Know what really gets our chastity ring in a knot? When we're so overwhelmed with updating this paunch of a website, calling Nobu's reservation line non-stop and monitoring the waves in Rita Cosby's hair that we don't have enough time to play EverQuest to build our characters up from virtual squatters into virtual slumlords.

Luckily, there's plenty of cheap labor in China available to outsource your video game playing. Yes — you can now pay other people to undertake your recreation.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."

Suddenly we realize how lucrative this blogging gig actually is. While we don't get to kill monsters, we do play our fair share of Frogger and earn much more than $250/month. But only because we don't work for Jason Calacanis.

Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese [David Barboza, NYT]