WHAT’S A VIRTUAL PET, ANYWAY?

Virtual is one of those words you hear a lot of these days. It’s virtual this and virtual that … a lot of times it’s virtual reality or virtual pet. No doubt about it, virtual is a word that has been virtually overused a whole bunch.

In truth, virtual means “a lot like, but not quite the real thing” or, something that has a lot of the same attributes or qualities of the real thing, but is not real. It’s pretty simple, really: virtual reality is not really reality. So, a virtual pet is a lot like a real pet, but not a real pet.

If you think of all the things that make up a real pet, like the fact it has to eat, play, sleep and sometimes take medicine, then take all those needs a real pet has and put them into a computer chip, and you have a virtual pet.

So, whenever somebody says virtual, it always means close to being real, but not really real.

I have a million Tamagotchi. One of them, it evolves and a lot of times it got Agumon. I used to have all the names. All the papers got lost. I used to play with them but they ran out of batteries. Digimon should make one. I play when I get it for a few months and then it gets a little boring and then it runs out of batteries. You get to hook it up to another one and they get to battle. I like that part. I lost at it twice. The first two times my Mom won. I was mad. I don’t like losing to my Mom.

—Colin