Addicted to the Web
Many real-world behaviours have found their way onto the Web. People with various addictive personality traits are being drawn to the Web like moths to a flame. A 15-year-old Swedish boy collapsed with epileptic seizures after a marathon 15-hour World of Warcraft session. Back in 2004, a 36-hour stint with the same package drove a 13-year-old Chinese lad to jump to his death. In 2005, a 28-year-old South Korean man actually died as a result of after playing Starcraft for 50 hours non-stop.
Internet addiction has been cited in divorce cases. The number of on-line gamblers is exhibiting exponential growth. And then there are the auction addicts. Some people just don’t know when to stop. They don’t understand the golden rule of auctions: check out the interesting lots; decide those that you want to bid on; set your maximum proposed bid, and NEVER exceed it; ensure your total spend for the whole sale falls below a maximum you can afford.
Andrew Tyler, a 13-year-old New Jersey, thought it was all a game. Back in 1999 he placed 14 bids worth a total of US$3.1 million on e-Bay using his parent’s password: five were successful. Luckily he didn’t win the Van Gogh painting, but his bid of $24,500 for a red 1971 Corvette convertible was successful, as was $900,000 for an 1860s bed that once belonged to Sir John Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister (the previous best bid was $12,000).
There was one problem: Andrew’s weekly pocket money was $15. When the sellers of the bed contacted his parents to fix delivery, and asking for the $900,000, his mother, who answered the call, was rumoured to have started hyperventilating and collapsed. Thankfully, she didn’t have to pay because of Andrew’s age, but needless to say the owners of the bed were really p****d off with e-Bay. Andrew’s parents then banned him from the Web.
Let us know if you have any similar stories of addictive behaviour.
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