The ad I got to the right of the article is a steel top straight out of Inception. Anyone else, or is that just a weird coincidence? http://i.imgur.com/0ao0aSQ.png
> “I understood that the demo was over, but it was [as] if a lower level part of my mind couldn’t exactly be sure. It gave me a very weird existential dread of my entire situation, and the only way I could get rid of that feeling was to walk around or touch things around me.”
> It seems that VR is making people ill in a way no one predicted. And as hard as it is to articulate the effects, it may prove even harder to identify its cause.
Ok, I know Inception was technically about dreams and not "strap a screen on your face" VR, but really? "No one predicted"? I've only ever tried an Oculus DK1 and didn't experience anything like this, but I think they're stretching it to say nobody imagined that this could happen.
> And as hard as it is to articulate the effects, it may prove even harder to identify its cause.
How is this sensation any different from any other existensial crisis? There are many causes for that, widely discussed both in Western and Eastern Philosophy.
E.g. Sartre's most known work, Being and Nothingness, is very much focused on this. Sartre's Nothingness is, despite what you might think, a positive force and ultimately what provides for our free will; it resembles somehow the tabula rasa of Aristotle, the mind being a clean slate. You can imagine anything you want, completely unconstrained. This is in sharp conflict with Being; as a human in the physical world you are bound by external constraints: time, money, family etc. Most people will deny the conflict, believing that the constraints of their Being are compatible with their Nothingness. Acknowledgement of the conflict provokes existential crisis.
When we step into a VR world, we are brought away from the Being and closer to the true experience of Nothingness. We can literally experience anything, unconstrained. Thus when we return, we are forced to reconsider the Being, to reacknowledge its conflict with our inherent Nothingness.
Accordingly, the difference between this crisis and the ones experienced after the end of any immersive escapist experience, be it cinema, books or even music, is at best a matter of degree.
I'm struggling to find the exact passage, but in Thomas Metzinger's Being No One, he brings up a similar concept in regard to lucid dreaming. There we find ourselves with access to the full spectrum of experience that we are capable of mentally modeling without regard to what is physically possible. I found this concept interesting but it wasn't explored fully, thanks for linking it back to Sartre, perhaps I should read some of him next.
Unbelievable to stumble on this comment. I just started Being and Nothingness. It isn't an easy read but really fascinating and now I have more motivation to get through it as I also make VR games as a hobby.
> Ok, I know Inception was technically about dreams and not "strap a screen on your face" VR, but really? "No one predicted"?
ExistenZ predicted exactly this, except with more advanced technology. I don't know if the author of the article just didn't do much pop-culture research, or if ExistenZ just happened to slip by her radar - as I recall, it wasn't very well received (unfortunately!)
This reminds me of the time I was asleep and realized I was dreaming, and freaked out and wanted to wake up. Luckily, I did, and stayed awake for a few minutes before going back to sleep.
The next morning, I remembered this and realized I had never actually woken up, I just dreamt I had woken up. Unsettling.
I've had similar experience. Had a dream about my dead grandpa (at some point I realized he's dead and he turned into a zombie along with other people around - not very nice dream). Then I dreamt that I've woken up, I've seen the dormitory in which I really slept, went to open door cause somebody wa ringing, and it was the zombies :/, at which point I've woke up again, for real this time. My friend from the room said I've sat up on the bed and "looked at him" with closed eyes for like 5 minutes, before waking up.
It might have sth to do with drinking like 2 liters of strong tea and studying for exam whole night and day before.
I experience conscious dreaming, where I am aware of my activities during my dreams and can shape them at will - rather than being subject to events dreamed. I remember everything that happens in them.
This has been one of the side effects of my meditative practice.
Well, you've been in the simulation so long that the only way we can safely bring you out is through subtle hints like that. I am kidding, of course, and those ads seem to be everywhere these days.
Well if that was a hint, The Architect was practically screaming about multiple levels of The Matrix, but it was lost in his (intentionally?) verbose dialogue with Neo.
> The ad I got to the right of the article is a steel top straight out of Inception. Anyone else, or is that just a weird coincidence?
Spooky - but it's just a targeted google ad. Somebody who reads about existential shenanigans will most likely have seen and enjoyed inception - and there's the top.
I've often wondered how other people deal with the questions of existence. What is real, after all? The only thing I feel certain of is that I exist in some form. "I think, therefore I am." I have no absolute certainty of anything else beyond that; I have to accept everything else with varying degrees of faith.
