I was the one who said escapism was considered an improvement over the real world. My logic being: why would anyone want to "escape" to a world that is actively worse than reality?
Because at least in that escapist world they can be the hero, or someone who makes a difference.
Put it this way: imagine you are Vladimir Putin. Why have your country into a war-ridden, economically stagnant, miserable dump when you could instead trade and work with your neighbours, build schools, encourage modern industry, increase human development, and turn it into a well-developed, richer and happier one? Because the latter would almost certainly involve giving up your job as dictator. Some people would get more of a buzz as slum lord than as a mediocrity with comfortable, middle class job.
Nor does someone playing the escapist fiction have to put up with a lot of the stuff that a real world would have: they don't have to really experience swords in the guts, cut ligaments, dysentary, tetanus, lice, ticks, ill-fitting clothing, boots with holes in, hunger, thin gruel and stale bread, exhaustion, maiming and death etc. It's all just numbers on a screen and imagination, with a sense of satisfaction at the end that they achieved tasks and won.