Virtual Reality

Read this:

http://gawker.com/5914621/the-long-fake-life-of-js-dirr-a-decade+long-internet-cancer-hoax-unravels

What? Seriously. 71 fake people? 11 years? I'm astounded.

I've been obsessed since the kids woke me up this morning and I read this, one eye open, over a bowl of crack (read: Golden Puffs). And as I've thought about it more, throughout the day, it's grown more bizarre on one hand and less on the other. For one thing, the charlatan didn't monetize the sting at all. In fact, after being busted she apparently gave money back. Along with the fact that she spent money on those bracelets (side note: Those rubber bracelets won't be looked back on kindly. I have slap bracelets in mind, but I'm sure there's a more apt comparison). So she makes nothing off of all her hard work. You can say: Well, she got attention, which is probably what she wanted. Maybe. But pretty diluted attention. And the cost/benefit analysis is lousy.

The thing that strikes me as less bizarre is that all of this has the ring of reality TV to me. Except that people weren't told that it was fake. I tried to articulate this to Sarah earlier and it didn't make any sense, but it seems to me that the crime this girl committed is that she presented something that wasn't true as true. Isn't that what reality TV is? But we're all in on it (sort of) so it's fine. I don't know. I guess it's just not that surprising when I think about entertainment in general now.

But maybe I'm just saying that. Hey. Maybe I'm not even real.

In all, it makes me think of virtual reality. You know, like the kind that got talked about in the late eighties that was supposed to take over the world? You wear the big helmet and experience a different plane of existence. It feels like we have that now, just minus the big helmet. Like we live on a new plane of existence. And maybe the rules are cloudier than ever.