I came to understand that years ago. It was agonizing at first, but I've come to terms with it. I learned that if I align myself with things that are probably true, I can be happy. Certainty is simply not required anymore.
It seems to me that people who don't understand this principle (that almost nothing is certain) would be more prone to dissociative effects. As for myself, I find it hard to imagine VR would have any effect on my state of mind since I'm not convinced reality isn't VR anyway. :-)
Most people trap themselves in the certainty of belief.
Some move beyond the certainty of belief and get trapped in nihilism.
Those that move through nihilism gain a perspective on meaning itself, realizing that meaning is relative and can be objectified. All of meaning and reality become a playful flux of creation. Buddhists are the most studied in this regard.
A quick and easy read on different levels of human development can be found here:
This was fun, so kudos, but deeply flawed I feel. It's basically Tim Leary/Robert Anton Wilson's model dressed in psychobabble. I'd give her more credit if she at least credited/referenced them and let's also not forget that psychology is not really a science [1].
For something with far more substance, I suggest metaprogramming by John Lilly [2]. At least he had the conviction to spend more than half of his life experimenting (radically) on himself.
>"It's basically Tim Leary/Robert Anton Wilson's model dressed in psychobabble. I'd give her more credit if she at least credited/referenced them"
Are you suggesting the two individuals you mentioned are the originators of that line of thought? Why is it important to you that these two individuals are name dropped?
Plagiarism is not something I find easy to accept thus I do my best to counter it whenever I encounter it.
Besides, mentioning the originators of certain ideas and models and guiding people to their work is surely adding a lot of substance to the discussion.
This is funny/meta because the idea of ownership (almost in a way reminiscent of weak vs. strong pointers haha), I feel, originates from some semblance of ego and associated 'territorialism' which RAW touches on in eg. Prometheus Rising.
Only if they were the sources of inspiration. What I'm trying to suggest to you is that similar ideas to those put forward by Leary and Wilson existed before either of those two individuals were born. With that in mind, why are you convinced these two individuals are being plagarised? Can you point to any passages that reminded you of their works?
While there's overlap with some of the work you mentioned, I would think it most congruent with said work to be appreciative of yet another inroad to the same conclusion (as opposed to unappreciative based on cosmetic difference).
Not defending the text you're talking about, but if you feel like it's "deeply flawed" could you please point out some concrete examples?
Thank you very much for posting this. While I haven't made it very far in the linked text, it led me to the following two pages that gave me something that people in this thread might be looking for:
Robert Anton Wilson, channelling James Joyce, claimed "no man is a solipsist when he is scraping dog shit from his shoe."
It sounds trite, but forcing yourself into situations where you absolutely must deal with the immediacy of "now" is a good solution to existential angst.
A philosophical mantra repeated many times throughout history in varying amounts of eloquence and simplicity - Stoics, Buddhists, X Anonymous type groups, Jews, and even freaking Mother Goose!
Reminds me of a Reinhold Niebuhr quote:
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
Nah, they'd ignore that, if they even notice. You have to forcibly make them take notice. Like take over a galaxy and make all the stars in it blink in synchrony in some sort of code and establish a communication channel.
You are assumming they higher beings are functioning on timescales comparable to ours. Imagine a colony of microbes on an agar block writing out morse code intended for us - but there is no-one and the labs are locked for the night. Yet they keep trying for generations...
Alternatively - the spatial scales are very different and an entire galaxy or ours is not observable by their 'naked' eyes.
Sure, it really depends on the speed of the simulation relative to their own, and the level of resources poured into this (is it a high school project, or the combined output of their entire civilization? what do they look for inside, if anything?), and of course, their actual objectives.
Honestly, who wants to talk to some snot-nosed humans? They probably don't bother checking until the universe becomes one giant superorganism anyways. And even then maybe they just make their observations and ignore it as it tries to wave them down.
Even if "you" (who/what is "you" by the way?) do understand the principle "you" have mentioned, the mind will experience cognitive dissonance. It can't be avoided as it happens on a layer below conscious perception.
"You" seem to think that beliefs exist on a conscious self-aware layer of thought, thus "you" should be aware of them but if "you" have done any serious psychonautics or experienced traumatic events in childhood, "you" will realize that is not the case. It takes a lot more than simple affirmation to rid "yourself" of such demons. Reading books about ceremonial magick and the techniques that had to be invented over the years to deal with such problems can be very enlightening, if not fascinating.
