In the movie “Ready Player One,” most of humanity spends almost all of their time in a virtual world called the Oasis. Players can create avatars and do pretty much anything they can imagine.
While the metaverse of today is not quite as expansive and immersive as the Oasis, many companies are working hard to bridge that gap. That, plus the fact that many young people are adopting VR technology, and a question begins to pop up – how likely is it that people will want to live in VR?
The question might seem a bit outlandish today when most VR offerings are video games and virtual porn, but it’s one worth answering. So, let’s see if we can’t come up with a satisfying response.
Why Would People Want to Live in VR?
The first aspect of this question is whether people would even want to spend all of their time in a virtual environment. Yes, watching sexy videos or playing an immersive game can be fun, but is it really compelling enough to spend more of your time plugged in?
Here are some top reasons why a virtual world is more appealing than the real one:
Reinventing Yourself
You’ve made thousands of decisions in your lifetime. Some of them have been good, others bad, and most of them are innocuous (i.e., what to wear today). However, those decisions have shaped who you are and where you’re at in life.
But what if you could start over from scratch, knowing everything you know now? That kind of reset button is highly appealing to many people, and VR makes it possible to explore that option.
Limitless Options
While virtual environments are relatively limited today, they’ll only keep getting better in the future. There will come a day when you could travel the world from the comfort of your couch. Even better, you can experience the world as it exists today or as it was a decade, a century, or a millennia ago.
If you don’t want to be bound by our reality, you can visit worlds that only used to exist in your imagination. Do you love the steampunk aesthetic? What about living in a steampunk city? Or, what about living in your favorite sandbox video game? There are no rules when it comes to virtual reality.
Convenience
Rather than putting in physical effort in the real world, VR allows you to get the same experiences and rewards but without the work. Traveling requires money, a passport, and the energy to move from one place to another. But it’s much more convenient if you can do everything from a headset.
We believe that this benefit, more than anything else, will be what compels people to live in VR. Once it becomes possible to make real money to take care of housing, food, and utilities, people will have no reason to leave.
Oh, and about money and utilities, that brings us to the other side of things:
How Would Life in VR Work?
Some significant hurdles prevent your average user from spending their days in virtual reality, visiting sites like SexLikeReal. Those obstacles include:
- Finances – Fake money may pay the bills in VR, but your real landlord likely doesn’t accept it. Although cryptocurrency can help bridge the gap (if it comes back in full swing), VR would need to have a way to translate virtual work into real-world dollars.
- Bodily Functions – Since we’re all humans and not robots, we all still need to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. While VR headsets can come with front-facing cameras to see these things in real life, doing so could take you out of the experience. Alternatively, it may be possible to map skins on real items, so it seems like you’re doing everything in the virtual world as you do it in the real one.
- Psychological Impact – Living in VR may seem appealing for a few days, but living in virtual reality will likely make it harder to accept the real world. Here is where convenience can be a double-edged sword. Real work can seem like a massive ordeal when you’re used to getting what you want with a click of a button. Once you make the switch, it’ll only get harder to return to regular reality.
While it’s impossible to say how humanity will embrace VR, the obstacles and challenges are still too immense to make a living in virtual environments possible. However, since we’re optimists, we believe that day is just over the horizon.
