Guitar solos and exercise. Apparently, these are the significant life experiences being hijacked by the virtual experience, according to Misty Harris over at Canada.com.

Citing Guitar Hero, Wii, and marketing campaigns, the writer claims that real life has been replaced by the (more expensive, I might note) virtual realm.

Well, there is no questioning the dominance of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, with their guitar solos and fake musiciainship, in the basements of North America. But it is perhaps stretching it a bit to say that “organic human experience is being knocked off.”

Sure, people spend a lot of time on Second Life, but there is a strong counter-argument to be made that SL’s (along with all sorts of other virtual worlds) experience is not a knockoff of real life, but a whole new (albeit, an anti-exercise one) chapter in the human race. Sure, guitar-solo numbers are down, and PlayStation Home lurks on the horizon – a platform that may have a serious impact on one’s real, ‘organic’ life – I think that the decrease in guitar solos is, in fact, a good thing. And Wii? Isn’t that exercise?

Until they replace the trip to the grocery store, the walking-of-the-dog, or cleaning one’s apartment with their virtual equivalent, I’ll remain skeptical that ‘human experience’ is taking a serious and long-term thrashing.