In 2004, a boy became obsessed with WoW. He wrote an 80,000 word “in-character” journal from the perspective of his character. He soon became overwhelmed with grief that he couldn’t be with the characters in the game, then committed suicide to “be with them”. Do you think he was fictionkin? Or that if the fictionkin community had existed back then, he might’ve had an outlet for his feelings and avoided suicide?

Hi there anon. First of all, the boy in question, Zhang Xiaoyi was a 13 year old Chinese native, and the game he was addicted…