News You Can't Use: Inside the Rehab Saving Young Men from their Internet Addiction

I've clearly won the battle against internet addiction, at least if my recent run of posting here is any indication (let's pretend it actually is and I don't spend hundreds of hours watching sovereign citizen and weightlifting battle videos). Not everyone is winning this battle over themselves, however. As evidenced by the legions of millennial human derelicts mercilessly bashing the candle in church parking lots with the aid of a tiny glowing screen, we've still got big problems. Fortunately expensive and humiliating "rehab" has been developed and we should soon see the end of electronic onanism in much the same way as the drug "fad" was completely defeated last decade.

By the time Marshall Carpenter’s father broke down the barricaded door of his son’s apartment and physically ripped him away from his electronic devices, the 25-year-old was in a bad way. 

"I'm coming son!" *kicks in door* Here's the product of my loins, covered in Mountain Dew and other far less wholesome fluids, entering hour 79 of a Wikipedia editing marathon.

“I was playing video games 14 or 15 hours a day, I had Netflix on a loop in the background, and any time there was the tiniest break in any of that, I would be playing a game on my phone or sending lonely texts to ex-girlfriends,” Carpenter says.

Horny as hell here, please send help. Well, back to pretending to be an elf. Here, let me turn on the Republican villain fantasy hour. Hey, flappy birds! Then it all collapsed, believe it or not.

We are sitting in a small, plain apartment in a nondescript condo complex in Redmond, Washington, on the outskirts of Seattle. Marshall shares the apartment with other men in their 20s, all of whom have recently emerged from a unique internet addiction rehab program called reSTART Life.

A program of physical culture, speaking only when spoken to, constant ridicule, wall-scaling and making sure the first and last words out of your sewer are "sir" should turn around the Generation with No Chest and get them back to serving proudly as important barcodes within the corporate grid.

“I was basically living on Dr Pepper, which is packed with caffeine and sugar."

Just in case you got confused by the name and thought it was a healthy prescription supplement, I guess.

"I would get weak from not eating but I would only notice it when I got so shaky I stopped being able to think and play well,” he adds.

All those "Game Overs" and "Restart from last checkpoint" were actually trying to warn me that I was slowly killing myself.

His new friends Charlie and Peter nod sagely. Charlie Bracke, 28, was suicidal and had lost his job when he realized his online gaming was totally out of control. He can’t remember a time in his life before he was not playing video games of some kind: he reckons he began when he was about four and was addicted by the age of nine.

The first game of Miss Pac-Man is free. Then see who comes back for more. Then I start charging.

For Peter, 31, who preferred to withhold his last name, the low came when he had been homeless for six months and was living in his car.

Time to plug the computer into the lighter port and keep on saving those fantasy worlds.

“I would stay in church parking lots and put sunshades up on the windows and spend all day in my car on my tablet device,” he says. He was addicted to internet porn, masturbating six to 10 times a day, to the point where he was bleeding but would continue.

What the hell? Yuck.

When he wasn’t doing that, he was so immersed in the fantasy battle game World of Warcraft that in his mind, he was no longer a person sitting at a screen, but an avatar: the bold dwarvish hero Tarokalas, “shooting guns and assassinating the enemy” as he ran through a Tolkien-esque virtual realm.

This subscription vidiot game is just like a complex and heavily layered Christian allegory. Welp, time to bash the bishop for the tenth time today.

And when he wasn’t doing that, he would read online news reports obsessively and exercise his political opinions and a hair-trigger temper in the comment section of The Economist, projecting himself pseudonymously as a swaggering blogger-cum-troll.

Maybe "cum-troll" wasn't the best word choice in light of some other details we were given.

“I was a virgin until I was 29. Then I had sex with a lap dancer at a strip club. That’s something I never thought I would do,” he says.

This is actually marginally less pathetic than the rest of your story, but who am I to decide what your own personal rock bottom is.

After completing the initial $25,000, 45-day residential stage at the main “campus” a few miles away, clients move into the cheaper, off-site secondary phase.

How a guy that was homeless and had destroyed his own genitals via the solitary vice was able to afford this remains a mystery. Special government scholarship programs?

Here they get to share a normal apartment, on the condition that they continue with psychotherapy, attend Alcoholics Anonymous-style 12-step meetings, search for work and avoid the internet for a minimum of six months. 

You're not allowed on the internet. Good luck with your job search.

Mostly they carry only flip phones and have to go to the library when they want to check email.

Think of it as technological methadone.

“I’m taking my life in six-month chunks at this stage. So far I haven’t relapsed into gaming and I’m feeling optimistic,” says Bracke.

