Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Addiction To Fortnite Cited In Over 200 Divorce Petitions (dailydot.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the end-game-strategies dept.

An anonymous reader writes: In just the last 35 weeks, one online divorce site received over 200 petitions citing addiction to Fortnite and other online games as one of the reasons someone wanted a divorce. "[T]he dawn of the digital revolution has introduced new addictions," said a spokesperson for the company, also citing online pornography and social media. "These numbers equate to roughly 5% of the 4,665 petitions we have handled since the beginning of the year and as one of the largest filers of divorce petitions in the UK, is a pretty good indicator."

On the other hand, the A.V. Club notes that the web site's creators "have a vested interest in making divorce seem sexy and cool in a way that only 'You walked in front of the screen and a 10-year-old in Wyoming shot me dead so now I'm taking the house' truly can."

10 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe or maybe not. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Informative

    So, according to Internets, in the UK you can't just get divorced, you need to have a reason. (Internets would lie to me would it?)

    In order to start divorce proceedings in England or Wales, you first need to have been married for at least 12 months.

    To file a divorce petition against your spouse you must prove to the court that your marriage has irretrievably broken down by establishing one of the following grounds for divorce:

    * Adultery
    * Desertion
    * Unreasonable Behaviour
    * Separation of 2 years with consent
    * Separation of 5 years - no consent required

    I sure there are legit cases of addiction to gaming but I get the feeling that it's really just one contributing factor to an unhappy marriage that is being used as an easy target for "Unreasonable Behaviour". The real question is if the number of divorces has increased or have the reasons for divorce simply shifted.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Maybe or maybe not. by Blue+Stone · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're actually in the process of changing this right now, so that 'no fault' divorces can happen.

      https://www.theguardian.com/li...

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
  2. Got It Backwards by mentil · · Score: 4, Informative

    'You walked in front of the screen and a 10-year-old in Wyoming shot me dead so now I'm taking the house'

    Pretty sure it's more like "you spend more time yelling racial slurs at 10 year olds than acknowledging that your spouse exists."
    Fortnite could be Madden, Call of Duty, et cetera. They were called 'Everquest widows' back in the day.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Got It Backwards by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I knew about a guy who was the main tank for a guild on my server back in the days of World of Warcraft 1.0. The guy went to get a sandwich halfway through a Molten Core raid, only to discover a note from his wife saying that she had taken the kids and was leaving for Florida to be with her parents because he was too addicted to the game (apparently he had logged 120 days of played time in the first year that the game was out).

      He got his sandwich and finished the raid before going after his wife and kids.

      He finally got her to come back by promising that he’d auction his character off on eBay, but then he posted it for a price he knew it would never sell at and then bragged about his cleverness on his guild’s forums...which is when he discovered that his wife read the forums. In the end, he was forced to sell the character for less and their marriage survived, though by the time I quit the game a year later, he was playing again on another character.

  3. No correlation. by Rip!ey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unless there has been a comparable increase in the rate of change of the number of divorce applications, then this is a non-story.

    People who want a divorce, that are required to give reason to get one, will find one. If it wasn't Fortnite, it would be something else. If it wasn't computer games, it would be something else.

  4. Divorce Cool? by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    in a way that only 'You walked in front of the screen and a 10-year-old in Wyoming shot me dead so now I'm taking the house' truly can.

    This isn't a description of a "cool" divorce. This is a description of an "inevitable" divorce.

  5. Re:I'm sorry, but I couldn't parse this by vlad30 · · Score: 4, Funny

    spouse walking in front of the display

    Now everything depends on if the spouse is naked

    --
    Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
  6. The roof of these addictions by lucasnate1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fortnite is not special, neither is alcohol nor weed nor pills nor social networks. The only thing that IS special, is that our reality is intolerable for more and more people, and they find forms of escape. Can you blame them? For many people, life is just going to work, not having anyone they are close to, and if they are a man, knowing that they are never allowed to cry or express frustration (I guess there is some parallel for women, but I'm not a woman so I do not feel like I should say how they feel). Frankly, I suspect that a lot of modern technology and economy are just dedicated to create ways for people to escape the empty lives that they have.

    --
    Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
    1. Re:The roof of these addictions by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Fortnite is not special, neither is alcohol nor weed nor pills nor social networks. The only thing that IS special, is that our reality is intolerable for more and more people, and they find forms of escape. Can you blame them?

      Actually I do blame them, because I’m old enough to remember how much worse life was fifty and sixty years ago compared to today. Racism everywhere, huge wars being fought over totally pointless causes (Ask your nail girl to describe her childhood), three billion people starving to death in India and China, massive urban air pollution, and the threat of thermonuclear annihilation hanging over our heads.

      Those who forget the past are condemned to bitch about the present.

  7. Dirty little number about divorce by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Depending on the source, women initiate between 70 and 80% of all divorces in the US. Most of them are "no fault."

    Now women are starting to notice more and more that there aren't as many eligible bachelors around as there "should be."

    Well, it's quite simple: the opposite sex responds to the way they're treated in the aggregate both consciously and unconsciously.

    The whole system is FUBAR because it is the worst combination of conservative white knighting and feminism. It maintains the rules on who pays what and allows women to say "well, I'm just not in lurrrvv with you anymore, so bye--and thanks for half of the shit your bigger paycheck paid for."