Without even noticing it, the fabric of our world has drastically changed. Most used to live just within their own circles, know their friends and families and acquaintances, and only kind of know about the rest of the world through non-interactive sources like TVs and newspapers and such. Most used to spend almost all their time in their own country or city or whatever, and quick travel between countries was expensive and relatively rare. We used to be a much less connected world, both physically and mentally, much more wrapped up just in our own lives with people that we knew well. So we just really needed to take care of ourselves and our people, and that was enough. Or that is what our parents or mentors taught us.

But the world is different now.

Traveling across the world in half a day is so normal for people in developed countries, it doesn’t feel all that much different from taking a road trip. And with how close the Internet and social media have made everyone, we are all suddenly constantly interacting with pseudo-strangers: people we barely know but yet we can interact with and talk to for hours at a time. In this world, the values that allow us to just take care of ourselves and those we know intimately no longer translate as well. Without knowing these pseudo-strangers intimately, there is no real reason to understand them, feel compassion for them, trust them in anyway way. Without this intimacy, it appears many people are not able to treat each other the way they treat people in their real lives. So we may interact with these pseudo-strangers closely, talk to them for hours at a time, but in the end they aren’t our intimate friends and our values do not teach us that we need to extend any care to them.

I say we, because I am speaking as someone part of the American culture. I can speak for two cultures only, so I do not know if this value system extends to the many others. But it’s fair to say that American culture has an outsize effect on the world in general and perhaps the Internet world in particular, and the influences of this upon the entire world cannot be discounted.

So, I have felt that a WoW mythic guild is in some ways a microcosm of our new world. And perhaps in particular an American WoW mythic guild is a microcosm of the situation of the current world, as it intersects with American values. In a WoW guild, we don’t really know each other. After being intimately involved in Syzygy for 6 years now, almost no one knows what I actually even look like. Few people know my true background: my age, my nationalities, my ethnicity, my education, my work, my life. And so it is with most other people in guild, I know very little about them as well. But every week we gather to raid for 8 hours, and often hang out on other days for much longer than that. We barely know each other yet we are together so often we do kind of know each other. We are absolutely pseudo-strangers.

And none of us really know how to deal with it. Many continue to treat it like they treat things in their real life, in which case they either don’t really care much about anyone in the game. Or, on rare occasions, they may have friendships with others in game that transcend the pseudo-stranger bond for them. These occasions include those who are friends in real life, and those whose relationship in game has gotten so personal and intimate they became real life friends. And no one else is extended much care (though some do not even feel the real life friendship extends to being part of their circle, so even then they may not extend the same care). If someone feels annoyed, they don’t really think about how their actions can affect all those pseudo-strangers, like they would if those pseudo-strangers were their intimate friends. They have no qualms in being rude or hurtful to the pseudo-stranger friends, while they would never do this with their real life friends. When things are rough, many people abandon game friends with as much concern as they would abandon any used item, perhaps with regret, sentimentality, even sadness, but with no real qualms. These people would not treat their real life friends the same way, they recognize that abandoning someone they care for in their time of need is not something they want to do. But they do not think of online pseudo-stranger friends as people who they need to extend that sort of care to, so the treatment is vastly different.

I, on the other hand, have not been able to approach this the same way. Perhaps my other culture has affected me, but I do not believe in only caring for those that are just in my circle, I feel I must care for everyone, period. But more so, I have not been able to see online people as pseudo-strangers. If anything, I feel that it is much harder to know a person in real life than it is to know them online, in a WoW mythic guild. There are so many opportunities in WoW mythic raiding that allow people to portray the majority of their character and personalities. Hanging out with friends in real life does not allow me to see how friends react to high pressure situations, it does not allow me to see what they choose when the choice is between their own interests and the greater good, it does not allow me to see how they handle frustrating social situations, etc. I feel that I see more humanity in people in WoW than I see in most people in my real life (barring exceptions like close family and lovers). And so when push comes to shove, I feel so much worse when people shrug and say it’s just a game, and behave to me in ways one would never behave to a real life friend. And the intensity of my feelings have surely affected others, who may then be burdened with the pressure of needing to care for me the same way they would care for their real life friends, while not being able to since I am a pseudo-stranger to them. And perhaps, my way of seeing things being so much less detached may also add strain to people, I have certainly had people and even officers flake on me with no warning, telling me they admired the community I was trying to create but it required too much of them, and this is just a game.

It’s possible others also have other ways of interpreting, understanding, and living in this microcosm of the new world that WoW raiding is. But either way, whether in WoW or in the new real world, we are all struggling to adjust to it. So much pain has been caused through the Internet in so many ways. And obviously the covid pandemic could never have gotten to what it’s become if we weren’t all suddenly so close to each other, so my decision whether to go out today or wear a mask today could affect hundreds of others by inadvertently making me part of the chain of infections that keeps the outbreaks going.

And as I thrash about and try to keep my head above the water, I feel more and more that this microcosm that is my guild in WoW is helping me realize how we all need to learn to adjust… to cause less pain, to do more good, in our new world.