Back in the 60s and 70s, virtual reality meant consuming a tab of LSD.

Charles Moreira

The article starts as follows:

Flight from fantasy
The enormous popularity of online video games suggests that for many gamers, exploring a virtual universe is not just an entertaining diversion, it is a highly addictive form of escapism.

Elise Dettmann. Melbourne, Aust.

C.S. Lewis in Chapter 12 of “Screwtape Letters” describes the devil instructing his nephew, Wormwood on how to distract his victim, not in spectacular debauchery but through trivial pursuits:

My Dear Wormwood ,…..you will be gradually freed from the tiresome business of providing Pleasures as temptations. As the uneasiness and his reluctance to face it cut him off more and more from all real
happiness, and as habit renders the pleasures of vanity and excitement and flippancy at once less pleasant and harder to forgo (for that is what habit fortunately does to a pleasure) you will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked”. The Christians describe the Enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong”. And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off. You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

Blaise Pascal also had much to say about this human trait: www.geocities.com/seapadre_1999/pascal-diversion.html

David Skinner, UK

Don’t forget the great potential all that typing to your computer has!

Since it’s just as socially acceptable to hang out with a friend online as in person these days, sitting on the computer in the evening can become an awesome way to bless and love your friends and even convey to them what Jesus means to you. I’ve found that it’s a lot less confronting for most of my friends to talk about their beliefs in an online context.

Dante Mavec

Yes you are right to point out that there are all sorts of things that can become diversions and distractions. I suppose in the old days seemingly mundane things such as Monopoly or Risk or other board games could unduly captivate people and their time. But the new life-like virtual reality games are so much more seductive and engrossing. As I said, anything to keep our minds and hearts off the really important things in life.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I agree that some of these games can be quite intrusive on people’s lives and sure can take our mind off of Godly things. Indeed, speaking for myself here, sometimes just the Internet itself can be intrusive and one can waste hours on things like facebook and myspace, for example. I often think of how much real time I could spend with friends instead of spending it typing to my computer with these friends.

I also note with regard to the virtual reality games you mention, a particularly troubling one – World of Warcraft. Although the game started in a similar vein as Second Life, there are countless stories of problems being caused by people’s obsession with WoW. It has caused people’s marriages to dissolve and there were even cases of people drinking (I know of one in China) so much caffeine and staying up so long (ie 48 hours) that they have died from heart failure.

Anyway, thank you for reminding us, Bill, of the dangers of allowing ourselves to be deluded by the false world (and hopes therein) of the Internet.

Regards, Andrew Dinham