It’s an exciting time to be living the life of a Geek. Isn’t it? As gamers in this modern world, our choices for interaction among friends involve more than tired and time-worn staples like Poker Night and Monday Night Football. We can sit on our couch and deal out punishment to people we will never really meet. We can create personas that will fight in wars that never really happen.

A subscription to Xbox Live provides so much more than access to a video game. It’s a chance to create a parallel life to lead, free of consequence or mortal repercussions. People know us by an identity that we choose for ourselves. A gamertag is immortal, assuming you have unlimited respawns. In Project Mayhem, we have no names. Think about the people whom you would describe as “friend”, with no knowledge of the given moniker scribed on their birth certificates.

Sometimes, if you are lucky, that other life takes on a destiny all its own! The following is a true story, as well as an example of how truly bizarre our globally networked culture has become: In a development that has left me stunned, one of my known aliases has inherited $17,500,000. You don’t believe me? You need proof? Read below an excerpt from an e-Mail that I received this very week:

Dear XerxdeeJ,

I am Barr Peter Chris, a personal attorney to Mr. C.B. XerxdeeJ, a national of your country who used to work in Lome Togo. On the 21st of April 2002, my client lost his life in a car accident in Togo. After making several inquiries to your embassy to locate any extended relatives, I decided to trace his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family. I have contacted you to assist in retrieving the fund valued at $17.5 million, before it gets confiscated or is declared unserviceable. The Security Finance Company has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have his account confiscated within the next twenty one official working days.

I mean, WOW! You can imagine my utter shock, right? When I chose my gamertag [like a delicate and unique snowflake], I had no idea I was stumbling my way into a virtual Dynasty. What are the odds? Mr. CB XerxdeeJ even spells his last name that same way, bookended by capital letters. This is really weird.

With the boundaries between real life and cyberspace blurring the way they are, you can imagine the questions that are spinning in my head. Such as:

How many XerxdeeJ’s are there in the world?

How come I never ran into any of them on Xbox Live?

Do we have a Family Shield that looks like my icon?

Where is Lome Togo? Or is that a new Halo map?

Do poor driving skills run in the XerxdeeJ family?

Is that why I am always rolling my Warthog?

Will I get my payout in Microsoft Points?

Can I hire this dude to sue video game cheaters?

Do these f@#$ers think I was born yesterday?

Nice try, you ne’er-do-wells. You just spammed a Gamertag! Better luck next time, when you try to confirm my account information. Or perhaps you would like to warn me about accepting drinks from strangers at a LAN Party, only to wake up in a bathtub full of ice with my thumbs missing. And let’s not forget an impassioned plea to save National Podtacular Radio!

If you feeling all old-school, you could try to sell me a bridge in New Mombossa.

If you forward this blog post to ten people, all your wishes will be granted by magical kittens, and Bill Gates will send you a check every time it is passed on and that is no lie because my brother is a Judge and he said it is true.

Posted by XerxdeeJ