When I arrived at my friend’s place, he seemed particularly upbeat and cheerful. It was a change because he was usually sullen and serious. I think that in part that was one of the reasons why he liked hanging out with me in spite of my more, shall we say, free-spirited demeanor.

As I entered his place, I saw him typing on the keyboard. On the screen, I could see a 3D game world where a mage and an elf druid were standing side by side. I don’t like snooping into other people’s business, but as my gaze fell across the screen, I saw the words “sweetie” and “babe” on the chat window.

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At this point, I felt a little awkward because my friend lived with a lady at the time. She was a nice woman with a  friendly personality. So, I didn’t know what to make of what I saw on the screen, and I didn’t want to ask.

As the night wore on and we hung out doing the things that men do when they hang out, I noticed that once in a while, Mark would make his way to the keyboard and type a few things on the chat.

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“Yo, wassup?” I finally said talking in the lingo we used in high school. “You on a date with another hussy beside me?”

He laughed.

He finally fessed up. He had been playing an online multiplayer game and had met a woman there.

“She’s from Florida,” he told me. “We’ve been going on quests and have a great time.”

He showed me the screen, where the elf avatar stood in a forest. She wore druid regalia with a bit of leg showing and nicely accentuated elf bosoms. Her hair was long and blond. Her almond shaped eyes pure crystalline blue. Their conversation was a mix of in-game management and sweet tender words.

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Apparently, his adventures with this elf lady had been going on for a few months. He told me about her abilities and cleverness with the game. How she healed him as he battled monsters. Sometimes they joined larger parties but other times it was just the two of them moving across the great expanse of the magical game world.

Mark was excited about his elven companion.

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Personally, I kept my counsel to myself. I chuckled at the adventures and listened. I did not bring up Susy, his current lady-friend, or any of those personal aspects of the story. After all, it was all just jolly good fun and games.

Then he dropped hints about meeting her in real life and visiting her in Florida.

I thought about the complications that this turn of events would entail, but again, I minded my own business and simply listened throwing a few "holy shit," "no way", "wow dude".

I looked at the game and the elf woman. At that moment, I realized just how powerful digital interaction can be. We believe that those pixels on the screen have a reality of their own somewhere. Here were two people who had never met each other except in-game, and yet through their interaction, they had developed a romantic rapport. The power of media. Through computer interaction, we avoid all the messy real-life stuff and link up brain-to-brain, leaving the beautiful flesh encounters for when it really counts.

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I did not see my friend again for a couple of months. Then I visited him one evening. 

When I arrived the computer was turned off.

We hung out and talked about guy things, which usually doesn’t involve personal romantic liaisons. He hadn’t brought the elf lady up, however, and given his eager enthusiasm last I saw him, I went ahead and asked him about her.

“So when you guys getting married?” I said jokingly.

A sheepish smile appeared on his lips.

“We decided to send pictures of each other via email,” he told me. He shook his head. “Nah man, it’s not going to work.”

That was the last time he talked about her.

Fascinating! I thought. Here my friend had fallen head-over-heels with a digital illusion or distortion. He had spent months with this make-believe character who had an agency of her own somewhere in real life. They were in tune on a personal level, managing their fantasy affairs, and yet, all it took was a single photograph to shatter the illusion. It is interesting how we develop conceptions of people online- good and bad- when the reality is much more complex.

For his part, Mark kept on playing the game for some time after that, but not once did I hear him mention any female characters again, just the intricacies of the quests, and the epic battles that he joined in that multiplayer game world. There would be no grand fantasy romance. They would not grow old together and go on quests with their children. Their vision was clouded by the spell of the game, then dispelled by the offline reality, and perhaps as an unintended consequence, they did not truly appreciate just how special that moment had been.

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*Images generated by @litguru using Stable Diffusion software*
***
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