South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl.
The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.
"I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven," the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.
According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.
"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."
3.05.2010
Virtually Lost
I was pointed to this horrible and sad story by Blake Huggins:
This story is so incredibly disturbing. It is so sad to think that we as human beings would forsake the love and nurture of a child so that we could enjoy a virtual pseudo-reality.
Is life so unsatisfying that we prefer the reflection of this life in the cyber-verse? Are we that lost?
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1 comment:
What an awful story...
I'm not sure what to make of the desire to protect the virtual and ignore the real. Where are our priorities in life and why do we devote more focus and attention to things that are meaningless, chasing after the wind?
Thanks for brightening my day, Corey.
Andrew P.
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