is easier to escape reality than to change it.

In Jeremy's reality, he is not a good athlete at all. He is required to participate in an after-school activity, but rather than choose something like debate or science club that he might be good at, he chooses soccer because he believes he will never get to play. He avoids a real challenge rather than working to actually perform well.

Jeremy escapes reality by going online and pretending to be someone he is not. He tells his online friends that he scored the winning goal in the soccer game and his friends cheered for him, but the reality is that he actually scored for the opposing team and his teammates gave him a bloody nose. Jeremy escapes reality rather than changing it. Two of Jeremy's friends are also avoiding reality with false online personalities.

Nethermagus convinces Jeremy to stay in Nethergrave by contrasting unappealing reality with a fantastic virtual world. He reminds Jeremy many times of the negative points of his reality: he humiliated himself in the soccer game, his friends are lying to him, and his friends will soon be leaving him.

The fact that Jeremy doesn't believe he can change his life in the real world is shown as he thinks about his teammates passing him the ball and concludes, "As if they would." He thinks about whether his father makes real decisions about sending him a computer every year or if it is just an automatic order and decides, "It didn't matter." Jeremy has given up on changing reality and chooses to escape it.