard from everyone else in the room that by the time he hit 10 frags, she was already over 50.
Six months later they got married. He can usually win in Warcraft, but she still hands him his ass in any FPS.