I spent many fun hours there! It blew my mind to discover a game world that was so deeply player-driven and offered so many possibilities - my main character became a professional author...
I earned my first money in-world by writing poetry. At first I hand-wrote it and sold it on the street to other players (probably because they had compassion on a poor first-level wizard who didn't know anything about the game). Later on I had a book of my poems printed and sold in the local bookshops, and went on to write for one of the player-run newspapers. Good fun :-)
I've begun thinking in that direction too, after seeing how my peers have been moving all over the country in the last few years - first for uni, then for a job, then another job... I'm one of the movers myself, and I know why I moved, but I feel the cost of lost relationships quite heavily.
While I agree with your scepticism of our smart phone use, this comment doesn't do the article justice. (The author addresses that point and explains why he thinks that smart phone use, while a problem, is not the root cause.)
I earned my first money in-world by writing poetry. At first I hand-wrote it and sold it on the street to other players (probably because they had compassion on a poor first-level wizard who didn't know anything about the game). Later on I had a book of my poems printed and sold in the local bookshops, and went on to write for one of the player-run newspapers. Good fun :-)