Massively Multiplayer Online Games are real life, and I’m not talking LARPing.

MMO’s all run roughly the same system: you level up, form a party, and go raid dungeons for the pursuit of “loot.” The game is essentially the structure, story plays a tertiary role at best and is largely there to cloak this system from derogatory claims of the game being a “grindfest.” Yet despite the repetition there are still millions who log in every day and giddily fork out cash for the “new” iteration. Why? Peel the cover back and you’ll find a mirror beneath, and a face staring back thats devoid of all the messy details of reality. In these fantasy worlds it just seems brighter, simpler, and easier to achieve importance and the idealized versions of ourselves. So since yesterday was April Fool’s it seems apt to mention that this is without a doubt the longest running hoax of all time.

Its one you’ve heard before, not a new refrain by any means but instead of getting tired of it like we might a song blaring endlessly on the radio we just keep coming back for more. Consumerism, the one true God of the Western world.

Here we’ve spun addiction into a virtue, glorified excess and thumbed our noses at frugality. Consumerism is like an alcoholic sorority girl at a Jell-o wrestling tournament. We roll in it, slather our bodies with it, hungrily lap it up until pushed to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes we wake up to the harsh light of day and look aghast at what we’ve done. Shame, horror, disgust. But just as soon we are back again, sliding into that pool and trying to pin the next slippery foe to the floor. All for that fleeting satisfaction of the prize, the next piece of stuff.

Just how your level 20 mage tries to nab that extra 5 gold so he can get that level 20 staff, the level 19 one just doesn’t have the same luster anymore. In my view, obsessing about stuff erodes culture and society in the ways that most matter, the effects of which sometimes aren’t obvious for decades. This isn’t a negotiation. You can’t just fold the old values of personal growth, family, and friendship in with the new and tag each with the same importance. Taking the red pill reformats human consciousness like a hard drive with ever shrinking partitions. There is no purple pill.

For those with enough good fortune to be raised by more “outside the box” parents you have an advantage out of the gate and life is more about emboldening your resistance to the pressures of conformity. Most others are born into this deceptive landscape, as their parents were before them. The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” is often bandied with haughty finger wagging yet how many actually live it? A declaration that is just as empty as how that sorority girl feels when personal reflection comes knocking. Breaking out of this pattern of sentient cows isn’t easy either, each new thing comes with the possibility of bumping up your social status, “Dang look at that guy’s car, wish I had that. Maybe if we hang out I’ll learn how I can get one too.”

Just like an MMO theres a reward structure built into it all that makes you want to complete just one more quest and follow the chain of actions until you get that new item, then the whole process restarts for something bigger and shinier that takes twice as long. Its a treadmill that we leash ourselves to without thinking. You can cut the cord but it takes time and resilience and you’ll have to brave the cluster of advertising fleas urging you to forgo bathing, you wouldn’t know who you are without them right? So just buy something and you’ll feel better. For a little while. The perfect citizen is the perfect consumer so knock off all the protests, requests for oversight, and complaints about being poisoned. Top men are handling it. Top men. But if you think the answer is waiting for a white knight to come galloping in to liberate us you’ll be waiting forever. No, the emancipator is within.

Here are some ways to break free of the treadmill:

• Avoid locations soaked in advertising – These are places like the mall, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. Try spending your time at someplace like a park or a trail instead and if you have to buy something choose a single store. These huge stores have poured in millions in researching consumer patterns and are organized in just the right way to make you see and pause as much as possible on your route to the thing you needed.

• Avoid mainstream news/media – Advertising has long been the backbone of newspapers, and the media overall. It generates cash that keeps them going and many of the stations rely on “shock jock” tactics to keep you from changing the channel and keep those ad dollars flowing. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC all spin narratives to keep pre-ordained stories going even when there isn’t actual news.

• Read more – Limit internet reading, read books, and avoid magazines. Exercise restraint on online reading and try to keep it to an hour or less a day, your attention span will thank you. Magazines and many blogs are also chock full of ads and structured with catchy short buzzwords that like news coverage, are designed to keep you from clicking or flipping away.

• Awareness of urges – This taps into the Id part of psychology and impulse control. Personally I have a problem with peanut butter cups so I’ve started keeping a tally of each time I get the desire to eat one. Instead of letting urges control me from moment to moment I can see how frequent they come, and the overall size is unsettling. This gives me greater control and reflection.  Do the same thing with media consumption and entertainment urges and you’ll be shocked at what you notice.