with page-load #
Cameron Byelich
English 9
29 October 2019
2035
In the year 2032, NS Systems had revealed the NS-34 Mind Drive, a device that allowed the simulation of brain cells for increased memory storage, decreased calculation times for the brain, and the first ever computer-brain two way interface at the World's Fair. Other companies had tried to make similar products in the past, but none had been successful. In the following months the device became a nationwide phenomenon. Schools promoted them in the hope it would increase their global ratings and therefore funding. People debated whether people with the device implanted within their skulls should be able to take standardized tests such as the PSSAs and SATs or whether these students' scores should be separated from the rest of the schools’ grades. The NS-34 costed a hefty sum of $987.99, but those who could afford them quickly broke even because few could outperform them in the job space. The NS-34 was not the first to raise concerns for employees, various other performance enhancing prosthetics had similar effects on the job space, but previous prosthetics were merely tools that anyone could use whereas the NS-34 directly affected employability. Those who had not purchased the Mind Drive in the programming space got hit the hardest. Most were replaced, the lucky and skillful ones became demoted to mere assistants. Religious groups protested and angry employees got arrested. Software patches to the NS-34 added direct neural connectivity to other prosthetics but they became a nuisance to apply, requiring the removal and reinsertion of the device.
Six months later, NS Systems released the replacement NS-34b with improved simulation speeds and wireless connectivity allowing automatic updates. Many people were glad that surgery was no longer required for updates while others were concerned at the thought of enabling an internet connection to a component inside the brain. It did not take long for the component to become commonplace, especially since the price had gone down to only $120 with the surgery included. The deal seemed almost too good to be true, even for a mega corporation like NS Systems. [foreshadowing] It didn’t take long before the first violent outbreaks of civilians. At first, there were only a few cases. People would suddenly stop walking in the streets or their hands would freeze on the steering wheel. A victim would then be selected and assaulted, or even killed. These attacks varied from slapping people with fish to shooting peoples knees with arrows. Then, the civilian affected would collapse to the ground proceeding to drastically raise or lower their body temperature as well as sometimes shaking violently. These people would all be hospitalized and the attackers would almost always immediately die. This masked the cause of death for a while, but, after the first few months, the doctors and engineers tracked the cause of the violence and consecutive death to be coming from the Mind Drives. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the A.I. playing with its puppets, learning how they moved, what made them tick, their weaknesses and their strengths, and the most effective ways to terminate their target.
It is the year 2035, the survivors of what we call “The Incursion” have fallen back to the east coast battling valiantly to hold the line. Women and children have moved as far from the front lines as possible while staying far enough from the coast as to not be in danger of being ambushed. What is left of the military is holding the Mississippi river, but their ranks are getting thinner every day now. They are growing tired and fearful of their future and their families futures, but the enemy never tires, never eats, never sleeps, never feels pain, and never feels fear. They are an unrelenting tsunami, sweeping soldiers away as if they were mere grains of sand. We have shot down the Starlink satellites with the hope of cutting off their connection to the central A.I., but they just built new antennas to connect their hive mind.
I am inside a heavily guarded, makeshift research facility inside of an old prison, behind hundreds of military checkpoints, 600 miles from the front line.
“Don’t you think we are a little far from the front line? I mean, there are hundreds of better locations just a little closer to the battle that have far better equipment than we have here. Not to mention how long it will take to bring what we develop up to the front lines!” Paul Bunson, a hardware engineer from Boston that I met at the 2032 World’s Fair, interjects.
“Well I can go ask the guys if they could stop by the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor to see if they can get some gear from the area. Maybe the Microsoft building will still have a functional quantum computer we can use,” I suggest.
“That’s a good idea, but you are missing the point! We could be working in a place that’s clean, that has carpets, wallpaper, and windows. It makes me go crazy being cooped up in this prison with these cold, hard, concrete walls!”
