This story will now replace the cross-eyed bear in my nightmares:
BEIJING, China
A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.
The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.
Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.
The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.
The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."
China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the U.S.. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of PCs in public Internet cafes.
Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.
4 comments:
Quite a surprise this. Normally it is the Koreans who seem to drop dead in internet cafe's after too much online activities.
There was one case of a Koream playing too much 'World of Warcraft' and dropping dead - I think it was the fact that he wasn't eating during his xxx hours of play - not that I understand this. He was in an Internet CAFE. Surely he could have had the waitress bring him a sandwich...
That's good.
I now have visions of losing a hand when holding a full house, suffering a fatal heart attack and saying the final words:'I'd like to re-buy'
This strikes me as being propaganda from the Chinese Govt - an attempt to dissuade their citizens from playing games etc on the net.
Interesting angle. I wonder how the British Government would attempt the same goal. Given the advice on number of fruit and veg and 'Eat No More Than 6g Of Salt A Day', I would guess it would follow similar lines.
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