Teen net addicts pee in bottles to stay glued to WoW
British youngsters have become so addicted to the internet that they will relieve themselves into bottles rather than step away from their screens to visit the lav, reports the, er, Sun. It is online multiplayer games such as World Of Warcraft that are coming between children and the toilet, with addictive game play encouraging …
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My only comment:
There's only one thing to say about this:
Where the hell is/are the parent(s)?
Everything else is moot in the face of that question.
"Where the hell are the parents?"
I imagine they are reading that bastion of truth and morality, The Sun.
eek!
First read that as "Where the hell are the patents?"
I should stop reading all those patent-trolling related articles...
Indeed.
This article also has the whiff of someone being trolled. I've known some pretty hardcore WoW players in my time but not one of them has ever done stuff like that. Next we'll be hearing how sweet little Timmy from the Home Counties whores himself out every evening to pay for Farmville items.
@ Lee Dowling - It's not only a teens problem.
It's not only a teens problem, I know of several over-60s with the same internet and game addiction and, to make matters worse, their bladders aren't as efficient as a teenager's.
Internet addiction is a much more serious problem than generally acknowledged although that fact ought to be obvious even to Blind Freddy. Today, one only has to be a vehicle driver to have good anecdotal information to that effect. How many times have you had to make an emergency stop when some iPhone-addicted person blindly walks out onto a roadway in front of you whilst texting?
It's not only people walking onto roadways, in just about any endeavour known to humankind you'll see people whose eyes are glued to their smartphones as if their life depended on it.
Incidentally, I've avoided such annoyances by having both internet and texting services turned off at the telco, my cellphone is just that--a voice phone (life is much more peaceful).
re Lee Dowling
At 3am the parent will be most likely asleep.
@h3
At 3am, wee Timmy should find that his PC is be blocked by the firewall.
Simple
They are thinking whilst he/she is playing that they aren't bothering me.
Its the governments fault they allow games like this
The one thing to say is...
If they've been fondling their bits to do the bizzo, they then start touching the keyboard/mouse straight afterward without having washed their hands?!
Wee Timmy knows a lot more about firewalls than his parents do.
What is addiction?
"Any activity, substance, object, or behavior that has become the major focus of a person's life to the exclusion of other activities, or that has begun to harm the individual or others physically, mentally, or socially is considered an addictive behavior. A person can become addicted, dependent, or compulsively obsessed with anything."
-- Ruth C. Engs, RN, EdD. Professor, Applied Health Science, Indiana University (http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/hints/addictiveb.html)
I don't know many (any?) people who would pee in a bottle to keep gaming. As far as timing of game sessions goes, I question if waking up early and gaming for a bit qualifies. I would say it does if, and only if, work/school is compromised... I'm not convinced this article established that in cases where the "addict" was getting up early morning to play.
I have gamed early morning, mostly I'm kinda annoyed to be up that early and unable to sleep. I'm mostly a night person, but, due to call, sometimes have my sleeping patterns disrupted. Nothing open, can't go get a coffee... nothing on TV (is there ever anymore?)... don't want to bother anyone (I'm not QUITE that rude)... so I either stare at the ceiling, or go through the normal hygiene routine and play until it's time to go to the office.
I've also texted at inappropriate times, I'll admit it (not an iPhone though, just the company-provided BB). In almost all cases, the person who was texting me was my boss. So, maybe my life didn't depend on it, but not being on the dole did.
Asleep?
I doubt they're asleep. Most parents I know would be farming Elementium at 3am.
Where?
It depends what you mean by 'where'. Mostly like they are on the same server, but occasionally a parent will roll for a different faction to keep their objectivity when disciplining their kids for hogging too much WoW bandwidth. If you mean 'where at 3am', my best guess would be farming mats or playing rated battlegrounds.
EEK
I meant They would probably say "Its the governments fault they allow games like this" and not "Its the governments fault they allow games like this"
"Drawing on her experience as a clinical psychologist"
Should be: Drawing on her experience as a presenter of rubbish TV. I'm sure she's a noble ornament to that fine institution the University of Ormskirk and not in any way angling for or promoting a new series.
Indeed...
" Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Edge Hill University"
Seriously, wtf does that mean? Nothing, I should know. Im a Professor of Spotting Made Up Bullshit Titles at the University of Worthless and Meaningless Qualifications.
She's a proper muppet that one.
Obviously I agree with 'muppet', but you should be aware that there are genuine chairs of 'Understanding Science'. At Oxford, Marcus de Sautoy succeeded Richard Dawkins in the Charles Simonyi chair, and Jim Al-Khalili occupies a similar chair (Public Engagement in Science) at Surrey. But they're at real, rather than pretend, universities.
Disgusting
Havent they heard of catheters?
Just run the line straight to the loo and as they say job jobbed....
err no that doesnt sound right either.....
It's going to get worse, you know.
In the future, there will be gamers who think peeing is not hardcore enough. They'll just hook themselves up to dialysis machines.
Why not go the whole hog?
IV feeding, colostomy and catheter
BI2BO
Bag in - 2 bags out
Mines the one with "Colostomy? It's not my bag!" written across the back.
@ Ian Stephenson - A commercial livelihood methinks.
Check in up and coming IT catalogs, it'll probably be the next big thing in computing. After all, these days it's a desperately needed IT accessory.
An advanced/more efficient model wouldn't need the line to the loo. Its heating arrangement would vaporize the waste. The greenhouse-producing water vapour would be vented directly to the air and the solids--urea, caffeine, pot and other recreational drug byproducts--to a container labeled "To be emptied into the backyard once a year by Mother".
>;-)
Texas Catheter
As employed by Case in Neuromancer when "jacking-in" for hours on end.
