This is an extremely rare, serious post, from Jane Vodka.

While fantasy is fine, it shouldn’t replace reality. On the surface, escapism is a wonderful thing. In fact, for many of us, it is really the only thing.

And that’s a bad thing.

In our modern society, is has become too easy to completely isolate ourselves socially while scratching the needs of the social itch with faux interactions.

Doing so allows us to “morph” into something that is not a natural state for us as human beings. We begin to live in a fantasy world that ignores the reality around us.

For some of us, this leads to being a “homebody” and we become sedentary. Gaining weight, losing muscle… essential finding a way to live vicariously through our electronics.

For some, this is video games. If you don’t really believe it can be a problem, start searching the internet to see what people say. Don’t just look to see what they say about it, look to see what they say they want:

“I want to stay home and play video games and watch TV all day”- Gamespot forums

“My wife said I can stay home playing video games instead of going to see her parents this weekend” – Reddit

“My son is a 20 year old addict” -On-Line Gamers Anonymous

For some it is binge watching television shows:

“Binge TV watching has a bad name, associated as it is with binge eating, a habit followed by guilt and fatness, or, worse, with binge drinking, a habit followed by blackouts and regret. That rep is undeserved.” -DuJour

“According to new research, people who binge-watch are more likely to be depressed and lonely, two factors that are also marked by harmful binge behaviors such as eating and drinking.” -Science.Mic

“Adults who watched more than three hours of TV a day doubled their risk of premature death compared to those who watched less…”- Reader’s Digest

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “I don’t have those problems” or “those are personal choices, people can do what they want, it doesn’t affect me.” Well, you’re wrong. It can affect you. It  has already started to affect a lot of people. It is fundamentally changing our society.

Did you get a chance to read the Time Magazine article, Porn and the Threat to Virility?

Basically, young men who grew up on internet porn are now claiming that they just aren’t aroused by real women.

Ha. Silly. Right? Right? That story is going nowhere.

Right…

“The Japanese press has taken to calling it sekkusu shinai shokogun: celibacy syndrome.” – Business Insider

A few thoughts from an article on Tech Insider titled ‘Herbivore men’ could be the reason nobody’s having sex in Japan’

“Only 1.001 million babies were born in Japan in 2014 — a record low — and 1.269 million people died.”

and

“…17.9 percent (of men) reported little or no interest in having sex — or even an extreme dislike of it…”

From Japanese Times News article titled “In sexless Japan, almost half of single young men and women are virgins: survey”

“A survey of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 found that almost 70 percent of unmarried men and 60 percent of unmarried women are not in a relationship.”

and

“Moreover, many of them have never got close and cuddly. Around 42 percent of the men and 44.2 percent of the women admitted they were virgins.”

Thoughts on the cause of this vary, but most echo this:

“Japan’s lack of interest in sex is blamed on everything from a stagnant economy to Japanese manga fans favoring fantasy over reality.” -CNN

If you can’t put together what I am saying her for yourself, you haven’t considered the problem fully enough. If you don’t understand what the problem is, or how it can affect you, you haven’t considered the problem fully enough.

I may sound hypocritical, as I sit here and type this up, hoping to someday make money off of the things that I write, the entertainment that I write; the Romance, the smut, the porn. Whatever you want to call it.

But I don’t think that I am. I think fantasy has always had a place in human survival. I think fantasy is one of the things that separate us from the animals. It gives us hopes and desires. It makes us aspire. We use it to better ourselves.

Until we replace reality with it.

Consider this a public service announcement from Jane Vodka: Make sure you live your life. Don’t piss it away on fake fantasies. Use fantasy to augment your life, to improve you life, to make your life bearable. Don’t use it to distract you from being alive.

Now I’ma go drink this one off so I don’t have to think about it anymore.