this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Y'all know that Ready Player One was a DYS-topia right guys?
But it was still owned privately. Ideally, the virtual paradise would use a federation method with an open protocol, so anyone could connect to it.
It was basically owned by Gaben who died and some other corporation tried to take over Valve.
That's the idea the book tries to convey, but even to the extent it gets idealized we see that Oasis is overmonetized and poor people have a harder time enjoying themselves compared to those who are better off. At one point Wade gets stuck on the education world because he doesn't have enough money to travel to other worlds.
Not that money doesn't buy entertainment in our world also, but we have a variety of free options too.
Exactly. The virtual world is still a dystopia that just looks like paradise. It's a virtual world that is designed specifically to introduce scarcity so it can be monetized. You can be anyone and do anything... As long as you can afford it.
It's got all the same problems as the real world, but some people can be Ultra Man or something if they're rich.
Can't help thinking of skull-with-sunglasses Shaun talking about Harry Potter as neoliberal high fantasy, because the only proposed solution was changing who's in charge. 'It would be very bad if some asshole owned this magical land! Oh good, we stopped him, and some protagonist-coded dork owns it instead. I guess we're safe forever.'
In Ready Player Two the protagonist dork fucks up the magical land without hesitation and has to save it again.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
I didn't know that meme, and the original tweet is funny and really hits the nail on the head for a lot of things...
But from what I've seen of the movie, Ready Player One is more like "Please create the Oasis, so that asshole can have fun".
Yep, Ernest Cline was always pro Torment Nexus.
Snowcrash was a dystopia too but that didn't stop tech bros from jerking it to the metaverse.
I think most govts and corporations see the word "dystopia" and understand "how-to manual"