Ready Player One

I recently watched this movie with a couple teammates the other night and thought it was a cool idea to blog regarding modern media. Without spoiling anything, this movie is about a creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dying, then releasing a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune. This movie reminded me a lot of the virtual reality game that we have in the E sports lounge, although in the movie the people rely much more on there virtual world. The movie is based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller. The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe. It is interesting to see sort of post apocalypse theme pair with the virtual reality. The concept was great, because so much of happiness was placed in this virtual word, and once it was beaten the major theme of the movie surfaced and that is that reality is a beautiful thing. It made me think about the way we communicate as a culture today. Even with classmates. We have social medias that basically once we follow someone we sort of feel like okay now we are friends and no need to really establish a face to face relationship because you already know what is going in there life based off what they post. You sort of have that relationship shallowly locked in as long as you follow them on social media, but never really get to truly see who they are. The movie sort of portrays this idea when each of the teammates within the game meet up in real life and end up becoming friends and working to gather both inside the game and in reality. They all display a version of themselves that they think is most desirable within the game. I thought this related a lot to social media because we have the ability to show only the best parts of our lives and ourselves.