I love VR but hundreds of thousands of people think I hate it
So, I Tweeted this video a couple Fridays ago:
Within 2 minutes I got 14 retweets. I was shocked. 14? Good golly; my record prior to that was something like 8.
Now there’s 5,200 retweets. Plus 330,000 views on YouTube and 5 million views on Imgur. We also made the top post on Reddit for a day.
I really only expected like 10 of my close friends/Twitter followers to see it. The internet is a fascinating thing.
The story behind the video
Several people have asked me what inspired me to film that video. Well — erm — there isn’t really a story. I honestly just love to spontaneously capture videos of people wearing VR headsets because let’s be real: from the outside, people in VR look ridiculous.
People-watching is a passion of mine, and so is people-recording. Wow. I’m not really making myself sound good right now, am I?
But honestly, I feel a strong inclination to capture the spectator perspective of what it looks like when someone in a headset is immersed in another “world”.
Maybe because I’m anticipating that they’ll run into a wall, knock over their coffee mug and/or the cat on their desk. Or maybe I want to document their behaviors and gestures for research purposes. Or maybe I just want to capture this phenomenon so that our grandchildren can swipe through these videos on their augmented Instagrams (InstARgram?) and question our sanity at this stage in humanity.
Since I work in VR and am frequently nearby by people flailing their arms with an Oculus brick strapped to their face, I simply can’t resist whipping out my iPhone camera.
And for some reason, people really connected with the video I posted a couple weeks ago.
I’m not dating my coworker
While I was warned to not read the comments that the lovely Internet people left, especially on YouTube (I actually had to disable the YouTube ones, my god), I couldn’t help but pour a cup of coffee and take a scroll through the forums.
Let’s just say that the coffee turned into something a little harder later on.
With all jokes aside, it’s been fascinating to glean interpretations of the video from thousands of comments. The top themes I gathered were:
- I am dating the guy in the video and I’m mad that he’s not paying attention to me.
2. There’s no way he can be controlling things with just his hands.
3. He’s watching porn.
4. I have a resting bitch face.
5. Bitch.
6. Our future is doomed.
7. People in headsets look ridiculous to outsiders.
Which one was I going for? #7. But as we all know, things can be interpreted in an infinite amount of ways on the Internet. And that’s okay, because these comments were more enlightening than anything else.
Most importantly, a good chunk of comments revealed a concern that many consumers share: VR is going to tear us apart due to its (seemingly) isolating nature.
Are people ready for VR?
Tons of comments were along the lines of “this isn’t the future that I want” or “goodbye girlfriends of the future”. I’m sure most were sarcastic, but I sense that some of them were legitimate concerns or at least signs of uncertainty about the VR medium.
And this was refreshing to hear. I’ve been enveloped in the passion and optimism of VR enthusiasts for the past year here in Seattle, so I don’t hear from the VR skeptics and non-belieVRs too often.
But as VR pioneers, it’s incredibly important that we gather perspectives from all sorts of people early on. After all, this is our future, and everyone should have an input on what they do and don’t want it to look like.
While I’m not expecting everyone to happily throw a big ol’ headset on their face, I am concerned that not enough people have tried VR and therefore haven’t had the opportunity to explore its potential. From the outside, VR might look silly and isolating, but you really can’t judge it until you experience it yourself.
“Attempting to describe presence is like attempting to describe concepts such as consciousness or the feeling of love.”
-Jason Jerald, PhD. Quoted from The VR Book.
Plus, there is a continuing growth of startups that are focusing on the social, empathetic, productive, and educational use cases for VR. These are the types of experiences, if done well, that will get people on board for not just VR, but also augmented reality experiences that will be emerging throughout the next decade.
Why it’s crucial to highlight the potential of VR right now
We don’t know what the killer app for VR is yet. But, that’s okay. It’s important to never stop exploring use cases for such a newly immersive medium. One of the best ways to begin this exploration is by welcoming all kinds of expertise into this industry.
Have a VR headset? Go show it to your neighbor, your kids, your grandparents, your doctor, your mailman, the pizza delivery guy, and that random dude walking down the street. I might pitch VR to a stranger as: “Oh hey there, are you interested in strapping this brick to your face and looking into the FUTURE?”
Witness people react to the platform. Ask them what they think about it. Do they think it’s cool? Do they think it’s useful? How do they see VR in comparison to other mediums?
And don’t just witness it, document it. Take videos, take photos, take notes, record sounds. Capture those reactions (just not the vomiting ones). We’ll want to look back on these artifacts later as we chuckle (and maybe cry a little bit) about the “good ol’ days”.
Yes, I am asking you to people-watch.
Don’t have hardware? Try searching for VR Meetups or events that are going on in your city. Invite your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and that random dude on the sidewalk with you (as long as they’re cool/not creepy).
A VR headset today will be the fanny pack of VR tomorrow
So friends, I’m calling on all of you to capture how hilarious today’s headsets look. I want our grandchildren to laugh and be thankful that they can just play around with holograms anywhere they want without spending hours setting up mountains of cables or battling with eye strain/vomiting.
Today, we are literally this guy. Except imagine that chunky phone strapped to our eyeballs:
So let’s embrace it while we can: #vrswag.
