Life has become like a shitty MMO RPG with strategic elements. While this might sound like a spicy critique of modern life, it’s hard not to see some frightening comparisons when we start seriously criticizing the systems we find ourselves trapped in: bureaucracy, career ladders, performative social media quests, productivity tracking, even gamified apps that reward you for drinking water or filing your taxes.

A “shitty MMO” implies:

• A bloated world full of pointless fetch quests.
  
• A grind-heavy loop with poor narrative payoff.
  
• Uninspired design where agency feels fake.
  
• PvP dynamics in co-op disguises (hello, workplace drama).
  

The “strategic elements” I suggest are those activities that despite the existential crises, people are still trying to min-max their lives with calendars, life hacks, bullet journals, biohacks, and emotional spreadsheets. There’s intentionality, yes—but it’s layered over broken mechanics. Modern life, particularly under late capitalism and hyperconnectivity, functions like a buggy game where optimization has replaced meaning.

When you really think about the parallels between modern work life and playing an MMORPG, they’re actually scarily striking:

• Daily quests: Email inbox zero.
  
• NPC interactions: Awkward small talk at work.
  
• XP farming: Grinding for raises or social clout.
  
• Lag: Bureaucratic delays, mental health burnout.
  
• Patch notes: Cultural trends updating faster than human adaptation can handle.

Thinking of what a “Real Life” MMO would be visually and tonally, my imagination conjures a grainy, grey, overpopulated digital world where avatars bump into each other with lag, side quests never end. Plus, the main plotline is so convoluted no one remembers why they’re doing it besides the modest XP, skill point, and loot rewards. It drips with a stylized apathy that could easily be rendered in a vaporwave-meets-dystopian-BBS visual language. I think of Glitchcore  aesthetics, lo-fi character sheets, overclocked status bars, and consistently broken HUDs. Every new map is akin to the worst-designed zone in any online game you’ve rage-quit.

Such an MMO metaphor collapses the boundary between life as game and game as metaphor for existential confusion. If you’re not choosing the game, and you can’t exit the server, are you really playing? What does it mean to play a role you didn’t choose in a game you didn’t design—and where no one remembers the objective?

There’s a bit of Camus’ absurdism here—Sisyphus with a daily login bonus. There’s also a quiet nihilism creeping in, masked by the joke. It raises some important questions:

• Is agency real if the system is rigged?
  
• Are we optimizing for survival or fulfillment?
  
• Can we “mod” our reality? Or only cope within it?
  
• If the game is poorly designed, do we still owe it our best effort?
  

I’m definitely returning to water this particular seed at a later date. There’s a lot more I can riff on with this subject!