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  • Writer's pictureDrake M. Alexander

Virtual Factitious Disorder

Virtual Factitious Disorder - VFD

A mental disorder in which a person creates a virtual, usually cybernetic, identity and then identifies psycho-emotionally more with it than with any real life identity. A common sobriquet for this malady is “Munschhausen by Internet”. This disorder at best , generates, perpetuates or worsens a condition of personality disorder, but at worse can cause great emotional and psychological harm to others, sometimes actual financial suffering and identity theft, loss of employment or reputation, and chaos in real world relationships. It finds many cyber-pathways including social media and virtual grid metaverses such as Second Life.


Symptoms you may suffer from this disorder:

- You identify more strongly with your avatar or a role-play character you play, than with your real-world self.

- You spend far more time living and interacting as your avatar or a role-play character than you do with real people in the real world.

- You have felt at least once in recent months a strong sense of displacement from your actual body and the sensation that you are literally your avatar on a grid or even a character in a role-play region on that grid.

- You experience real and powerful emotions from how your avatar identity or a role-play character of yours is treated: joy, importance, personal power, love both unilateral and bilateral, erotic arousal and fulfillment, validation and okay-ness, respect, honor, dislike, hostility, anger, hate, and even a vicious desire to destroy someone.

- You take real actions to slander and harm real people because of their negative reaction to, or treatment of your avatar identity or a role-play character identity.If your avatar identity is treated poorly in either an out-of-character or in-character situation, you go into real world depression over it and may feel suicidal.

- You rejoice and feel genuinely loved in a role-play romance or virtual family or group, and you feel rejected, heartbroken or betrayed when it ends.

- You take correction of any noncompliance with a grid or role-play region's rules for interaction, out-of-character or in-character, very resentfully in a real and personal way, and compulsively lash out in interaction with administrators and social or role-play peers, unable to repress the impulse to do so.

- You cannot repress the compulsion to lash out at someone either in-character or out-of-character because of their treatment of your avatar or role-play identity or things about their avatar or role-play identity that generate real-world negative feelings in you. You have experienced disciplinary action from grid-region owners for this behavior possibly including exile from their region. You feel this is a very personal rejection of you and you viciously hate the owners of that region and feel deeply wronged by them for correcting your behavior that violated the region's rules. You feel like everything you said and did through your avatar or role-play character should have been fine and that they and their rules are in the wrong. You cannot wrap your understanding around their right as owners of a private region that they pay for to establish rules for guests in their region, that are compliant with the rules of the overall grid.

- You feel real hostility toward characters in a social or role-play environment because of their apparent fictional race or ethnicity, character personality, treatment of your character, gender or gender identity, religious beliefs, or use of language, including new gender pronouns for you particular real or virtual gender identity.

- You consistently or exclusively create virtual or role-play identities with the same real world disabilities or mental and personality disorders that you suffer with in real life. Examples include ADD, ADHD, Sociopathy, MPD, Anxiety disorders, and various phobias, to name a few.

- You expect kind treatment of your virtual identity, no matter how toxic your output is, the same as you expect or receive from caregivers in the real world.

- You feel like real life is hell, and only your virtual avatar life is worth living. You put no effort into improving your real world life circumstances and habits, putting everything into your virtual life. If internet or grid service is interrupted for any period of time, or your account is hacked, shut down by the grid owners or your role-play character is banned from a roleplay simulation, you feel like life is not worth living and you become depressed and even suicidal. If a role-play region, on which you feel alive, is shut down by the owners even for reason of their own financial circumstances, you are angry with the owners and feel morbidly depressed and doubt you will ever find another role-play region you will feel alive on again.


For a broader and more detailed presentation on this disorder and the damage it can do to yourself and others, see the following web article:

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