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Delphinia Senske

English 4B

Mr.Brandes

6 March 2019

Virtual Reality’s Effect On Society

The novel ​Ready Player One​ by Ernest Cline serves as a warning to our society that is

slowly moving out of the real world and into the digital one. The outside world is depicted as a

wasteland with people living in cramped communities constructed out of old shipping containers.

The condition of the outside world will never change because the citizens are distracted by the

OASIS, a virtual world where they can be and do anything. The OASIS also offers another

reality for citizens, to work in, go to school, and spend their money in, causing a lack of interest

in the issues of the real world. By combining the awful reality of the real world and the

distraction of the OASIS the novel Ready Player one is a perfect example of how dystopian

control can come in the form of technology.

The world outside of the OASIS is shown as a world that has been destroyed, and is now

abandoned by its citizens. This is made clear to the reader on the very first page of the novel,

Wade is describing how he first heard of the contest for control over the OASIS and describes

his world around him as, ”after all, the people of earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy

crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine,poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars”

(Cline 1) The description of the world matches a typical dystopia, the citizens are suffering, and

the world has been torn apart by war and lack of resources. The main thing to take away from

this quote is that the problems Wade is describing are fixable. If citizens were mentally present
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in the real world, more focus and time would be spent on building better communities, and

increasing food production. This is how technology has taken peoples focus out of the real world

and into a digital one.

In the novel the OASIS serves as a distraction for the citizens, allowing them to escape

their own reality. Why would someone want to live in a world ruined by war and famine when

they could be in a fantasy world where they can do anything they want? Wade shows the reader

this distraction while describing a city, “The number of homeless people seemed to have

increased drastically. (...) Others waited in line at the free solar power charging stations, wearing

bulky, outdated visors and haptic gloves. Their hands made small, ghostly gestures as they

interacted with the far more pleasant reality of the OASIS via one of the GSS’s free wireless

access points.” (Cline 276) This quote that shows in this society they prioritize the distraction of

the OASIS above all else. They don’t have soup kitchens or homeless shelters, instead they have

wireless access points. This society continues to be a dystopia because instead of fixing the

issues that are ruining their world, they are distracted by the comfort of the virtual world.

The obvious solution to ending the technological control over the society would be to

shut off the OASIS, temporarily or permanently. Though now the OASIS has become so

entrenched in society that millions of people depend on it for jobs or for their education. Before

he found the first key Wade was a full time student at one of the hundreds of public schools in

the OASIS. Once he moves out of the stacks and into his apartment he gets a job in the OASIS in

order to help pay for his rent, “The only job I’d been able to get was as a tier-one technical

support representative at Helpful Helpdesk Inc.(...) Now I worked forty hours a week, helping

morons reboot their OASIS consoles and update the drivers for their haptic gloves. It was
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grueling work, but it paid the rent.” (Cline 206) Wade is one of the many people that if the

OASIS got shut down they wouldn’t be able to pay their rent or buy food. With the control the

OASIS has over the job market and education it would be impossible to shut it down in order to

return people’s attention to the real world. The technological control that the OASIS has over the

society has become so strong that it’s now impossible to have a world without it.

The society in the Ready Player One is a dystopian society that is enforced through

technological control. The outside world has been destroyed by war and famine, and people are

forced to live in horrible conditions. The only escape from this awful reality is the OASIS, which

is prioritized before the issues in the real world. People’s lives now revolve around the OASIS,

with their entire well being depending on their virtual job or school, leading to even more of a

detachment from the real world. This novel should serve as a warning to our society about what

happens when you let the virtual world take over reality.