World of Warcraft

Why?

Why do we become our inder demons when we go virtual mode behind a computer? Why do we become greedy and careless about anything happening beyond our virtual world? To set an Example; World of Warcraft. A fairly popular game amongst the whole society regardless of gender, age and workclass. Most people within the game act as they played a single player game, where it doesn’t matter about the opponents you are playing against. They become their demons (Their true being), Greedy, Evil, Careless. Most players do not realize that the opponents whom they are playing against or even, with, are actual human beings, who have the same blood and flesh as themselves, yet they treat them like they were slaves to their virtual character. They are the king, they can harash any man, be as greedy as it fits them. Though most players do share a common bond that they can be polite towards the members of the guild, whom they are in? But why? Whats the difference between a member of the guild, compared to a random whom they have not met, in another guild? Afterall, in the end, they are just as random, since most people do not know the actual person behind the screen, only their character. What decides whether we feel like sharing/showing our inderdemons towards player’s whom we have never met, and probably never will? Some may say that the reason is that those who they treat nice, is people who know what they are doing “Having a brain etc”. Now this seems like a fair reason. Or does it? Aren’t we all new to some things at some point in life? What would happen if we was asked “Do you know how to make coffee?” and answered No? Would the person who asked us, start going mental on us, telling us funny stuffs?” I’d love to say no, but I have no doubt that there would be someone.

What´s the actual difference between virtual society and real life society, and when do we consider our self in virtual mode? As soon as the person who we are speaking with, aren’t visible? Most people probably fear, watching the person’s expressions when we tell them something, which is hurtful. But why do these expressions “touch” us? Why can´t we just ignore the expression as if we had our back turned to them, and didn’t knew them?
Try think of any of your friends or family members who play’s MMO games, and ask yourself, “Is their behavior different, virtual vs reality?”. 99% did probably answer yes. Then try ask yourself once again, “Why does their behavior change?” Afterall it´s still other “beings of flesh and blood” that they play against.

Then the evident question, most people think of atm. “What about those who aren’t greedy, evil, careless and whatnot in MMO’s? “ There will always be the 1% of those who play, who either reflects their actual being real life, or even treat people better, because they feel like those whom they play with/against is sitting right next to you.

I could without doubt, continue making questions, consider examples and whatnot, because the list is longer than we can imagine. I did like to hear examples of this. Try to argue properly for your examples, of random things from my text, or even your own examples.

Respect other people’s threads, examples and opinions, regardless of whatever they may type. It’s in their good right to type what they feel like, as long it doesn’t violate the Way to Behavior codex from Blizzard.

Written by Valori, SSE.

This isn't anything new, and there's a lot of research out there on personality changes of people when they take on a virtual character's persona.

The problem is people don't only behave like that in the Internet. It's happening more and more often in real life.

The problem is the humanity and the current society trend, not the "virtual world".

It isn't, but when it comes to interpretations in psychology, the interpretation itself is different from one man, to another, therefore i would rather hear different point of view's rather than just a short range of view's from "experts" as no man is telling the truth when it comes to interpretations, as no man is the same nor would react the same way, because our perceptions strongly varies.

15/12/2011 15:48Posted by Valori

Why do we become our inder demons when we go virtual mode behind a computer? Why do we become greedy and careless about anything happening beyond our virtual world?

Who says that those people act differently in real life? There are plenty of history books that show how a man treats his fellow man.

The "Privacy allows people to do what they want online" speech is not always true. Some time ago (I can't remember how long it's been), there was a wow player. Apparently those who knew him in game (aka the "virtual world") said that he was OK. In real life he killed 90 people.

Just one example of how a man treats his fellow man, regardless of the environment he is in.

I agree with Diogo here, the root of the problem lies in normal, daily life. We are living in a world that revolves around.... Money. Everything is about that stuff. From the moment we are born it starts: your parents need to earn money to feed and dress you, it puts pressure on them. Then, as you get older, the pressure comes to you. You need to go to school, you need to get an education. It is sad to see how even small children are already pressured to perform.

When and if we make it through school, the working life starts. You have to go to work to make money to pay for your food, your house, the car you need to get to your work, the TV or PC you need to unwind a little and so on. Some are lucky enough to receive support from the governement because they don't have a job, but most of the time they are under pressure too, first of all to find a job, and second because the money they get is not too much.

This pressure has its concequences. More and more relationships crash on money problems, more and more single parents have to work instead of tend to their children, and the families that stay together have 2 working parents. The children are alone and unguided, under pressure to perform at school, at sports, at social skills etc. The parents are under pressure to make enough money to take care of their children, while also preparing for when they are old. It's constant pressure for everyone.

As a result of that, people have less energy and protect themselves by thinking of themselves more and more. Combined with the ever growing technical ways to be "in contact" with people, the social aspects of life are slowly decaying.

And then, after a day of being terrorrised at work, or at school, people log in to - let's say - WoW... Where all of a sudden no one can really harm them or tell them what to do. And all of a sudden that anonimity feels very powerful. So they do to others, what others do to them during the day. Or out of pure stress, because they play a game now and MUST HAVE FUN and what that other guy is doing RUINS MY FUN so let's tell him how I feel!

