Kathleen to Grace- Ready, Player One
Hey Grace! I really enjoyed reading Ready, Player One. I liked how it was a modern twist on dystopian novels in the sense that it incorporated cool technologies. I also liked how school was online yet he could still be present in the classroom. That’d be fun. You also get to choose how you look like with your avatar, which is fun but also sad when you have to transition back to real life and deal with how you actually looked. Have you seen the movie Wall-E? I was reminded of how in Wall-E everyone is so overweight and no longer uses their muscles so they just float around in their wheelchairs. It seems like the world in Ready, Player One is quickly headed in that direction!
“The virtual world once again seems crucial to him because his peers are pretty much forced to judge him not by their looks, but by their personality and smarts.” I love that you said that! I agree. It’s cool that you can really create what you want to be and show the world what you want them to see. It reminds me of social media today. We can create these profiles online and choose to show friends, family, or acquaintances the things we want them to see. Except right now our social media is focused on sharing pictures from our lives so we can’t really hide who we really are… yet. It must be pretty freeing for Wade to not be held back by the way he looks or his physical limitations. He is incredibly intelligent, focused, and synthesizes cool references in order to advance in the Oasis.
I think the Oasis is almost essential for the people living in that time of destruction to escape from the horror of their real life momentarily. Yet at the same time it is the reason their conditions are so terrible. Instead of working in a positive direction toward bettering their societies in the real world, they are focusing on living in a world purely based on fantasy. I mean, I love the Sims but I would never give up my real life connections with people in order to interact online. We can do that now without giving up personal connections. That’s one thing about today’s society, we can connect with people we would have never connected to without the internet across the world but we aren’t giving up our personal, real life connections in exchange for that. At least not yet!
Let me know what you’re reading next :) I loved reading your blog!