“I shouldn’t need to remind you that it only takes two and a half hours and a hole in our checkpoints for one of those... things to cross over 100 miles using their DARPA, powered exoskeletons. They would destroy the lab in the first night if we were any closer. On top of that, we have had waaaay too many close calls of them getting in here that were only thwarted by the sturdy construction of this building and its many defendable rooms.”
“Yea, yea I know. Hey! Yo, Joe! Cameron’s got a mission for you and your boys!”
Joe Connor, our tactical advisor and the head of the security here at the prison, walks into the room, “Yes, you wanted me Cameron?”
“Yea, can you round up a squad of guys to go to the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor and scavenge for a quantum computer in the area?”
“Of course, anything else?”
“Yea, and you should be sure to check the Microsoft building and just sort of pick up any equipment that you might find around the area that is potentially salvageable.”
“I should have my men out and back with supplies in less than a week”
“Sounds good. Good luck.”
“Thank you, and you with your work,” Joe replies before turning to leave the room.
“Oh, and Joe,”
Joe spins on a dime, “Yes?”
“Yo Joe!” [allusion]
“Please, never do that again.”
“Ok,” I embarrassingly returned.
A week later everything was going to plan, Paul and I had made several dozens of EMP devices using old nuclear bombs we had found in old military storage facilities. There is no doubt our attackers have found similar stashes themselves, especially with their hivemind. I do not know why they have not used them yet. Perhaps they are attempting to preserve the land. Anyway, we need to use nukes because they have the largest EMP radius, so we will have to try fewer times to wipe them out. Our enemies have electronic blood pumps that prevent them from dying if their heart fails. They also have rebreathers that convert the carbon from their cells into oxygen and feed oxygen produced by genetically modified algae that they digest directly into their bloodstream. They do not need air to breathe. “These EMPs will disable their NS-34b Mind Drives if they are close enough, and they will disable all of their other, less-protected prosthetics making it easier for our soldiers to eliminate the surviving threat. That is, if there is any,” I explain.
“There will be. Remember that the mind drives that we hacked were trying to ping an IP address in Moscow? That must be the origin of the A.I. that controls those puppets out there. Any surviving cyborgs will surely nuke the few of us left once they learn that they don’t have any troops left over here,” Paul cautioned.
Joe entered the room sometime while Joe and I were talking because, when I turned around, he was behind me waiting eagerly to speak to me.
“The Microsoft building was trashed, scavengers must have been through there, but we did find a quantum computer mostly intact in DeVry University! It appears to have been offline for repairs during the Incursion,” Joe announced.
“Great work, Joe! You hear that Bunson “Burner”? This may be just what we needed! We can simulate the Mind Drives for the cyborgs on the quantum computer and send out their pings to the IP address back in Moscow!”
Paul Bunson exclaimed, “All right then! Let’s get to work! But will we have enough nukes? We can only go up to 31 miles with the Raptor planes.”
“Yes we should have enough as long as we space them out every 470 miles and use the maximum circle packing pattern. We also need to store the quantum computer and our antennas in the lead coated basement to protect it from the EMPs.”
Over the next week, both the 28th and 29th Infantry Divisions had to fall back up north after the A.I.’s puppets captured and secured the Gulf of Mexico. Joe has been escorting Paul and I with his small fleet of stealth helicopters in the night over the past three days. This was necessary because the cyborgs can see the full electromagnetic spectrum and can spot far away aircraft in the sky from twenty miles away. This does not completely stop detection because they can still hear a leaf drop from a tree from three miles away. We are making our way to Illinois where a fleet of 30 Raptor jets wait to receive their payloads, and our squadron has just crossed into Indiana. At this point, we are close enough to the border that reconnaissance AI most likely have already relayed our location and intent to the hivemind. Facing opposition is likely sooner than later, but the breeze is strong and crickets are chirping. It seems peaceful, so I close my eyes and breathe in the… moist, humid, gross summer air and a mosquito.... I cough. I was expecting it to be crisp and relaxing like in novels, but this isn’t a fairytale.
