MC Guffee 10/21

Regarding virtual reality through the internet, Poster denotes, "If such experiences become commonplace, just as viewing television is today, then surely reality will have been multiplied. The continued Western quest for making tools may at that point retrospectively be reinterpreted in relation to its culmination in virtual reality. From the club that extends and replaces the arm to virtual reality in cyberspace, technology has evolved to mime and to multiply, to multiplex and to improve upon the real."

Multiplying the real through the creation of virtual reality is detrimental to both our health and our pursuit of happiness. As I have experienced through media portrayals of life, virtual reality sets our expectations of reality out of reach. With higher expectations of reality, the individual is destined to be disappointed over and over again as real life can't measure up to the immediate satisfactions of the imagined world. Reading Poster's assessment helped me realize just how dangerous the multiplication of reality will be on the human psyche.

From a young age, I was enthralled by television and film's ability to captivate my attention as well as my imagination. At first I considered this captivation a positive and loved watching shows that portrayed all the happiness life has to offer. Each stage of my life I watched television that correlated to my next phase in life. For instance, when I was in elementary school and middles school, my dad and I always watched One Tree Hill together. One Tree Hill was a show depicting the trials and tribulations of high school students in a quant town in North Carolina. Unfortunately, depictions of typical high school events such as sports games and prom gave me extremely high expectations for my own experience in high school. Once in high school, I found myself rather disappointed in my experiences because they failed to live up to the caliber of media's high school portrayal.

Don't get me wrong, I still consider myself a positive and rather jovial person, however, I wouldn't deny that the narratives from television and film left me frustrated with reality. Constantly expecting more from the real when reality can't produce the same effect leads me to recall when Baudrillard asked "But does fiction actually outstrip reality?" To which I would answer, yes it absolutely does! Thus, I conclude creating multiple realities from the potential of virtual reality is dangerous because it leads to an apathetic mindset towards reality when in actuality, reality is the only genuine experience.