Okay, I confess. I am officially out of it.
The moment of realization came when I was reading our story on gadget-savvy students and I came across the acronym MMORPG. What the . . . ?
Sounds like a suspicious government agency, or the name of a vowel-allergic rapper. Turns out it stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. Of course you already knew that, right?
In an MMORPG, with-it people all over the world log on, assume a character in a fantasy simulation and compete for, well, I’m not sure about that part. Dominance, I guess.
MMORPGs are hugely popular, especially with college students. The analogue for those of us who grew up in the ’70s might be Dungeons and Dragons, an elaborate simulation game that was usually played by bearded graduate students named Lester. The difference is MMORPGs don’t require getting all your friends together in one room, or even having friends, since you can play against whoever shows up in this virtual world.
Anyway, after reading Christine Foster’s article, I was confident it would be illuminating to Stanford readers because I had already learned a lot by paragraph four. And what I learned was this: I am sadly out of touch, not only with the massively multiplayer universe and its adherents, but maybe with something more serious—youth itself.
Our story refers to them as the “technology natives,” the first generation of students that has never known a world that didn’t include instant, 24/7 communication, go-anywhere phones and Internet dating. To them, interrupting a conversation means leaving their laptop to go get a sandwich.
Their lives are governed by digital devices. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but I imagine many would agree that they’d be lost without their iPods.
It would be easy to look at this always-on phenomenon and be jaundiced. But instead of playing the skeptic, I’ve decided to inhabit this world awhile and see what’s it like.
From now on, I will only talk to people via instant messaging. I’ll order all my new clothes online and sell the old ones on eBay. I will never buy a movie ticket in person, never set foot in a bank, never read a newspaper made from paper. I will make my own CDs one song at a time, thank you very much, and don’t bother trying to sell me the whole album. I will send postcards electronically, travel virtually and share my deepest thoughts with total strangers by blogging each and every day.
Most important, my new associates will know me by my MMORPG name, Bazar the Terrible, wielder of an enchanted spear and overlord of Outer Sanctum. You can call me Lester for short.