Take it six months all at once, great advice for any addict.

Full Article.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.   

News You Can't Use: High-Fliers at Risk of Isolation and Depression From Internet Addiction

Internet addiction is a problem, and not just for the "one more game" video avenger or the one-handed typist. No, actual productive and valuable human assets are now falling victim to this scourge. What can we do about it? If you immediately thought "write a snarky blog post mocking a serious problem," we're definitely on the same wavelength on this one.

The most successful employees are at risk of isolation, depression and anxiety as they increasingly use the internet to continue to work outside the office, researchers have warned.

Nothing says "success" like a heapin' helpin' of isolation, depression and anxiety with a side of the early death. Slave away in some meaningless job that shuffles around debt at levels are minds can't even properly comprehend. Take that work home. Wear an electronic chain around your neck. Suffer a plethora of psychological and physical issues as a result. Keep telling yourself how free you are.

A new study suggests workaholics are increasingly logging on after work, becoming addicted to the web and are more likely to suffer from withdrawal symptoms when they switch off.

Yes, withdrawal symptoms. Got runny nose and the shakes...better look at some scores on a mainstream sports site...ah, that's the rush.

But researchers warned the dangers are being overlooked by companies because those at the most risk are usually the most successful.

I know it's hard to believe, but your company might not be as concerned that you're killing yourself so some horrible rich bastard can become slightly richer as you'd probably expect.

“Compulsive behaviour occurs when workers cross an invisible boundary and their internet use becomes unhealthy,” said Nada Kakabadse Professor of policy, governance and ethics at Henley School of Business.

"I'd tell you more, but I'm pretty busy changing signage now that the word "ethics" is finally being removed from the department name to better reflect reality."

Also, "invisible boundary." Sorry, cool science-fiction language is not saving this tale of pathetic wage slavery.

“They spend increasing amounts of time online, waking up three times in a night to check their emails, eating patterns become irregular, relationships suffer and they become totally absorbed and feel anxious when separated from the computer. 

"Computer is only real friend...don't need to eat...can't be separated...must...check...e-mail..."

“For overachievers it is worse and they are more likely to burn-out more quickly. They begin to lose judgement and make mistakes.”

Underachiever and proud of my resistance to "burn-out."

Researchers said they had expected to find compulsive internet use among the young and the unemployed who had more time on their hands. But they were surprised to find overachievers were actually the most at risk.

We were hoping to just keep piling it on the young people, who we blame for everything, because that never gets old. That was our noble goal. Then we were shocked that there's pathology among business zombies.

The team found the working excessively was the ‘strongest predictor’ of compulsive internet use.

I mean, you can still blame that on the young. Maybe they're so lazy that you're forced to pick up the slack or something. Come on, use your imagination!

Co-author Dr Cristina Quinones-Garcia of Northampton Business School said: “Internet supports all areas of human interaction. However the omnipresence of this phenomenon could have double-edged sword impact on our lives.

Unnecessary fifty cent words, sloppy mixed metaphors...yeah, you're a professional academic. 

Now stay off that internet, it's a bad addiction for your kind.

“Those individuals who use technology to enable working beyond office hours tend to be highly successful in their jobs, but are at a high risk of developing problems.”

"Society says they're winners, so that must be true, but they sure seem to be miserable."

Researchers have called on companies to issue guidelines on safe internet use outside the workplace which educates about the dangers.

Because employers controlling your private life is a Good Thing.

A recent poll found that British workers would rather have no heat and water than lose their Internet connection at home.

I'm sure this has been duly noted by your rulers and you can expect exciting new "Heat and Water Adjustment Acts" very soon.

A separate study of found that three quarters of workers are now afraid to open their emails on Monday morning.

Hey, it's stressful being related to Nigerian nobility who are constantly dying and leaving massive fortunes that get tied up for want of a $200 processing fee.

For some it grew so bad that they felt ‘paralysed’ by the volume of messages , said lead author Mare Teichmann.

"Trapped...can't move...so many discount Viagra offers....sent help..."

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

Next we'll be seeing a bunch of unbathed, welfare using, parents basement dwelling protesters attacking over achievers.

Did I get redirected from the Mickey Mouse Club website somehow??

still have trouble letting go of Battle Pirates, working on it... baby steps.

Loss of employment, even imprisonment from reckless drunken posts and tweets, temptation to view worse and worse pornography or searches which will attract the attentions of the authorities are some of the more serious possibilities.

Shill Section  

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read a free excerpt here.

His first novel The Foolchild Invention is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.