So, when the mind experiences cognitive dissonance, the effects propagate to the upper layers and "you" may become aware of them. I guess my point (through experience) is that as long as there is a "you" there to begin with, cognitive dissonance and dissociation will be problems that "you" will have to deal with :-)
As to your original question, it has long been my view that "most people" are not self-aware enough for such matters to even register. Even those who do have the curiosity and inclination, don't really like spending a lot of time in that UNCOMFORTABLE space, and quickly reach for the nearest distraction or escape (living in a make-believe dream world) to help them cope with daily life. When the luster starts to fade, a new dream bubble (new goals and aspirations) is quickly conjured and entered.
I highly recommend Celia Green's "The Human Evasion" [1] to you, something tells me you will enjoy it very much.
I agree. My words fail to express how horrifying and depressing it was for me to see the uncertainty of everything, but I worked through it and now my experience of everything is both "real" and "not real" at the same time. I feel as if I'm in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance. However, I've decided that state is beautiful, enjoyable, and the only state of mind I can actually understand well.
There are people living with full blown ego-loss, no "I" there at all. It can be quite hard to get to grips with, like being part of a 2D canvas (the perception of depth-space and also time is extremely warped).
It is fascinating to contemplate that dissociation may be the next stage in human evolution (leading up to ego-death and an emergent hive mind?) and that it may happen on a mass-scale, not through mysticism or magick or psychonautics but technology that has become so ubiquitous nobody can really escape from.
Apologies if this is getting too paranormal for HN, but you might want to read up on the online cult of Kek (watch "Esoteric Kekism" on YouTube). It's founded on the idea that consciousness forms reality, and that the internet has connected/aligned our minds tighter than ever before. Thus, internet memes, propagated among the collective consciousness, are said to have the ability to alter reality itself.
Of course it's kookery (which I'm forced to say to avoid mockery), but it's quite relevant.
Expand that to questioning also whether time exists as we perceive it and you have a real mindfuck there.
If you can't even convince yourself that you will experience the future then there is no reason to do anything. Suppose every moment you are transferred into the head of a different person. Or let's say that time runs backwards. What possible motivation do you have to do anything? Why take your hand away from a hot stove if you have no evidence that you will experience the after effects?
Existence is simply perceiving something while simultaneously being limited to how much perception and interaction you can conduct with the reality over a given moment. Consider it a resolution/cost of time, if you will. It's also the side effect of everyone believing they are them and not someone else "playing" them.
Limiting perception should not limit the objective reality, but I hypothesize it does limit the ability of the perceiver to easily manifest their own non-objective reality here in this "real world". Strangely enough, I just picked up Galapagos by Vonnegut yesterday and he's presenting a similar concept and I'm curious to see where he goes with it. I've been remiss in reading more of him.
When you are going in or exiting a VR or gaming existence, it feels just like shifting existing "goals" into existing "get it done slots". In Astronomer, for example, the "goal" is gathering Oxygen to breath/live and the "get it done" part is gathering building materials to construct devices which help you learn how to do more things. It feels like a life because I've done similar things in the real world to survive. I get sad when my little guy/gal dies, so who's to say they aren't "real"? I hope someone is sad and happy for my existence as well!
I wonder if the the dissociation may result from the resistance to comprehending an eventual truth which cannot be "unheard"? I'm OK with it because I think about it all the tim, but I'm sure it's frightening to just have it spontaneously happen to you without realizing what it is that is occurring.
Sometimes late at night after playing video games I get serious existential angst. As if I realize that the game can and has ended several times in front of me, all the goals and mechanics of it are over. And I realize that we in this world are also facing the prospect of an end at any time.
Does anyone else have that? Late at night. After video games? I am 33.
I play Fallout a lot. I know exactly how you feel. Every time I play I am saddened at how my actions in the game reflect a last desperate attempt to prolong existence before entropy comes for us all. Even more so when I consider how technology is making the end of the world easier to accomplish every decade.
Having worked in a factory at about the same time I discovered Dwarf Fortress caused me to heavily objectify all the activities going on in that factory. Workshop there, stockpile here, dwarf moving goods with wheelbarrow (guy on forklift)...
I'm not sure the question of existence comes to us naturally. I've known, very few people, but some people who were raised without anyone ever bringing up the topic to them, and they simply seem to not care about that question or its answer. Yet I, who was actively raised where multiple people brought up existence and the point of it and why we are here, and what we must do, etc., I feel an anxiety for it, like I can't satisfy myself not knowing and just being here, doing things without reason.