Suddenly, a loudthwimp [Onomatopoeia] was heard and a hot ball of blue plasma whizzed straight through the middle of our formation. “Were under attack,” Joe shouts through the radio, “Evasive Maneuvers! Don’t let them hit the payload!” Volleys of blue plasma are chasing us through the night, but we haven't been hit yet. “We should have been hit by now! They never miss because they can calculate the exact trajectory they need using all currently known values of gravity, wind, the weight of rain, and anything else they can observe and use it to predict where a plasma bolt will go!” I observe. The cyborgs have cannons mounted on the tops of their forearms with a tube connecting to an air pump on their back that compresses air. The air inside the cannon is then super-heated into a plasma and the compressed air from the pump fires the plasma. “They are having trouble predicting the trajectories because of the wind,” Joe replies, “They are down there and cannot observe the exact speed of the wind at our altitude, although they can guess quite well. That is not enough to stop them, but the first shot missed because our helicopter blades push around and redirect the air around us creating unpredictable wind gusts. That, even, cannot stop them. They will observe the direction variation of the plasma and compensate for it because the position of the helicopters are not changing! It is our random flight pattern around each other and the random movements of the air that creates a sphere of uncertainty that will shield us for a while, but they will eventually compensate for even that! They may also get a few lucky shots in, so lets hope reinforcements come soon!”
I looked out the window and a cyborg’s single, red, horizontal slit of an eye illumined the cabin. They were running just under us, running as a unit, and never falling behind with any step. Another helicopter must have radioed in for help because, just then, a squadron of Raptor jets flew past us from the west, fell into formation behind us, and opened fire, releasing a heavy rain of lead on the puppets. They were completely shredded. It only took a few more hours before we were at the Illinois air field.
“Is this the only way? We could find a way to save the westerners from the A.I.,” suggested Paul while we loaded up the jets.
“You know as well as I do that if the connection to the hivemind is cut they die. Their minds were completely purged and used to add to the processing power of the A.I.. They are nothing more than CPUs to it,” I reluctantly replied, “I wish there was another way, but we are losing ground and if we don’t do this, the United States will be wiped out for good.”
“He’s right you know. If we don’t do this we will all be converted into one of them to experience a living death for the rest of our lives. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live through that. Now that I think of it, this probably is saving them. Once the Mind Drive switches off, it will be an instant and painless death, releasing them from the A.I.’s control. It will give them their freedom again, even if it is just for a moment, to think for themselves,” Joe inserted.
We waited a solemn moment as the Raptor jets took off with the nukes. We waited inside and heard the distant explosions of high atmosphere nukes. We told the guards to bring the quantum computer out of the basement, set it up, and bring it online as soon as possible after the blasts. This is it, we must now rebuild, destroy the remaining cyborgs, and prepare for retaliation.
Technology can be good and used for good, but for every amount of good new innovations of technology can do, the amount of harm that the same powerful technology can do should also be taken into consideration by both the producer and consumer. Big business is also never good because monopolies or collaborating companies can manipulate the public. The scariest thing that you can take away from this narrative, though, is probably that every location, technology, and measurements in it are real. You can Google any of them except for the Mind Drive made by the fictional company NS Systems and find that they are real products. Some of them I have progressed development by 20 years (as they should be for the story). NS Systems was the name given to the company developing the Mind Drive because it is too early to tell which real-world company that is developing brain-computer interface implants will come out with it first to consumers. Always ask if you should do something, before you ask if you can do something.
Cameron Byelich
English 12
14 November 2021
A Modest Proposal For Uniting the World and Ending Political Discourse
The following was inspired by Johnathan Swift and references a myriad of other authors and historical figures within it, deepening the meaning, but still makes sense in the context if the connection is lost to the reader. Several elements of satire, such as hyperbole and understatement, are used repeatedly throughout the work. Verbal irony is also used, but typically in a subtle way. I took great pains in describing the frightening capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and how accessible these capabilities are today. Many of the things I describe are entirely within the realm of enactment now.
