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Social craze on the internet: A virtual life is easier than real life, but it is really no life at all

By FnF Desk | PUBLISHED: 21, Dec 2014, 16:58 pm IST | UPDATED: 21, Dec 2014, 17:05 pm IST

Social craze on the internet: A virtual life is easier than real life, but it is really no life at all As a hardened technophobe, it usually doesn't bother me when my friends get immersed in the latest social craze on the internet. YouTube, Facebook and you Twitter if you want to, I tell them, but I won't be joining you, because I inhabit the real world.

Such a high-handed attitude has served me very well through the Facebook, WhatsApp, FB massenger and MySpace eras, but lately a new craze has gripped my social circle, and is threatening to impact on me, even if I don't succumb to it.

This is because one of my favourite things to do is to spend time at a farm in Surrey where I keep my horses. About 20 people also use the same stables, and before going for a ride, we all congregate in a Portakabin tearoom to exchange gossip.

The other day, I was settling down with a cuppa when I realised that everyone around the table was talking not about farrier bills or dressage test scores, but something called Facebook Farm Town. This, I learned, is an online game where you play at living in the countryside. You harvest virtual crops, ride virtual horses and trade virtual livestock denoted by cartoon characters.

"Hang on a minute," I said. "We are in the countryside. We don't need to play at it on the internet." But they went on talking about tokens and points and comparing techniques for clicking speedily on little pictures of cabbages.

"I applied for this job harvesting the other day and I did a whole field of crops and got 200 extra points!" said one woman with great excitement, as a tractor harvesting real crops roared past outside.

As the only one who doesn't play the game, I was excluded from their club. So I tried to talk about the actual vegetables I was growing in my actual garden. They looked at me with complete disdain. "Yes, but can you grow lettuce in two days like on Farm Town?" I had to concede that no, I could not. My actual wild rocket takes a couple of weeks to grow, as do my actual tomatoes, and my actual strawberries.

So I gave up, sat in my poxy real world on my own and let them all bang excitedly on about crop tokens for what seemed like hours.

Then I got up and said: "Right, I'm off to ride my actual horse. Anyone fancy coming?" But they were too busy exchanging tips about how to get the most out of an application called "Give your friend a plastic horse".

Of course, this virtual madness is not limited to Facebook. I have another friend who plays a computer wargame day and night. When I last rang her to invite her out for the evening, she said: "I can't, I'm in the middle of a game with some people in Australia, and if I leave now I'll lose all my points."

She only really sees her boyfriend in the game: she could drive half a mile down the road to his flat, but they prefer to meet in a place where she's a potion maker and he's an elf, or something like that.

Yet while the subject matter of these games may be harmless – orcs and elves apart – the very act of sitting at home and playing them is isolating and destructive. They're as addictive as drink or drugs. In fact, the way these sites shrink your life, and smooth your path into a total retreat from reality, means you may as well be sitting at home with a stack of Tennent's Extra.

OK, so my friends' livers are intact. But they are still prisoners of their habit, too hooked to leave the house, or too obsessed to talk about anything else when they do. No wonder treatment centres have new programmes for "fantasy addicts", with the numbers of sufferers seeking help for addiction to computer sites sharply on the rise.

The sad reality is that we have become enslaved to the very technology that was meant to free us.

From our smartphones to our Facebook applications, one click is never enough. We start, but we can't stop. After a while, our virtual life becomes preferable to our actual one, probably because it is easier to get results.

And don't be fooled by the term "social networking". In truth, any "social" element is entirely bogus. An instant message is no substitute for phoning someone to have a proper conversation. Clicking on a picture of a finger tagged "Poke!" will never yield the rewards of meeting up with someone, and putting in the work involved in maintaining a real relationship.

But I sometimes feel resistance is useless. So many of my friends prefer to exist online, it will soon be the only place I can go to meet them.

# Source: The Telegraph, By Melissa Kite