I've come to piece with this now though, by managing to really accept that I actually don't care either.
In deep sleep there is no thinking, but there is 'amness,' so 'I am' seems closest to the Truth. Otherwise you could not declare "I had a good sleep" — how do you know?
The point is that the amness is independent of any particular personality you happen to assume in any of the three states of consciousness (waking, dream or deep-sleep).
The difference is between "I think, therefore I am" and "I am, therefore I am"
A mild form of this happened to me after watching Tron -- the original -- which must have been one of the first opportunities to become immersed in (nearly) totally artificial visuals. I walked out of the theater into the parking lot, which had a Tron-like simplicity of geometry and bright color scheme, and had a disturbing feeling of unreality that lasted several minutes.
The San Junipero episode of Black Mirror nailed it--limiting people's time in VR to avoid "side effects". That show is just hauntingly prescient with its straddle between what's possible now and what's just-slightly-out-of-reach.
Growing numbers of people preferring an alternative reality is scary to me. And the idea that it may cause a psychological break with reality for a significant number of people is even scarier--as if we need more people disassociated and thus capable of committing heinous or anti-social acts.
Strange that we're just cruising into this with little alarm. Stranger still that we don't find any issue with a relatively small number of people literally jockeying to redefine reality for the masses for commercial gain.
> Stranger still that we don't find any issue with a relatively small number of people literally jockeying to redefine reality for the masses for commercial gain.
That's unusually harsh. A lot of people involved in VR love it and want others to experience it. You make it sound like they are spreading a virus.
I don't think it's harsh at all, but I'm not quite sure which part raises an issue for you. If you're saying that they are motivated by their desire to "spread their love" much more than the economic benefit they seek, then why not do this in a non-profit fashion?
But, I won't quibble with that point. I mean, I do think that the economic benefit sets up the potential to "taint" the benovolenct love fest, but my much bigger point is WRT the very idea that a relative few people would redefine reality for everyone else by any motivation. It's an incredible amount of power to hand over and I think it warrants caution.
That they are seeking to profit from it simply underscores this point and adds an additional "Dystopian Future Sci-fi Creep Factor".
Would the same argument work against cinema? Surely the difference between VR and film is one of degree rather than a categorical change.
I think there will be negative and positive aspects if/when VR becomes mass market but it's the opening up of a new creative medium and on the whole that has always been a net benefit for humanity.
>Surely the difference between VR and film is one of degree rather than a categorical change.
Degree matters. And, naming them both media doesn't make them qualitatively the same to begin with.
>I think there will be negative and positive aspects
Respectfully, one can use that argument to wave off any concern about anything. But, here, experiencing lasting and disturbing dissociative effects after walking away from the interaction is not the same as feeling momentarily sad after watching a film.
>that has always been a net benefit for humanity.
I'm not sure if that's categorically true but, there is certainly no rule that says it must always be so, irrespective of the actual medium or environment.
And, I think it's safe to say we are in uncharted waters here. We've never had a medium that competes with reality so effectively or whose effects are more akin to doing psychadelic drugs than reading a book or watching film.
I'm not willing to declare that a net positive just yet.
Certainly this is not a new occurrence as a reaction to media of any kind. Some of my favorite novels have left me experiencing a similar melange of feelings and detachment from the real world (not to a severe extent by any means). Turning the last page has left me with the reminder that not only will I not ever be able to experience the world of the novel in a physical sense, but won't even be able experience the thrill and excitement of vicariously living the story of the characters through reading, not knowing what will happen next.
Having experienced slight feelings of melange/detachment following novels, video games, and movies in the past, and having experienced what this article is describing: it's not quite the same feeling.
With movies/novels/etc., I've always experienced what you're describing as something similar to a feeling of loss--the world you experienced or the story you were involved in or the characters you cared about will no longer be there as a new experience, no longer have new experiences as characters, etc. That 'world' is gone.
With VR, even if I don't really miss the experience, I've experienced what I'd describe as a "readjustment" phase of between 10 minutes and a couple hours (depending on length of experience and how recently I'd been in VR) where the real world feels disconnected/less real. It's a much more intense and visceral feeling, and doesn't have the same undertone of 'loss' that movies/novels have. It isn't a "Man, I'm not actually a space pilot in the year 3000" feeling, or a "I'll never be able to experience that world again" feeling, it's more of a visceral disassociation from the real world, as though my senses don't feel like they can quite trust the inputs they're receiving anymore.
