@lasercats—
Well, a number of things might prevail. For example, those in the entertainment industries might have a special distaste not shared by the regular denizens. Or maybe there's just a very terrible fear of getting hit by trucks, and these reincarnation theories can't be made to jibe with returning to one's own nation in one's own time, because those who were reincarnated too often would try to re-establish their prior identities. But I think that the principal driver is probably that
many people are more successful playing computer games than they are in real life and therefore fantasize about the computer game becoming their real lives — with an occasional exception in which the main character finds himself a farm girl or somesuch.
In America, people fantasize about getting bit by radioactive spiders, which predate computer games.