They’re Ignoring The Biggest Extra-Life That The World Can Give Them

Back when I worked at a gaming company as in-game support, one parent in a divorce filed a complaint with us about the other parent harassing them.

This is pretty common: lots of people meet in-game, fall in love, marry, and then fall out of love after finding out what living with this person’s like, or that moving across the country and getting a new job was a bigger problem than anticipated.

I quickly discovered this wasn’t the case here; these were two parents whose relationship predated the game. I knew this, because chat logs between the two parents were primarily angry discussions about their eight-year-old son and who’d get custody rights.

It turns out, neither parent wanted custody, since raising the child would detract from their game time. Interspersed with these awful parents trying to disown their son was the occasional message from said son, who would ask one parent or the other for help with homework or if he could help with dinner. Both parents would dismiss the child regularly.

I got this petition at three am. It took me half an hour to find the specific comment that my petitioner found worthy of complaint. I filed the petition as quickly as I could, then called my girlfriend to tell her how much I loved her.