I like depersonalization. Used to get it relatively often as a kid and teen, sadly very rarely now. Guess I'm going to buy a vr!
It's like playing a rpg with 'your' body as an avatar. Which means there's (almost) nothing left except pure will. Very useful, can be used to make a character do things it wouldn't normally do and/or become much more efficient. Everything seems inherently pointless, may as well go with inertia of old goals.
That's how I imagine the first transhumans to think, only with more than one body and hopefully truly independent (ie. mind uploading, distributed computing or something similar).
Imagine feeling like you're in a video game and can't step out of the unreality of existence. Everything that felt full feels distant, like you're watching someone else. I hated every moment of it, I'm very glad it's over.
I had my first experience with VR yesterday, maybe I'm differenent but I actually found it kind of boring, at first it was scary and exciting, but after about 10 minutes I just got sick of killing zombies and flying through the air. The fact it was a simulation was just too obvious for me. This can obviously change as the technology get's better but that's just how I felt. It was no doubt a cool / new experience but it felt like a gimimck.
I did question reality a little bit on the way home etc, but that would surely be normal? I do remember feeling great taking off the goggles and thinking to myself how good it is to actually be alive and walking on the earth. I've heard others say the real world felt boring to them, but I felt the opposite.
If I felt dread about anything, it was seeing my friends son running around the room while his playmate sat there watching him for hours on end and vice-versa. I felt a little sad that's how some kids are now spending holiday time together. I guess they're probably having fun but it did seem a little anti-social and unhealthy. Infact, I thought about it a lot today.
For those interested in the nature of Reality and existence itself, and the possibility that our experience may in some way be illusory or "VR like," please allow me to suggest the Vedanta Treatise by A. Parthasarathy[0].
If you're going that route, read the last section of the book first and then come back to the first two sections (:
Edit: interestingly, it seems the Wachowski brothers (sisters?) were inspired by the Vedanta (Upanishads), mantras of which may be heard chanted during key scenes such as the fight between Neo and Smith. Of course the grandeur of the philosophy in the Upanishads does not need the validation of a pop culture movie, but it's an interesting reference.
I would argue that movies can do this. I often walk out of a movie and the world outside seems surreal. With VR though, I'm so drawn out of it, rather than into it (like a film) that it more feels like I'm just playing with a toy. VR tech, at least to my eyes is just not there enough to draw me in. I can see the pixels and there's nothing interesting and non-gimmicky in the sphere.
I have had these feelings since I touched computers in the 80s and more so when 3d ish stuff started to become out in the 90s. I would walk to university with my best friend and we would try to describe the world in the form of 3d primitives with 'effects' (did not know shaders back then). Since I had the Oculus and recently the PSVR, we (that same friend recently moved to the tiny mountain village as I, 2500km from our home town) can see that soon (for many already, but some people are more sensitive to it than others, like said, I never even needed VR or fancy graphics to feel reality while playing) brains will find it impossible to find the difference between that and reality. Playing simple games on psvr for more than a few minutes, for me, is real; I can feel movement, I get scared of dropping of cliffs; in rush of blood, my brain adds wind and smell even. And I am not the only one; on my birthday a few days ago, I had complete computer illiterate people who never played games try and; one got ill straight away, two said it looked fake, but at least 4 ask how it was possible to feel movement and wind while sitting in a chair or feel like you might drop of an edge or feel real and actual dread while getting pulled deeper into the experience. That makes me see we are finally there (sure, if you are a gamesgeek you complain about framerate and resolution but that will improve rapidly now that there is money in it) and I know now what my next company is going to do.
Edit; I also do see the kind of sadness some people describe after lsd/shrooms; the real world disappoints. It is literally going from something like Disneyworld straight to your own boring appartment the second you take off the helmet. Hell, new rides in theme parks are infested with VR; if you can have one of those robot chairs in your livingroom you actually have a modern themepark at home.
I wonder if the more concrete and down to earth someone is, the more drastic this "non-reality" sensation feels.
Despite all of its flaws, I wonder if S-types in the MBTI classification system would have a harder time than N-types; i.e., would an ISTJ feel weirder after being in VR than an INTJ?
A quick google search[1] about the movie Avatar showed in 2010 people couldn't go see Avatar without being unhappy with the world they had to live in here.
Surprised this article gets a new flavor every year about what people feel they wish they had.
