Excerpt from the article:
(12-18) 04:00 PDT Seoul -- Choi Yeon-sung avoids going out most days, and when he's on the street, he puts his head down -- to dodge the whispers, the stares and the pleas for autographs.
Such are the hardships of a celebrity video game player in South Korea.
I guess it figures. All the people that we idolize-- actors, singers, sports players-- are gaining enormous fame and fortune for doing something that we all did for fun when we were kids.
I mean, as kids, most of us enjoyed singing songs. Most of us played pretend, and most of us threw a ball around from time to time. And now, as adults, we have a certain fascination for people who can take these seemingly simple activities almost to the level of an art form, doing them with such skill that they make gigantic amounts of money just from the expenditures of people who are willing to pay to see them do it.
This happens even when (as in the case of some actors) there is very little actual skill present, and the individual in question got this ridiculously high-paying job because of other traits, like inherited wealth or good looks. In some ways, this may fascinate people even more, because not only is the person making millions doing an activity that kids do for fun, but he or she is making millions without even doing this activity much better than kids do it. It's the American dream of attaining fame and fortune without any significant effort.
So it's no surprise that some country, someday, would convey this kind of celebrity status to video game players. I say it's great-- at least video game players have to have actual skill in order to achieve celebrity status.
I just wish that there were some kind of respect for people who don't do anything fun and useless for a living, and instead work long hours doing hard manual labor that benefits others in a tangible way. Why is it people like that who earn minimum wage?
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