Making phone calls from anywhere, chatting, and entertaining oneself on the Internet. A lifestyle that overtakes our everyday lives. The organization of our existences is increasingly enslaved to the use of networks. Alongside a sclerotic society in which it is difficult to find one’s place, new virtual spaces open access to marvelous universes. Portraits.
Lost. In her twenties, wearing low-rise jeans with gaping rips, retro hairstyle, designer glasses, and a scarf from the French team, she has done the unthinkable: forgotten her mobile phone. The young student waits in the bar. The last words of her best friend come to mind: “Meet at Thor, Cours Saleya”. No room for confusion. She curses the moment when in haste, she changed bags to correct a fashion mistake, without thinking to grab the sacrosanct mobile phone, the rallying tool of an entire generation. No phone, no means of transport. The thread of the network is broken. Active memory and microprocessors have replaced gray matter: she knows no number and can’t contact anyone. The night of the World Cup final. Cinderella is definitively alone, cut off from her tribe. It’s not that she loves football… But without a phone, the carriage will not pass. Sworn. She will never forget it again. To relive such a situation is out of the question.
Happy. Finally home from the office. Before even taking off his pair of shoes, he turns on his computer. As a manager at a major distribution company and divorced, he spends a lot of time on a dating site. Every evening and weekend, he transforms into a digital James Dean. A gentleman to the ladies, he multiplies virtual encounters. Him, the embodiment of shyness. The one who could never approach someone of the opposite sex without stuttering, blushing with shame, and slipping away apologizing. Not a single real date. A ministerial schedule on the web. His phone has been unplugged for over a month. He only communicates through emails. His mother can’t reach him and is despairing at the other end of the country. Tonight, she decides to reach him through email with technical help from a friend. “You have a new message”. “My little Jacques,…”. Deleted. He does not want to hear from Jacques anymore.
Alive. “Click”. Connections established. A surge of pleasure runs through his frail young body slumped in the chair. A sensation surely triggered by an increase in adrenaline levels in the blood. With pupils dilated from satisfaction, the teenager rides on the back of a tiger through settings of forests infested with giant spiders and magical trolls. His character, a warrior with magical powers named “Razor”. He is what one might call, in his jargon, a “hardcore gamer”, a “gik” who plays “no life”: a man or woman, between 12 to 35 years old, who lives only through his avatar, his digital representation in an imaginary world. The medium: MMORPGs. Online network games on the Internet that allow thousands of people connected around the world, to clash in a themed universe (for example, the heroic-fantasy universe made famous by the movie “The Lord of the Rings”). His dream “to receive unemployment benefits for life”. Opening the door to the pizza delivery person as his only ‘real’ concern. His last nightmare, an Internet connection cut for more than three days. Unenrolled and without outside activities, he is still the idol of an entire friendly network, one of the best players in the region.