This is of course a very superficial discription, but it should give an idea of what I think and mean to say...

True its impossible to generalize people in such a manner as i have tried to do, and ofc there will always be those idealistic people who seem to be above everyone else; but people do still seem considerably different when moving in virtual mode. Whether its from good to bad, or other way around, as you mentioned with your fellow player who supposedly killed 90 people, which sounds like Anders Breivik, nontheless not the point who it was.
But lets try an example: Charles LeMeque (fictional name) murdered 4 men in a blindfolded rage. Let's assume this happened real life. Then yes real life he would have killed these men, but in his "own" world as he see's it, he have murdered these men for a reason. Regardless of the reason he killed these men, from the point of his "own" world, and therefore could be considered as being in virtual mode.
Perhaps like Adolf. Maybe he thought of this !@#$% race in his "own" world blindfolded from reality, yet from other's view he would've been deem'd insane. Once again "mentally" blindfolded in a virtual mode.

Now true, my points and examples are purely fictional and assumptions based on my view's, so dont go rage mode and think i support his idea of ^-*!@ race and whatnot.

Note: What the xxxx? How can the word A r y a n be considered as a "OMGWTF" bad word? Its merely a defination of a former race known as the Ary-ans from pre-jesuschrist.

@ Aerea; You're correct in pretty much all aspects. But nontheless the problem is that this is happening to 99% of society. People aren't enlightened enough to know that they aren't the only one's to be in this issue.
However, with all this pressure as u mention, it can also affect people in such a manner that they evolve their "own" fictional world where everything is about them. Some people may even choose to live by this fictional world, making them blindfolded to reality in such manner leading to "virtual mode".

I take on a persona when I play online, but none of the greedy, evil stuff.

I like to consider myself a nice person to be around in game, I try to play to my best capability and help others. If people start fights, fair enough I can say some things back, and I do find myself sticking up for others who have been attacked also.

The persona I take on is more my character. I feel this is a life where I can be different, I hate my own life, its quite plain... In here I can be what I want to be. I like to make up far fetched stories which are quite obviously not true (they are true really, and you know it) like me having lived for 10000 years or so after being sent back in time(this ones true).

The people who unleash their inner demons are those who probably think like an idiot, but are too scared to act it out in real life. But on the internet there isn't someone with a fist ready to hit them straight in the face after stealing something from them or calling them names.

I mean I know I am, if I tried some of the stuff I talk about, I probably wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. Also I wear bunny ears around the city. I think its awesome, if I tried it outside of wow I'd probably get beaten up.

-Professor Clutch

True, at many points life can be plain boring at certain ages, because you feel restrained, due to, lets say money, and therefore cant visit and explore the world, (as an example), and therefore "live" into their character and start acting like they truely want to act, because none can harm you. Whether its for bad, or good acting as in your place, it still relieves us, from who we truely want to be. And when we live ourself into a character, we start feeling like we are apart of the character, and therefore enjoy the exploration and experience we get throughout the game, which we cant get real life. Sure some might consider this as having no life, but hardly, its merely a tool to escape reality once in a while. (There will be those who go beyond and become the characters itself and play 24/7. Those who do, have their reasons for so, which seems reasonable in their eye's but "insane" in everyone else eye's).

And to your bunny point. Personally I love people who arent afraid of using a couple of bunny ears regardless of their age. Those who would laugh, or beat you up for this, is scared of people who are being considered different/weird in the eye's of the majority:)

Freud has an answer to this.

In the material world, we suppress our id - our basic drives and impulses.
But a person cannot exist without sometimes acting these drives and impulses out, and what better way to do it, in a virtual, fairly anonymous world, without any retaliation?

Correct, Freud said so. However why do we suppress our id? What makes us hide our true "self" to someone? Are we scared of people getting to know us?
Regardless of our anonymousity, the outcome of our drives and impulses wont change, and retaliation is so much said. Sure we wont get physically harmed by this retaliation, but it will still affect us mentally, which hides our perception of things. Harmed physically, by the retaliation, wont harm us the same way, because it will most likely only affect the body and not the mind.
Physical and mental retaliation is two rather different things, so generalizing this into "one" would mislead people.

In real life, we aren't usually stopped by the fear of being harmed physically (well if someone was aiming a gun at me I whould think twice before saying something indeed), but the fear how whould our society understand this kind of reaction and relate it to our personality. In a virtual world we could have many avatars, we could delete them anytime and with them our virtual personality. Nobody can relate any of them to our real life if we dont tell them personal information about us. In the real world things are different-whatever you say or do is connected to your personality and you can never erase it (unless you fake your ID or something). This makes many people supress their true thoughts and feelings, they fear they could get negative reactions and relations to their personality becouse of them.