[1] Mine was 'people experiencing loss after watching avatar'
We're not far away from living in a storage room like Hiro Protagonist. For many people, the ability to "escape reality" like that might seem like an upgrade on life.
I remember reading about that. James Cameron's reply was something along the lines of "go walk in a forest" as though city people and urbanites have access to the beauty of real nature anymore.
I mean, don't get me wrong there's all kinds of beauty to appreciate in a downtown metropolis. It just won't be raw.
I haven't used VR for long enough to have sadness, but a 15 minutes is enough for me to have a very subtle, vague confusion about what I can manipulate in real life.
But I guess was a little disappointed that I had to drive home, since I flew home from space in Google Earth a few minutes prior.
I mentioned this to John Carmack over twitter once. He ignored me, I was an early dk2 owner and was close to having panic attacks in the beggining. I later learned that it had partially triggered PTSD in me (it came from another cause entirely, a traumatic event in my past) and it took me months to get over it.
This is all entirely down to personal subjective experience, but it was strange to see back then how I couldn't get any attention on the issue. I've met a few people who have had strong negative reactions of anxiety and dread after experiencing VR.
What's not real is our perception of reality - the mental model. VR only helps us realize that this is the case because it completely fucks with that model.
Now, the reality that we have an inaccurate model of is, imho, actually there, so there no need to worry - the problem is with you not with the reality (is that comforting?).
Anyhow, I really don't want to see VR banned because some people find it hard to acknowledge bugs in their brains.
I don't think this is isolated to VR. The effects of playing conventional video games can lead to a similar syndrome (I never drive after playing driving games for this reason). There's even a psychological experiment where you can quickly convince someone's brain that a prosthetic is actually their arm. I assume that this effect is general to any situation where a person projects their identity into a nonperson.
I'd suggest to you to consider that the VR is not the issue. DPDR is often an anxiety issue, one that you sometimes reach out to other events in your life to blame.
This is hard to answer, I've quit cold turkey since my DPDR developed 5 months ago. It hasn't gone away since then. It comes in waves. I just want to put this out there first: DPDR sucks. It's maybe the worst feeling I've ever felt. You feel completely alone. That your memories are not real. That you aren't the person you see in the mirror. At times even loved ones seem fake. It's scary. If you think you may be susceptible, stay away from VR. It's not worth it.
I don't think VR is the main cause of it, but I also don't think it would have happened without it.
I've been using VR for 3 years now on and off. Mostly off. About a year ago, after my longest VR session of ~1hr I felt DPDR for the first time and the effects of that lasted up to a few hours.
Around 5 months ago DPDR was triggered, but I was not using VR when it was happened. I don't think it would have been triggered without VR, but these all played a large role too:
1. I moved to a completely new city for the first time. 1.5 years ago
2. my best from from my hometown visited me the weekend it was triggered. 5 months ago
3. a stressful night the moment it was triggered. 5 months ago. stress was the trigger.
It's hard to say what role VR played. Clearly it was not the actual trigger. But I think it was large a part for a few reasons:
1. The feelings of DPDR after my trigger is essentially the same feelings as when it was temporarily induced from VR before the trigger
2. VR was my introduction to depersonalization. The first time I felt DP was from VR. 8 through 5 months ago.
3. I have never had anxiety problems or any mental health problems before.
4. ive been stressed plenty of times before =)
I think VR should best be avoided for anyone that is may be susceptible to DPDR.
I've had the dream-like state happen to me. Right after I tried VR for a bit longer than 30 minutes it felt like all my senses were dulled. It was very weird.
VR is never going to be capable of providing me with anything I actually want.
I don't understand why people care about it. It sounds like Ultima Online, but with something close to Real Dolls™ maybe.
I guess, just like cosplay and furries, there's a subculture that's ambivalent enough about their own combination of desperation for stimulus, to give it a try and find attachment and occupy themselves within this form of media...
> “I understood that the demo was over, but it was [as] if a lower level part of my mind couldn’t exactly be sure. It gave me a very weird existential dread of my entire situation, and the only way I could get rid of that feeling was to walk around or touch things around me.”
> It seems that VR is making people ill in a way no one predicted. And as hard as it is to articulate the effects, it may prove even harder to identify its cause.
Ok, I know Inception was technically about dreams and not "strap a screen on your face" VR, but really? "No one predicted"? I've only ever tried an Oculus DK1 and didn't experience anything like this, but I think they're stretching it to say nobody imagined that this could happen.