Dream within a dream

Reality is playing some very weird tricks right now. I'm busy wrapping my mind around the concept that this is all a dream, an illusion. But some people are putting another layer of unreality on top of it all. The virtual world has become less and less virtual since real money has begun changing hands. People are creating bots to outplay real players and get sought after items, then sell them for cold, hard cash. The game companies got wise to this, so they set traps for the bots, like asking questions out of the blue or setting up situations where a decision has to be made. So the writers of the bots got even wiser. There is apparently enough cold hard real cash in this to set up sweat shops in China and Indonesia and actually pay real people to monitor the bots and make them act human on occasion.

Couple this with the guy who died after 50 hours of video gaming. A fellow in South Korea played computer games in an Internet cafe for 50 hours, stopping only to take a few naps and go to the toilet. He died of heart failure minutes after walking out of the cafe.

But the one that I'm really having a hard time fitting into my world is the guy who got arrested for virtual mugging. So this Chinese exchange student writes these bots that go out and mug people's characters in Lineage II, then he sells their stuff online. He has been arrested in real life in Japan.

No word yet on whether the charges are fraud or assault.