Participatory Culture

A couple years ago I had become involved with a widely popular website entitled Pokerstars.net. I quickly became obsessed with fake money and real games with real people across the world. Perhaps it was because it was the idea of underage gambling without risking anything, or maybe it was due to the fact that I could illegally gamble without leaving the comfort of my very home. For the sake of this post I’ll focus on the aspect of the latter reason.

“Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993.”(Klosterman, 110). I however obviously hadn’t grasped that concept, as the idea that millions of gambling aficionados could gather via the web to put chips on the line in real time poker game was fascinating to the 16 year old version of myself. What I did not realize at the time was that while I was illegally gambling with fake money in my basement mostly everyone else was out enjoying their days without me. This may not seem like such a big deal, you may be thinking “So what Nick? What’s an hour or so a day thrown away playing poker against a 36 year old crocodile Dundee from Australia?” My response to this question is that you obviously do not grasp my addiction with a website such as Pokerstars.net. I mean there was once a time where I would wake up early for school to grab an hour on my favorite website before I headed out to the real world. I guess what the real issue here is the qualm of social alienation. If you’d have asked the 16 year old version of myself why I was spending so much time on the computer instead of out enjoying the day with my friends I probably would have responded with something along the lines of “It’s Elmira, what’s there to do?” All things considered this may be considered a legitimate argument, as there’s nothing in Elmira but Mennonites and the ridiculous amount of churches that they attend. That being said I’m sure I lost a lot of friends during that time period, not because they particularly disliked me, probably more so based on the fact that they just forgot me.

Looking back on it now I can see that I took my obsession with the idea of live online gaming to an unfortunate extreme. However, I understand that “life is rarely about what happened; it’s mostly about what we think happened.” (Klosterman, 103) You can call me a liar but from what I can recount is that I just so happened to be kicking the butts of middle aged casino goers all over the world at an alarming rate, all at the ripe age of 16. What an accomplished young man I was.

Pokerstars. Web. 24 Nov 2009. .

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.