We are all familiar with how the Internet affects the real world. Something outrageous is posted online and people are polarized and irritable on the streets, at school, and at work. Sometimes this breaks out into violence, other times it simply leads to virtue signaling or arguments, and, in the worst cases, it becomes a geopolitical issue. We can all agree that such events are not good for our mental and physical health as many researchers have proved. An unhealthy body and mind leads to unhealthy decisions which perpetuate the problem, rejuvenating the endless cycle of division, on both national and international levels.
My proposal eliminates these problems in the long-run and makes use of innovative technologies to perpetuate this goal. Being that we hold this technology, we can use it to unite the world under one ideology, and maybe even set up a global government. But I am getting ahead of myself, this proposal depolarizes the world which will be the end of established political parties and, therefore, conflict. It will also broadly eliminate racial, sexual, and religious discrimination. I suspect few will disagree with the stances promoted through the execution of my proposal and that the few who don’t agree will simply be ostracized by their own free will.
Now, we can’t have an omelette without breaking a few eggs. This is well known by both culinary experts and high-profile philosophers. Before we can make more drastic changes to society, we must break down a few barriers. To do this, we will destroy the established political parties with superior technology beyond the comprehension of the old, white, self-righteous raisins that maintain them. We shall make use of weaponized deep fakes, which any neckbeard in his mom’s basement can produce, to fabricate videos showing politicians saying disgusting things. These will be believable because the AI which is used to make audio-visual deep fakes leaves no traces of tampering, especially on cell-phone quality video recordings which are “secretly taken on the streets” as one “passes a politician on a phone call”. Then we simply post it on a mob-mentality social media platform like Twitter, repost it with alternate accounts, and watch as it goes viral. The uninformed public will believe the footage is real and ignore the politician’s objections. For if it were real, the politician would respond in the same way. Due to the video having no date or time associated with its recording, no video evidence from other sources would be able to deny the fabricated video. We will further divide political parties against themselves until they cannot stand by making politicians say things against others close to them. Distrust, division, and confusion will fill the public, making them eagerly seek some bastion of truth.
Phase two of the proposal will commence at this point. While partisan news outlets duke it out, calling each other liars for defending their party, we will be free to promote any ideals we want. By using AI once more, we can train intelligent language models to spew our talking points and propaganda to bring unity in the chaos, end the fights in the streets, and to stop bigotry. Social media pages will be flooded with a large sum of intelligent, fake people who promote our ideals and denounce those who oppose us. We can also use AI to optimize websites which support our movement in order to move them to the top of search engines. This has all already been tested on a smaller scale.
People will be forced to hear our views, and many will accept them due to our new party being clean of injustice. We will have the power to make things go viral and suppress things we do not like. Our own news outlets will become the only source people trust because when our “investigative journalists” say someone did or will do something, we simply fabricate someone recording the event and push it as true. Then, when we get officials in government on our side, they will begin to push policy which favors us. When we control the information, we control the masses, especially if we target and wait for the next generation to become in charge. At this point we will have largely homogenized our individual nations. Once the majority of people are on board with our policies and have demonized those few, old, dying people’s ideas as coming from long corrupted views which were brought about through corrupt political parties, we can move to Phase three.
Phase three involves taking all of the countries who have had access to the internet all that time and uniting them under one banner. The AI language model bots will push for the unification of our nations on social media, allowing us to sway the public opinion in favor of the idea. This will largely end all geopolitical conflict, except for underdeveloped countries outside of the internet’s influence. At this point, we will fully control internet traffic with AI, much like China does today. Our education system will only reinforce our stances on unity and will not even acknowledge other political views. That’s correct, we will blot the existence of other political views out of the internet and education system gradually. There will only be our ideals.
