A long time ago, I started to write a story about a world in which people lived their entire lives in an Internet virtual reality.
I wanted to write a dystopian story because I felt that all the most famous dystopian stories are exaggerated beyond the point of being realistic. The TV Tropes article on dystopias captures my feelings at the time:
A dystopia is a social commentary literally in the background, as is a utopian setting. The two settings share a problem in sometimes being a little too one-note. The author is thinking “capitalism sucks!”, for instance, and everything wrong with the world turns out be clearly the fault of nasty Corrupt Corporate Executives and their nasty, greedy megacorporations. Conversely, it could be “governments suck!” and the corporations are the last line of defense against the evil, totalitarian bureaucrats.
I do think novels like Brave New World provide important lessons, but the lessons are so spelled out that they start to come off as lectures that are forced down your throat. After John hanged himself at the end of Brave New World, I half expected him to suddenly wake up, noose still tight around his neck, and tell me, Arrested Development style, “And THAT’S why you don’t precondition people to become docile and incapable of independent thought!”
The kind of dystopian story I wanted to create wasn’t much of a dystopian story at all. I wanted to create a world in which it isn’t really clear whether it’s a utopia or a dystopia, even by the end of the story. (I’m sure stories like these exist, but I don’t currently know of any.) My Internet world would not be like the dystopian world of Forster’s The Machine Stops, which, like Brave New World and every other dystopian story, takes too many cheap shots. People are not going to stop valuing love, or sex, or original ideas or face-to-face contact or traveling outside of their tiny hexagonal cells.
The world I envisioned was a virtual reality that simulates the stimuli for all five of your senses so completely that it is indistinguishable from real life. Images appear as if they’re actually right in front of you; food tastes as if you’re actually eating it; sex feels as if you’re actually having it. It’s like The Matrix, except that machines aren’t the ones subjecting us to it. We create our own Matrix and voluntarily immerse ourselves in it. I always thought this would be a more likely situation.
It would be a world that perfectly reproduces all of the experiences we know and value from our beloved physical plane of existence, without having to sacrifice anything. Yes, it wouldn’t be technically face-to-face contact to meet someone online this way, but it would be difficult to construct an argument that explains what makes it any different in practice. Love still exists. Individuality still exists. Art still exists. But there wouldn’t be any of the problems associated with living in the physical world, for the simple reason that virtual resources are infinite. Things like hunger, disease, brutality, etc. would all be not only wiped out, but IMPOSSIBLE within the virtual world–the programming simply would not include these things. You wouldn’t even have to experience any physical pain (unless, you know, you’re into that, in which case you can ask to have it included in your body’s programming).
In effect, the world I envisioned was more like the world of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, but without the catch–no one has to suffer for the good of society. For all intents and purposes, it would be a perfect utopia.
But then the question becomes: How do you find meaning in a world in which nobody suffers? It’s a pertinent question because if this kind of society is not desirable, what good does it do us to try to eradicate the world’s problems?
The idea of games is a big theme in many of my favorite books, like Card’s Ender’s Game, Strauss’ The Game, McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken, etc., and I wanted it to be a big theme of my story as well. When there is no suffering, everything becomes a game. There are winners and losers, but ultimately, the outcome of the game has no significant consequences. It’s just a distraction.
But my main character, Jack (a temporary name that I wanted to change later), wants life to be more than just a game, and as a result he feels detached from a society that places such heavy emphasis on gaming. He wants to be a real hero in a world where the only heroes are generals in pretend wars.
The main plot was going to be about Jack meeting a girl, because that’s what all of my stories are about, naturally. It’s a typical manic pixie dream girl romance (also what all of my stories are about) in which the girl’s infectious exuberance allows the brooding male hero to feel excitement again. Jack falls in love with her, loses his feelings of detachment and starts to find meaning in his life.
And then, she disappears. One day, she simply isn’t there, and she leaves no trace of her existence. For the rest of the story, Jack tries to figure out what the hell happened, to no avail. There’s a part in which he sees another girl who talks using one of the unique mannerisms of the girl he loved. The two girls look nothing alike, but through the power of Internet anonymity, it could easily be the same girl that he met before, using a different avatar. He accosts her, and she insists she has no idea who he is. He starts looking like a crazy person in front of everyone until the moderator decides to boot him from the server.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to end this story, which is one of the reasons I never continued with it. That’s the problem with writing a story that isn’t just one-note. There’s no obvious ending. I definitely wasn’t going to take the cop-out route and have Jack kill himself, even if he had experienced anything drastic enough to merit that, which he hadn’t. I think I wanted Jack to just stay in the virtual world, and do his best to cope with the way the world is. It’s sort of an anticlimax, but that’s how life is. Life is full of anticlimaxes.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is that you can never really know people. My virtual reality world is a good medium for demonstrating this principle. First, the anonymity of the Internet makes it extraordinarily easy to put up walls and avoid investment. Second, nobody experiences any suffering with which others can empathize. Both of these phenomena thus heighten the impersonal nature of people’s interactions.
But it doesn’t take a different world to show that you can never really know people. Lots of books explore this principle (John Green’s Looking for Alaska comes to mind.) And in fact, I had an experience similar to Jack’s just recently.
