Yesterday was another BioShock day, though I have to admit that it's taking longer for me to get into the game nowadays. I'll save my quibbles for when I'm done.

I also rewatched Mimic. Are all three films so stylish? Though I did find myself wondering more than once why the characters weren't thinking.

At the Granite City Grill on Friday, we talked about Second Life — Pete and the Bionic Atheist were emphatically opposed to such potentially addictive electronic entertainment, but Radio Voice was all for the possibilities it opened up for people.

I think it should be obvious that I sided with Radio Voice, although with only one beer in me it took me a while to jump into such a spirited discussion.

Since I know something about the Internet, I should have piped up earlier, but interrupting someone else in order to give my two cents seemed so tactless. (It's also the kind of thing an extrovert would do without even thinking about... strange how so many people-people have no such sense of social decorum.)

I think that electronic activities are only really harmful when they substitute for "better" real life activities (lots of different criteria there), and that dangerously addicted people are by far the exception. However, Radio Voice and I never got far enough from the extreme examples in proving our point, and that's a shame. The homebound quadriplegics are also the exception.

The really substantial effect is the way our activities on interactive electronic media support our real-life egos: a blogger might self-identify as a journalist, a loner might find people "just like her," a gamer who's a total dork might be less depressed about himself if he's running riots online, etc. If it stays with us, we can't say that what we're doing online "doesn't matter."