3 Surprising Ways Virtual Reality Changes Your Life
I recently turned 27, and as a birthday gift to myself I bought an Oculus Go headset. Unboxing it was the most cyberpunk thing that’s ever happened to me.
The Oculus ads on Facebook and Youtube would have you believe that VR is a dopamine joyride from minute one, with constant excitement leaping out at you from around corners. And that’s not entirely untrue.
However, after the initial thrill of setting it up, VR carves a weird little niche in your life. It definitely adds something, but not in as exciting a way as you might initially expect.
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Here are three ways VR has changed my life in the past few weeks.
3. Your surroundings don’t matter as much
The first time I put it on, a chime sounded and I found myself in a spacious boho house. There was a fountain, a water feature, massive skylights welcoming in frothy beams of natural light. I started downloading some apps and took off the headset to make dinner.
Instantly I was back in my apartment. I live in a small loft in Busan, South Korea. A busy road runs past my apartment building, and the sound of traffic is ever present. I live on the eighth floor, so I can see the lights of the city out my window. It’s not squalor by any means, but neither is it spacious.
However, when I decide to watch a movie on my Oculus, I can choose to use Bigscreen VR, a movie app, and instantly be in a massive commercial movie theater. Sometimes I choose something more homey, like their House environment that feels a bit like a middle-class movie night in Arizona.
I recently created a public room in Bigscreen to watch Adventureland. Strangers popped into my luxe private movie theater I could imagine gracing the east wing of a Connecticut mansion. Not all of them stayed the entire time, but the strange aspect of watching a movie with a complete stranger was made even more surreal when a lady avatar turned to me and said “I didn’t know Andy Samberg was in this.”
In a decade, people might use VR or AR to decorate their house. A blank wall could become an exotic fishtank, or a window out of the Death Star. Your couch is a hammock on a tropical beach, your bed could be floating in the middle of the ocean. It makes your physical surroundings more or less irrelevant, and that’s a fascinating development.
2. Meeting People is Fun
I’m not a hypersocial person. As a teen, I wasn’t particularly interested in meeting strangers. Even now, given a choice between going out with work friends or staying home and blasting through half a season of Silicon Valley, I’m gonna stay home and laugh at Erlich.
However, when scrolling through public movies to join on Bigscreen, I found myself in a theater where someone was playing UHF, the bizarre 80’s classic starring Weird Al Yankovic.
The movie was about halfway done, and joining felt like walking into the movie room at a house party. A few people were watching the movie as well, so I moved my seat next to someone and said “What movie is this.” The person turned and looked at me before raising their avatar hand and drawing a massive purple heart in the air between us.
The experience was hilarious and strange, but it added a unique aspect to the movie night. In that headset lies the gateway to communities. Watching a movie in your house is surprisingly social. Dissociating yourself from your surroundings to join strangers from around the world to hang out, chat, or play games feels reassuringly futuristic. Double down by inaugurating your setup with a Ready Player One viewing party.
1. You get lazier
When I bought VR I really thought that I would more active when using it. After all, every ad I’ve seen has attractive, fit twenty-somethings leaping around a well-lit living room in the throes of digital hallucinations.
I play competitive games like Starcraft and League of Legends, so while I have a passing interest in the games available in VR, mostly what I’ve used my Oculus for so far is to lay on my bed and watch Youtube videos or Twitch streams without having to hold my iPad up.
Watching Lowko explain why I’m bad at the proxy hatchery rush on an IMAX sized screen while laying in bed is really the height of living. But after doing this almost every night for the past couple weeks, at this point even sitting up on my couch to watch a movie feels like too much work. When can I welcome the singularity and relinquish my mortal form to become one with the metaverse? Not soon enough.
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