The Loner Myth of VR

We have come to take for granted the narrative that our obsession with our iPhones and our fascination for VR is going to turn us into a network of isolated, hyper-focused, constantly distracted, filter fetishizing, soylented fatties like in WALL-E:

But there is an alternative story that I am beginning to experience.

Ever since starting to experiment with VR the past few months in our studio, I have experienced some of the silliest, most playful — and genuinely human — offline interactions since starting my first web company SiteSpecifc in 1995.

The fact is that VR is janky right now, and things don’t really fit.

Not these clunky HMDs that either let in too much light above your nose, or pinch too hard on your forehead.

Not all these new PC desktops running Windows 10 with souped-up, turbo-cooled graphics accelerator cards that have to be rebooted constantly, with the old control-alt-delete key chord.

VR doesn’t take Mac or iPhone. Instead you have all these USB and HDMI and DVI cables coming in and out of the back of your PC. And some things get in the way, or else get frozen when you enter your virtual world.

We got lucky when my friend Ted gave us an extra production model version of the HTC Vive two months ago, and that got us started.

Then, lo and behold, while my co-founder of Crossfader Ilias was away in Minnesota last month, a package showed up on his desk that said Oculus and I was like, “wtf?” And he said go ahead and open it, that it was probably because he was one of the first backers of Oculus on Kickstarter four years ago.

So now we have both the Vive and the Oculus set up in our studio, and perhaps soon things will settle into a parade of VR junkies walking in silently and jacking into cyberspace. But for now, ironically, VR is the one thing that gets everybody to put down their iPhones and roll up their sleeves and actively help eachother transition into whatever simulated world awaits. There is a kind of physical, human assistance required for each VR voyage, like needing somebody to belay you when you are climbing.