Virtual to Real?

Meadows (2008:51) argues that experiences create a grounding of belief. “People in virtual worlds build things, use them, sell them, trade them and discuss them. When another person confirms what I am seeing, places value on it, spends time working to pay for it, buys it, keeps it, uses it, talks about it, gets emotional about it, and then sells it – this tells me there is something real happening.  The suspension of disbelief has become a grounding of belief”

Do you agree with Meadows’ statement? If so why, if not, why not?  

I agree with Meadow’s statement because I find it to be believable that, experiences create a grounding of belief in something. It is believable that “...people respond to technology on social and emotional levels much more than we ever thought” (cited Meadows 2008:50) after seeing the statistics about virtual gamers provided by PhD graduate of Stanford University, Nick Yee. Yee surveyed 30,000 virtual gamers and found that 1.40 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women believed their virtual friends were equal or better than their real-world counterparts. These individuals were heavily immersed in the virtual worlds they played in, with 25 per cent of them attesting to their highlight of the week having occurred within a virtual world online. Having invested themselves so much into their virtual worlds, the 30,000 gamers are an example of how experiences create a grounding of belief, in that they can agree that virtual experiences which are not ‘real’ are equal to or better than real experiences.