Far Too Many Conversations, Ideas, Et Cetera

A new story idea (perhaps short, but easily expanded to something longer):

We have a Fellow, who shall fill the lead role of our experience; think something along the lines of Edward Norton in Fight Club, a office rat, rather dissatisfied with his existence despite having attended a good college, having done well, and having then secured a quite good job with Blank Corporation X. Nonetheless, he is unenthusiastic about his existence, his relationships with others deteriorate rapidly as he begins plumbing the depths of archaic video games and the internet in search of some sort of ancillary reality that has more meaning than the one that he inhabits. Our Fellow's side quest starts to chew up more and more time and we watch as he loses touch with his friends, girlfriend, family, in exchange for a more perfect, digital world with new, more perfect digital friends. Eventually, Our Fellow moves into a run down shack in some unpleasant corner of town and slowly integrates himself more fully into his digital existence that comes to be far more important than the real world.

From there the ending is murky, perhaps he goes all in and constructs some sort of device that permanently locks him into digitality, or perhaps something draws him back to the real world, some binary friends draws him into a chemical, physical reality. Either way, the message is essentially the same--there is no real worth in our world at present, and perhaps the digital escape that we create is no better, either way, meaning is instilled by humanity, and what we as individuals deem worthy of our time is then what is worthy of our time, end of story.

Perhaps something for the Stanford docket, or it'll just have to sit and gestate for a few more years.