This article talks about an online role-playing game that centers on "marriage." It talks about the culture of "online marriages," something that develops/results from "online dating." The interesting thing is that this is a growing phenomenon amongst 12-20 something year olds, which the article states as the "dating stage." However, there are cases where even already married people (in real life/reality) also have these "online marriages," and this brings up the issue of what "marriage" means today. Although this is "online," the article reminds us that outside that "online" context, the other person in the "marriage" is someone real somewhere out there in the world.
Anyway, it's a pretty interesting article about the growing phenomenon in China (possibly & probably the rest of the world). Personally, I have always been against the idea of "online dating" so "online marriages" are something... well, definitely a no to me. But, if you think about it, online friendships do have some sort of depth to them, so why not online romances? The problem, however, is that, these "online marriages" are part of a game & are treated as something (mostly) not serious. What it does to the idea of "marriage," then, is make it lose it's original value. Much of why today's age is so superficial is due to media (this is just my personal opinion), and the culture that develops as a result of such a thing has different values (not necessarily lower, but perhaps "easier"). But that is how times change, but it is worrisome that such changes are making the younger people grow even faster. It seems, that at the rate of which information is being absorbed at an earlier age, there is reason to fear an excess of information. & this excess amount of information might be too much for our minds to organize that what "values" we had before might change... I fear I am going off topic & too philosophical (perhaps), so I will stop there. Still, it IS an interesting article.
Linh Tran
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