A girl messaged me on OkCupid. The first two sentences of her message read, “You are my dream dude. That being said, I’ve only been on this site for two days so I’m going to assume you are too good to be true.” I looked at her profile, and she didn’t really seem like my type, but I always like it when a girl is straightforward. I was busy at the time, but a couple weeks later, we met up in San Francisco.
It was one of the best dates I’ve been on in a while. We had dinner, then went to a bar and talked about anything and everything until we had no awareness of time. At one point, she told me I was exactly the way she’d imagined. There was a photo booth at the bar, so we took some pictures. I suggested we kiss for the last one, and we did, just in time for the camera. We went to another bar, talked some more, went into the back where there was a completely deserted dance floor, and danced and made out. We went back to her place, where we watched a movie and fell asleep. She drove me to the BART station in the morning. I rode home, thinking that, against my expectations, she just might be exactly what I need right now.
Three weeks and a few texts from me later, that morning is still the last I’ve heard from her. Like Jack, I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to work out what happened.
Maybe she just wanted to have fun for one night, and does not feel any explanation is necessary.
Maybe she has drama going on with an ex or something that’s preventing her from contacting me.
Maybe she was arrested.
Maybe I am socially clueless and she actually didn’t enjoy the date at all.
Maybe, through some weird technological error, her phone hasn’t received any of my messages, and she’s been waiting for me to contact her the whole time.
Maybe she got into a serious accident and wound up in the hospital.
Maybe she was actually a pre-op transsexual and is afraid to contact me again until after her operation because she thinks I’ll be really weirded out if I find out she has a penis.
I can go crazy thinking about these things too much. I mean, literally crazy. As in, I find myself starting to wonder whether the date actually happened at all. Perhaps I hallucinated the whole thing.
If she were to contact me again, I’d be completely okay with anything she told me. I mean, we only went on one date. If she wanted to go on another date, great. If she wanted to just be friends, that’s cool, I can handle that. If she wanted to be very casual acquaintances who rarely contact each other, I can handle that. And if she just never wanted to see or hear from me again, I can handle that too.
The only thing I can’t handle is not knowing what the hell happened.
And yet, here I am, in an impersonal world that is only destined to become more impersonal, trying desperately to attribute meaning to an experience that I will probably never fully understand.
I wanted to create a dystopian story that wasn’t just one-note, that didn’t have clear answers. So here’s the question: is the virtual reality world a dystopia, in which the circumstances ruin people’s ability to make deep connections with each other and live meaningful lives? Or is it a utopia, and is Jack the one who needs to grow up and accept a world that’s as perfect as a world can reasonably be expected to be?
Can I really blame a girl for not returning my texts, when no one should reasonably have any obligation to contact someone after a single date?
I know that a more mature person would be able to just accept something like this and move on. But I derive the entire meaning of my existence from the connections I make with other people. Yet, so often when I interact with people, it feels like there’s some kind of disconnect. People rarely just tell you candidly what’s really going on. Maybe to avoid confrontation, maybe because they’re afraid of being exposed, maybe just because they don’t know how. Whatever the reason, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
I just wish the world didn’t have to be so impersonal sometimes.
I never dated anyone in high school. In college, I was a serial monogamist. I had a new girlfriend for each year that I was in college (the freshman year girlfriend, the sophomore year girlfriend, etc.) Only in my post-grad life, and mostly only in the last year or so, have I had many experiences with less traditional kinds of relationships. I now share my thoughts on the pros and cons of some of these experiences with you.
Disclaimer: These encounters reached various stages of sexual intensity, which I will not be divulging explicitly. I’m very open, though, so if you’d really like to know the details, ask away, creepers. 🙂
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The Ex Hook-Up
The Recipe: We break up, deciding we’re better off as friends. We see each other again a few days later. Things get steamy. I ask her what the hell we’re doing, and she says she doesn’t have a problem with hooking up even now that we’re broken up. Dumbfounded, I see no reason not to accept the proposition. And we continue to hook up, off and on, for the better part of a year.
Advantages: Already a well-established emotional connection, but without having to worry about being in love, or having a future together. Extremely convenient–don’t need to spend all your time with her, but always have someone to turn to. Still have someone to be close with and talk about problems. Doesn’t interfere with pursuing other opportunities in theory.
Disadvantages: Does interfere with pursuing other opportunities in practice. Relationship needs are already fulfilled, which might affect emotional connections with other women in insidious ways. Even if it doesn’t affect your ability to connect emotionally with other women, feelings of jealousy arise whenever new women come into the picture. Ex feels like she is being replaced. In worst-case scenario, ex tries to exert direct influence over your love life. (Naturally, mine turned out to be worst-case.) Even if you’re no longer hooking up with your ex, even if your ex already has another boyfriend, these issues can still come up. That’s why pretty much any dating blog will tell you that being friends with an ex is a bad idea.
The FWB
The Recipe: A friend invites me to a party she’s hosting at her place in Davis. There, she introduces me to a girl she thinks I’ll like. I talk to the girl for an hour over drinks, then take her onto the dance floor. Things get steamy. We ditch the party for an hour to fool around in her car. We exchange numbers and agree to meet up again if either one of us happens to be in the other’s area.