And in addition to that, the virtual society is different from the real one. It isn't based on money and there is no pressure on the players by the game itself (there is however pressure coming from their real lives). Money are used for purchases in most games but this type of economy is very different from a reallife one-it is only used for additional purchases and updates, nothing of essence , there is no money circulation, you dont need to take them by trading with other players, you can enter instances,kill monsters etc. In this type of society there is no dresscode, no models of behaviour. You can dance naked in front of the auction house and nobody whould care. But if you do that in real life you will be mocked and pointed by everyone for a very long time. You may not be hurting anyone by doing so, but you are not behaving like everyone else does.The real society doesnt understand people who act/dress/think differently.

Personally I don't like being rude to players who are not rude to me, I whouldn't do act in a way I don't usually act in the real world. But thats me, there are others who whould. I cannot blame them for doing so , they just fail to supress all the pressure in themselves or they may like pretending to be someone else,forget their real worries for a while. I don't mind weird/different people or thinking in a way becouse someone else does but see I m afraid I m a minority here. And when someone doesn't like the way he/she is accepted by the others he/she is also likely to act like the ones putting pressure on them unintentionally or not (kinda in the way a child with bad parents is likely to become a bad parent aswell). And after all we are given a choice who to be in this game, we aren't required to be our true selves , thats the charm of video games you can be the strong,beautifull,powerfull,evil,good person whenever you like.......







....It's up to you.





^^

Aerea,

I love reading thoughtful posts like yours, but I don't entirely agree with you. Money is the most obvious symptom of the 'condition' you describe, but it's not the ultimate cause of societal problems. The world revolves around various methods of control and power, not money - money is just a means by which to obtain it, or to buy yourself out of a system which gives you few privileges into one which does.

Money isn't the problem, a lack of egalitarianism is. People are routinely exploited and denied a chance to thrive for all sorts of reasons, but also because they must have money to live. They are asked for much, but given little in return. Since the system so freely admits greed and selfishness, what you end up with are greedy and selfish people who will take what they can get for themselves.

It was once said that it's Easy to be evil, Hard to be good. Easy to fall into the hands of the majority, Hard to choose the side of the minority.

@ Sashy - Correct however, deleting a virtual avatar doesn't nessecarily mean that it won't affect us. The personality, regardless of which, will always become of part of us. If someone have been bad on 1 avatar, and good on 1, deleting them, wont change the outcome of these feelings if you wish to say. They will follow you forever, and be a part of you and your ever changing "you". Let's even say that on any character which you made, was deleted to the reason of which you got mocked or pointed at for various reasons, this mocking will still be a part of you, aswell as change the very you.

Regarding the point of pressure upon players virtually is pingpong. Those who feel like being apart of a game, because they want to escape real life for random reasons, would still feel a form of pressure's, that they have to play well/act well/generally perform well overall, to be accepted in the eye's of other players. This is chosen ofcourse, so it would only "apply" to a x% number of players. Those on the otherhand, who choose to dont care about how they are in the eye's of others, may not have a pressure because they dont want so, perhaps because of an already existing pressure from rl.

Then the last thing with the bad parents evolves bad parent. Generalizing this is bad, because it often have the opposite effect aswell, with bad parents evolving good parents, because the child who was treated bad, want his/her child to have a decent raise, rather than what he/she rose up with.

07/01/2012 23:42Posted by Unicornis

Since the system so freely admits greed and selfishness, what you end up with are greedy and selfish people who will take what they can get for themselves.

Personally I dont think its the system who have the blame of this. More likely the majority in my opinion. People are more likely to join the majority than the minority, scared of being considered "different". Money, however, would still play a vital role, because choosing the majority, and become greedy would in some chases increase your chance to become more wealthy on money, thus better way of life, which attrach alot in people eyes.
Nontheless choosing the minority, might decrease your chances because you're being nice, generous etc, and get a more "spiritual" way of life, because you get wealthy on "good feelings" if you wish to say. Wealthy on money, or good feelings? Persoanlly i'd say people would take the money, because it increases your "status/rank" in a society measured on money.
"Choose a life of helping others, or Choose a life of, where money is your one and only". Alike Kate & Leopold, Leo representing the more "Man of the minority", Kate representing "Man of the majority". (slightly unrealistic yes)

I'm my inner demon every second of my demonic life, feels so much better than just behind the screen.

Not giving a crap about anyone truly is the fastest way to become a happy person.

10/01/2012 21:01Posted by Danomx

Not giving a crap about anyone truly is the fastest way to become a happy person.

Hardly. Living a careless live, and not caring about others, would people, just as careless towards you, thus unhappy live. Sure, some may prefer being lonely, but i hardly think that any man can survive an entire lifetime, without the slightest sort of sociality.

you don't have to be lonely just because you don't care about people

Well yes and no. Being careless about other people, would make those people, whom you are careless towards, be careless about you aswell, leading to no one wants to be with you, because you dont care about them. And since you are careless towards everyone, thus lonely in a humanized way.

But ofc, just because we dont engage with other people doesnt mean we are lonely, we may have pets or something else which keeps us going. But you would sitll be lonely in a humanized way.