if your life is screwed up by too much computer usage.. it's because u have serious problems in your life... don't blame the computer... blame your mental health
computers can be addicting... but in that sense... so can anything else.. (meaning anything and everything can be an addiction.. but not a physical one)
You forgot this part of my post:
:-)
That's the tounge in cheek part. It's the sarcastic part. It's the part you didn't interpret, the part denoting the whole post to be taken with a grain of salt.
Now, on the realistic side; a Personal Computer isn't used often for much of anything important that couldn't be done by hand. Some of it may be convenient, but a lot of it is just a time-filling waste. As many trpgers have said over the years, they play to pass the time between interesting parts of their life. In reality, there is always something interesting to be done in real life, it is just a matter of finding out what.
I already stated in an earlier post that I have trouble going to sleep. You obviously failed to notice that when you replied as well. That reminds em as well that if we had this conversation face to face or over the phone, then you would have been able to tell through my voice inflection and physical expression that my previous comment was to be taken in a tounge-in-cheek light.
That brings me to an other point; text based message systems that people use regularly often turn them into glaze-faced monotonous people in their writing habits and speaking habits. This is evident in anyone I know who uses the computer for text-only based communication for much of their computer use time. However, if it's someone who uses it as they do a phone, say talking in a voiced pub, then you will notice that those people do have a less monotonous approach to life. Of course, it's a psychollogical addiction for people to continuously respond to threads abotu pointless crap because they somehow get the mental feeling that their post is somehow worth reading either for it's satire, it's "ownage" or it's ammount of ingenuity to make other people angry, sad,happy, etc.
Though, when you struggle people out of their text based environment at regular intervals they also do appear to regain some of their sense of self, and this appears to be entirely reliant on the ammount of time they are in physical reality vs text-driven reality.
In any case, I DID have some "serious" probelms with computer use, but because I have a pretty strong will to do what I think is right for myself and others (when applicable) I was able to recover a heck of a lot. I can go days or weeks away from the computer with out feeling like I missed anything at all. Of course, I do like to "get things done" in the computer realm, like modding trpg, asking questions, helping answer questions, and playing games, BUT, the over all impact of these things on my life is nothing more than a tallied waste of time. There are many things in real life I could be getting done, so when the opportunity to get real life stuff done is present, I do them instead of the computer stuff.
Over all, I am down to a few (3) hours at most per day of computer use with no hours at least 2 days of the week (usually sat and sun when I'm not at work.) I think that's a good improovement over the "information-hungry" ammount of time I spent before gathering links and reading pages and pages of information that over all I did not need to know... I think it was at minimum 6 hours a day back then. Ahh well, life goes on.
My over all point is that if someone wants a computer, they better need it for something; writing papers, publishing ideas, entertainment. They had also better realise that real life comes first, and a lot of people don't realise that, which is why I try to deter people for a little bit... untill they need a computer.
