I do not say that I am right and I do not say that I’m wrong either.  All I am going to do is ask a question and give my personal opinion.

Well; first of all I need to define the parameters.  The type of on-line gamer I am referring to is someone who plays games on-line eight or more hours a day everyday.  This person lives their social life through the internet, via chat programs, etc.

So Let’s look at what this person may or may not do with there day.  Get up around maybe 12pm, switch the computer/console on and start to play. This will be the case until they get tired or suffer a headache.  They snack when they feel like it.  Some people would refer to them as a geek but, I’m referred to being a geek and I don’t spend anywhere near that amount of time playing games.  I must admit that I’m not too partial to playing games on-line.  I will explain more latter.

The persons learn this internet speak, where they abbreviate their typed replies to save time and speed up their replies, they  might use some form of head set and frequent the chat rooms like some dirty old man.  They take their character too seriously and perhaps start to talk as if they are really the personification of the character (Lord of the Rings on-line anyone?)  They don’t wash and don’t get visitors because they don’t need to see them face to face.  I must point out that this is tongue in cheek and I only know one person that was this extreme.

The question I ask is; what type of person would behave like this how does this affect their outlook in life?  The person in question was not able to see anyone else’s views and referred to anyone who disagreed with them as an idiot.  This was in my opinion, a short sighted view and showed up the fact that the person did not understand that everyone has a right to their opinion but not a right to the facts.

The person would spend all day being the total cliché and couldn’t see any point in being sociable at all.  He did everything outside his flat by himself and didn’t really want to give anyone he didn’t like a chance.  He and it was a he, would look at someone and decide straight away whether he liked them straight away and then would be surprised when they did the same to him.

The trouble in this world is that you attract the same type of people as yourself.  If you are outgoing, you will find that you attract outgoing people and that applies to introverted geeks.  Your only view of the world is the news services that let’s face it; lie to your face.  Their opinion of the world at best is limiting; due to the fact that they don’t care or know very little of it.  They may even believe that the world is under threat from some global terrorist group that intends to bring down the status quo.  They are likely to view certain sections of the community with suspicion due to the warped view of them via the controlled media outlets.  Maybe they consider everyone to be in some way inferior to themselves.

Usually unemployed; well let’s face the truth; they can’t work and play games eight hours or more a day and work full time can they?  Well this person did; play through the night and ignoring sleep.  He would crash out for a day or two after four or five days straight playing games or chatting to people across the net.

In my opinion this behaviour is unbalanced.  99.9 percent of people are well balanced individuals and would not want to take over the world, destroy someone’s house or kill the dreaded infidel.  They get on with life and generally are decent people.  They don’t cause any trouble and consider themselves to be of the country they are born to.  They don’t want to make a fuss and stand out from the crowd, due to the fact that they are easy targets.

They could be your next brother in-law, step mother, step father or even your new friend if you give them a chance.  They could be your son or daughters next boyfriend or girlfriend and then what are you going to do if you have such a narrow view of the world?  Obviously for the last statement to work implies that you had a life at some point but you get my point.

So ask the question; can an on-line gamer have a well balanced social life?  I will leave it you to find the answer.