Go one further like Cartman
Do what Cartman did in South Park, and get your Mum to hold the bed pan for you whilst you do a number 2
Well played cosmo.
I came onto here to be the first to suggest her research was actually just a south park episode....
well not JUST a south park episode, probably the best south park episode!
Getting assistance? Amateur.
I have one word for you: 'poopsocking'.
Old
We did this playing LAN games, 15 years or so ago. And I'm sure I've heard this story in relation to Chinese cybercafes before on the Reg.
Desk job
"Brits' screen-break aversion doesn't bode well for desk job future"
What, your employer doesn't make you do that?
*Angry glare at boss*
wait
Whats the issue ?? I regularly p!ss into a bottle while im reading elreg ..
Indeed. I often pee in a bottle whilst sitting on the toilet.
Oh so it's you! If I get fooled one more time by those full Rose bottles I keeping finding there....
Rose????
If you can't tell by looking something is seriously wrong.......
Luckily there are gaps
Most of the multiplayers I do have between match gaps long enough to have a wee.
But then I have a 90 minute limit before I need a break anyway.
If anyone says that's taking the p***, that's it, I'm leaving.
Umm
Well it is taking the p***! Literally, into a bottle.
Right then, you said it. I'm leaving.
Back in a minute :)
This isn't new.
When I was at school we relentlessly took the piss out of someone who got found to do this when playing final fantasy 7.
...and what did you do with it once you'd taken it out of him?
I call shenanigans
You could pee, make a coffee and change the oil in the family car in the time it took ff7 to animate the summons in one round.
life sux. wow all the way.
Perhaps if we hadn't made such a hair-ripping nightmare out of our miserable lives, a digital getaway wouldn't be so alluring.
Or perhaps...
Perhaps if everyone would quit wasting their time on their digital imaginary paradises, this miserable existence wouldn't be so miserable? Even just a few minutes in the sun makes you feel better than than hours of video games...
Solution: we need more outdoor LAN parties.
So much for individualism
Any parent knows that the hardest thing in the world is to persuade a teen to get out of bed. Yet here we have at least 2 kids who are so motivated by something that they'll voluntarily haul themselves out of the pit (while hopefully not tripping over bottles of stale pee - hey, if it was good enough for Howard Hughes ....) at 3 a.m. to partake of an activity with other, like-minded, people.
Rather than praise their dedication, determination and competitive spirit, she chooses to scoff at their choice of entertainment and criticise their methods of maximising their participation. I can't help wondering if this lady is guilty of a huge double standard: taking the errr, "mick" out of games players yet admiring sports-people who spend much more of each day (and are prepared to suffer more) fulfilling their obsession for equally fleeting successes and rewards.
Maybe she should be less concerned with forcing normative behaviours on children and look instead at how this enthusiasm (or obsession?) can be harnessed into something a bit more constructive than passing comments on how other people spend their time?
"I can't help wondering if this lady is guilty of a huge double standard: taking the errr, "mick" out of games players yet admiring sports-people who spend much more of each day (and are prepared to suffer more) fulfilling their obsession"
Paula Radcliff dropped a puddle in the middle of a race but gets millions in sponsorship deals, so the reward is worth the pain, effort and embarrassment. Sitting in your own room, not being paid, and putting yourself through a similar experience for fun is just plain crazy behaviour, it's also disgusting and pure lazyness. The games players in this situation, and keeping the running theme, are the equivalent of your dad whipping out his old chap in the middle of the parents race at a sports day rather than professional sportsperson in a competitive race.
Very true. I used to subscribe to Eve-Online and it amazed me how much time and effort some people would put it into. People happy to organise and manage corporations with hundreds even thousands of members. People willing to put in several hours preparing strategy for and then fighting huge campaigns. People willing to work out the machinations needed to build stuff and then figure out how to make a profit selling it.
I've not played many other MMORPGs but the complexity of Eve was staggering. Yet tens of thousands of people spent their leisure hours on it and from what I could tell put more effort into the game than they did anything else. If only that effort could be directed into doing something useful.
This is also a little like the open source community. Or wikipedia.
If only *that* effort could be directed into doing something useful. (With notable exceptions of course).
Perhaps it's symptomatic of the lack of fulfilment these people find in their real lives, people who may have abilities far beyond those required by their day jobs?
Maybe they didn't go to the right schools, or be born to the right parents to be able to realise their ambitions and thereby make the most of their talents? If so, it's a damning indictment of the structure of "real" society and the "real" economy that these people's efforts go (materially) unrewarded.
@Micky1
>>"Paula Radcliff dropped a puddle in the middle of a race but gets millions in sponsorship deals, so the reward is worth the pain, effort and embarrassment.
...
The games players in this situation, and keeping the running theme, are the equivalent of your dad whipping out his old chap in the middle of the parents race at a sports day rather than professional sportsperson in a competitive race."
So sport is only worth doing if you make money out of it?
I guess that makes the vast majority of amateur sportspeople pathetic timewasters.
And as for the 'embarrassment' side, why should people be embarrassed about something they do in private? It'd be a bit different if they were doing it in a room with loads of other people in.
And what's the big deal about pissing in a bottle anyway, as long as you don't start making a collection, or get the bottle mixed up with one you're going to drink out of?
FFS, urine is effectively filtered processed blood, and most people's blood, mine included, is good enough to remove and put into ill people to help make them better. It doesn't become magically evil as a result of passing through the kidneys.
While somebody else's might be unappealing, my own is unlikely to do me any harm.
Ever been alone in a tent in the middle of the night in wild weather when the choice is:
a) get dressed, get out of tent, get soaked, get in tent dripping wet, get undressed, try and find somewhere to put soaking wet jacket.
b) get bottle, use bottle, stick hand outside and empty bottle (or leave until morning)
believe me, b) is a much nicer option.
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