After my first look at the helpless little foam-filled creatures of The Asylum, I knew I had to do something to save them. I was their therapist, and I (apparently) had all necessary tools to bring them back to health. It is a good thing I am not actually a medical professional. My hasty attempts at medicating them did not have much effect on their conditions. When I discovered the electric shock therapy machine hiding under the bed, I figured I could fry them into a state of death or near death, which would get them off my hands. After minutes of pumping high voltage into the little green alligator, I became frustrated. He just wouldn't die. And then I remembered that he was a little plush animal; or, rather, he was a little bit of code written to make the image of a little plush animal appear on my computer screen. However, it was too late. I had already become emotionally invested in the "lives" of my patients. I couldn't even kill them to get them off my hands. The only choice I was left with was to buy them.

When I followed the link to the online store, the thrill of consumer impulse quickly remedied the frustration I'd felt in the asylum. If I'd only typed the digits from my credit card into the visually pleasing website I would have rescued the alligator from the asylum, and myself from feelings of failure and self-doubt. That's not bad for around forty bucks. After all, it was my responsibility to save the poor little creatures--and my initial attempts had failed.

This kind of marketing is so eerily affective. The asylum environment evoked feelings of fear for the helpless animals; but it also reminded me of the comforting atmosphere of being cared for by a doctor or parent. And who can resist trying to help cute little animals? Anyone who would try to do anything other than rescue them is obviously mentally disturbed, and may even belong in an asylum herself. So far, the emotions brought about by the asylum include fear, nostalgia, and guilt. The ease with which we can wipe these emotions away by retreating to an online marketplace has an opiate affect. Playing the asylum game evokes real emotions, but these emotions come out of fictive circumstances. Participation in this type of virtual world temporary replaces the emotions we feel about the actual circumstances of our real lives. This is not unlike the affects mainstream media have on people--affects which facilitate constant participation in the capitalist cycle by way of creating virtual worlds into which people can emotionally invest themselves. We, and I am referring to the collective Euro-American consumer culture, buy into this cycle constantly. It is all around us, and it takes conscious effort to distinguish between entertainment with capitalist motives and entertainment without--that is, if entertainment without capitalist motives still exists.

-Lori