Oh, I’ve encountered it in “reality” often enough. There was this group where my rogue ended up tanking while the three shadow priests kicked ass and the mage sheeped anything that moved, after kicking out that warrior who got wiped before we were out of the instance (I got a “lol” from him, then we all got the message that our ignores of him were being taken out as “character doesn’t exist any more”).
What I haven’t seen is movies.
Something I find weirder than that is the whole Second Life money>real money thing. I’ve never played the game myself, but I ave read some articles about it. There are several people who use the selling of real estate in the game as their whole income. And this is not in other, faraway countries- one person was Canadian, the other American IIRC.
That’s pretty horrifying. I can’t imagine being around people like that all the time.
I would suggest you not travel to Southeast Asia. Maybe also not to Africa or Latin America. It’s a whole other world.
The guys over here are indeed industrious. There’s a good story here on how local Black Marketeers are eagely awaiting the new iPhone.
Excerpt: “In Thailand, a Southeast Asian hub for pirated goods, where the iPhone is not officially for sale, dealers boast that they need only a few weeks to smuggle in the trendy phones and unlock them for use on local mobile networks.”
I couldn’t help but think of this Penny Arcade strip (it’s a 3-parter).
Add Russia, where by the way and in my limited experience a man’s word is worth a lot more than a piece of paper.