"Futures made of virtual insanity.
Now always seem, to be governed by this love we have,
For useless, twisting, of our new technology.
Oh now there is no sound for we all live underground."

forwarded me an excellent, excellent, excellent piece that theorizes on why we haven't met any other advanced races in the universe. And the long and short of the idea is that instead of reaching out, they turned inwards. They got so fascinated with collecting the shiny pennies in their civilization that they forgot about everything else.

Essentially, our bodies have indirect cues that we use to judge our fitness levels. Not anything as concrete as physical fitness like weight or cholesterol levels. Call them social fitness indicators. But there are so many, our brains have created shortcut maps of what leads to fitness. Want reproductive success? Well, good food and good mates tend to lead that way.

Society has figured out how to feed us these cues without really properly satisfying the need. Simulations that are much easier and convenient than doing the actual work, but still press all the right buttons to make us think we're staying socially fit. Can't get good food and good mates? How about fast food and pornography instead? It'll feel just as good...

It's so much easier to round up a group of guild mates and team up to take down a huge monster than to get a real group together to play over the line at the local park. It's also a lot less physically taxing (think you could really run around as much as you do in your favorite MMO? I'm sure I couldn't). And yet, I bet you get the same high and celebrate just as hard with the guild mates after felling the monster as you would with your team when you hit that home run.

Need met. Your brain doesn't care how it happened, just that it feels good. Calling EverQuest "EverCrack" was probably closer to the scary truth than any of us really want to admit. Because how many people do you know whose lives consist of work and World of Warcraft? WoW (or EverQuest or Second Life) has become their entire social existence. Their brain thinks they have a perfectly healthy social system while they spend hours in front of a monitor, rotting away physically.

(I know two, with a possible third, by the way. And that's just WoW. Because the ones that have succumbed to SL don't even hang out on the MUCKs or IMs anymore)

Reading this theory seems to have filled in a piece of my mind, one of those things that I could never put my finger on. But now I think it explains perfectly why I'm so wary of things like Second Life or even Facebook. Millions of people every day pretend to talk to all their friends (sometimes hundreds of them) but are you really talking? Or are you telling them what's going on (or posting witty sayings or sharing links) and moving on to the next thing in your busy, busy life?

Wow. Facebook is fast-food conversation. Cheap and easy, just as satisfying as the real thing, but empty of anything truly good for you. We're far too busy to actually sit down and have a real conversation with our friends and family.

Hell, I've been uneasy since the days of Livejournal. Seriously, when Livejournal was booming, did you ever ask someone how they were doing and they looked at you incredulously and asked if you had read their Livejournal. I know I got it plenty of times, and every time I did, it made me sad. It was a message loud and clear that they did not have enough time to sit down and actually talk to me about what was going on; to have a real conversation.

And now the next logical extension is being able to hit these social networking sites from everywhere else. Look at Vizio's new web-enabled TVs that let you access Facebook from your living room. Or the Motorola Backflip, specifically made to keep you in tune with Facebook, Twitter and instant messaging in real time. You never have to be alone again, no matter where you are! How's that for making sure you feel good all the time?

And before you warm up your keyboard to ask me what kind of life I'm living... well I'm not perfect. MUCKs have become a big social replacement in my life. I haven't really reached out much to meet new people since moving, and I think a very big part of that is my online social system. Why should I go out and meet new physical people when all my old friends are still here with me? And yes, I spend my Thursday evenings with Booth and Brennan or Bailey and Karev instead of talking or playing games with the friends down the street.

I've come to understand some things about the world, and frankly now I'm a little frightened at my new understanding. Things that I wish I could post for discussion, but I dare not because I don't have asbestos underwear strong enough to survive the resulting flamewar. Suffice to say, I'm one of many on the Titanic jumping up and down shouting 'ICEBERG!' while the rest of the people keep on dancing. It's just that some of us are shouting a lot louder than others.

"They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain’s ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels… ever so good."