Mmmm Virtual Drugs

VIRTUAL DRUGS; NO I’M NOT SELLING

Who gets a virtual 'kick' out of the internet? Well, me for one; a sure aid to a restful night’s sleep is to tune into MySpace and evaluate how many ‘hits’ my profile has received.

But really, are we even marginally aware of the utter dependency we have on virtual reality? Yes, it is quite the narcotic: every angst of the day is transcribed through the tap-tap-tapping on your keyboard as you complete the obligatory electronic forms to purchase the products guaranteed to enhance your quality of life and, hence, your happiness that has, until the point of purchase, sucked more than a little bit. Your succumbing consequently produces the blessed sleep of the virtual-consumer.

I know I am not alone in this: how good does it feel to return to the sanctuary of your home after a less-than-perfect day and log into a reality over which you have supreme control? You are a God. In setting Google Search as your homepage, you and only you control what you encounter. All stipulations that you ‘befriend your neighbour’, and thus contribute towards the establishment of social harmony, are suspended. Indeed, the only ‘neighbour’ you have to worry about is the anonymous irritant who outbids you on eBay in the last twenty seconds.

But this, paradoxically, breeds a sense of community: your hours of isolation trawling eBay for a bargain are socialised by the fact that your climactic bid is surpassed by an English penny in the final moments of the desired item’s listing. In other words, your unsuccessful vigilance indeed, your very isolation is vindicated by the fact that there is a shrewder Overlord of the virtual reality than you. And the range of emotions that this brief spell induces aggrandisement, assurance, anger, envy are all generated without your leaving your computer's vicinity. That's quite some virtual-reality.

To take Facebook as a site representative of the Internet’s potential to produce a race of social degenerates, one might feel inferior to one's virtual neighbour if that neighbour's number of 'wall posts' grossly exceeds one's own. To this end the individual becomes desperate and embraces the chirpy persona whose posts on a long-estranged friend's wall read something like this: "Hi, I'm sorry I've been rubbish, how are you doing...?"


What they actually mean is: "Hi, I obviously don't care about you that much or else I would have called by now; but I'm suffering from a total identity crisis and need you to validate my reality by confirming that I have friends beyond tin the world outside the room in which my computer is located".

That's pretty crazy, but the internet does indeed provide the opportunity to be as sociable as you please without leaving the well-worn groove in your chair. See? Convenience is key here. Yes you are inevitably inundated with 'special offers' and the assurances that you ARE the '999,999th visitor to this site which means that you win a prize', but you can eradicate these nuisances with the click of a button rather than the slap around the face that would cause offence - and a possible court appearance - in the real world.

It is possible to detect the virtual-addict through the very pallor of their skin; there is clearly a gap in the market for computer screens that create the healthy, sun-blushed complexion of the virtual-abstainer. I would seize this point of fact and go on to suggest that the lure of the internet is nothing short of virtual-vampirism. Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was unable to resist the foreign Count’s charms; who, in these times, can resist the magnetic pull of the Internet? Shopping, socialising, applying for jobs. The Internet takes the sting out of all these events; a pleasant indulgence upon which one soon becomes virtually dependent.

Text by MisSpells