The circumstances are perfect for this type of relationship. I go visit my parents in Folsom every couple of weeks, and Davis is right on the way. It’s frequent enough to satisfy our needs, but not frequent enough for it to develop into something more significant. We text each other and chat online periodically, but interact mostly when we’re about to meet up.
Advantages: Very low level of commitment. Easy to pursue other opportunities simultaneously, especially with the distance. Significant differences in lifestyle or philosophy don’t matter. She seemed somewhat materialistic, which would have made her a poor match for me if we’d wanted to be more serious. As it was, we both found each other fun and interesting, and we enjoyed each other’s company. That was enough.
Disadvantages: Missing the deeper emotional connections of something more serious. Low level of commitment means no obligation to explain any decisions whatsoever. Which is exactly what she did–abruptly stop returning my texts and chat messages for no stated reason. I don’t mind rejection, but I can’t stand not knowing things. But could I blame her? That’s the kind of relationship it was.
The Two-Night-Stand
The Recipe: We meet at a friend’s wedding reception. She performs a song on her ukulele, and I compliment her on her performance afterward. We start talking and hit it off. I find out that she has another year at Pratt and will be heading back to New York soon. I invite her over to play Ocarina of Time at my apartment the next weekend before she leaves. She comes over, and an awesome afternoon turns into an awesome night, which then turns into an awesome two nights. I finally drop her off at the train station the following morning.
Advantages: The ultimate no-strings-attached experience. In a week she’ll be 3,000 miles away, so there’s not really any question of pursuing something beyond her one visit. There’s no interference with anything else you’re pursuing at the time. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about except enjoying the moment. Unless….
Disadvantages: ….you actually develop serious feelings for her that persist even after you start dating local girls again. Then you’re screwed.
The Online Relationship
The Recipe: She lived in Texas. She was browsing OkCupid profiles in the Bay Area because she was planning on taking a trip to California sometime soon. She messages me, and we start chatting for hours almost every day. She gets a webcam. We videochat for the first time, and things get surprisingly physical despite the fact that we can’t actually touch each other. We start to like each other in a pretty serious way. Excitement builds for her trip to SF.
We agree that we need to actually see each other in person before we actually get into anything serious. We decide to wait until she arrives, have a blast for the week or two that she’s here, and then figure out where to go from there. We keep talking regularly until the date draws near, and then… her trip falls through. She has family issues to work out, and she needs to move out of her house and become financially independent first. I offer to pay at least part of her way here once she has her family issues sorted out, but she says she doesn’t like letting guys pay for her. After her trip has been postponed indefinitely, she starts coming online less often, avoiding me. I confront her, and she says she’s scared of being attached to me. I ask her if she still wants to come, and she says she does. I hold on to that hope.
Advantages: None whatsoever, unless you for some reason enjoy being really invested in things that are unlikely to pan out.
Disadvantages: Distance makes everything more complicated. You hear about her problems and feel powerless to do anything about them. You become attached without being able to have any direct physical connection. You aren’t really committed, but you aren’t really emotionally free to pursue other relationships either. An online “relationship” is not a real relationship at all, and yet it comes with all of the same investment and heartache that real relationships feature. In other words, it’s the same kind of desperately frustrating anticlimax that has plagued me ever since the last time I was in love, three years ago.
We all know how this story ends, and it’s pretty much exactly as described on this episode of Tales of Mere Existence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oHnE_ObivY. She ends up getting a local boyfriend a couple of weeks after telling me she still wanted to come to California. She’s still my Facebook friend, so I get to see photo albums of their trip to China. I find myself wondering how the hell she came up with the money to go to China. Maybe she’s not so against letting guys pay for her after all.
The Fling
The Recipe: She sends me a casual message on OkCupid, and we start talking. We meet up and quickly come to the conclusion that we’re not right for each other long-term. She’s 28 and has a 1-year-old kid, and is at a different stage in her life. Not to mention that we’re around a 70% match. But we like each other a lot, and we’re very attracted to each other, and we’re both at a point in life where we’re willing to be involved in something more casual. We start seeing each other a few times a week to go dancing, jog by the lake, eat crepes, and do other date stuff.
Advantages: New and exciting, like the start of a long-term relationship. Almost like having a real girlfriend, but without having to worry about long-term commitment or future plans. It’s just nice to have someone you think about all the time, while knowing she’s thinking about you too.
Disadvantages: Like any relationship, it eventually ends. We decide about a month later that if we keep it up for much longer, it will start becoming a real relationship. So we go our separate ways. Unlike most of the other relationships described earlier, though, this one felt conclusive when it ended. I still missed her, of course, but it was a satisfying, bittersweet missing. And we’ll always be able to talk to each other if we ever need to.
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Ultimately, I think I am and always will be a monogamist at heart. But this year I’ve come to accept the fact that I can’t wait forever for the perfect girl to come along, and I need to live my life to the fullest even when I’m single. I don’t regret any of these experiences. In fact, I think that because of these experiences, I’ve grown more in the past year than in any other year of my life. Here’s to indefinite singlehood.