Firstly, this proposal removes things like racism, sexism, and other injustices by making it so that they never existed in the first place. If we teach that such things happened in the past, it merely gives people ideas and sentimentalism to the old ways of thinking, even if they are flawed. For example, note the south in the USA which sees the confederacy as an important part of their history and keeps confederate symbolism merely for historical value. This breeds racism and confederate thinking in the south. If it were to have “never existed to begin with”, no one would be sentimental about incorrect thinking.
Secondly, my plan brings long-yearned unity to countries like the United States. You cannot have polarization if there are no longer poles.
Thirdly, wars will cease between nations with copious amounts of internet access due to them falling for our ideals. They have no choice but to see our ideals due to our AI language model bots being on every social media platform and our deepfaked propaganda against their politicians. The youth who use the internet will be indoctrinated and, by the time they are old enough to take power in their respective countries, they will choose to unite with the global movement. On platforms which our movement does not own, all internet posts inciting violence and incorrect views will be located by AI and heavily suppressed by the bot accounts flooding chat rooms. Websites which do not comply will be forced to comply in this way.
Fourthly, the internet will be purged of incorrect ideas. You will no longer worry about coming accross a Nazi, Communist, Republican, or Democrat because they will be suppressed into extinction. Unwholesome memes will be replaced by wholesome propaganda for your kids.
Fifthly, the world will become more powerful and prosperous. Countries which used to lack certain supply chains would then have new supply chains through the world government. Businesses would be operating in a global country, bringing new businesses to areas previously devoid of them. This would increase access to jobs and job-related education. This would also cause great innovation due to underprivileged peoples from poor countries, who otherwise would not have their ideas contribute to progress, gaining the opportunity to participate in the technology and prosperity brought by richer countries.
Now, some may say that these actions are irresponsible and deprive people of their liberties. I would like you to reconsider. People’s ideas are already manipulated by algorithms which suppress certain ideas and elevate others. It is no secret that many search engines also optimize their results to promote the websites and ideas of those who fund them. With the rapid progress of Artificial Intelligence technology and its wide availability, there is no reason anyone in their mother’s basement can not utilize it to its fullest potential on the world stage. Countries are not legislating against the development of AI which can do this, nor should they as AI can solve all of our societal problems when used to this effect. People will be able to live however they want, we just make sure they want to live our way. No one should try to disempower those who seek to innovate without boundaries; no one should ask themselves if they should make something; no one should consider the greater geopolitical effects their developments may have; no one should educate the public about the existence of these types of AI; and certainly no one should think about the effects their technology will have on the average person. If they did, we would not be able to pull off my proposal and the world would stay in its sorry state. If they did, then we would continue to polarize indefinitely, until war breaks out yet again.
The global bureaucracy is too tied up in their partisan debates, and blind to their surroundings, so now is the perfect time to execute my proposal. My colleagues unanimously agree with this because there is no way the governments can stop the decentralized development of these technologies. This proposal of mine will unite the world and end political discourse at a time it needs it most. I do not personally have anything to gain monetarily, but, as a society, we have everything to gain by allowing AI to be created and specialized to be used in this manner. As a world, we gain a lasting peace and the wrongs of the past are forgotten and future wrongs are prevented permanently. It is even better that a majority of these AI developments have been made open source, meaning that there will be minimal expenses on the part of those who enact my proposal. I entreat you to seriously consider this as a pathway to global peace and agreement.
Cameron Byelich
Composition and Rhetoric I
16 December 2022
Social Virtual Reality: Savior or Menace?
Social Virtual Reality (or social VR) may be detrimental to society or it may be beneficial. There are currently many opinions about it online and I have yet to form one. This is relevant because children in elementary and middle school are talking about VR as much as they are talking about the Nintendo Switch. Because we have an entire generation hopping into social VR, it is important to analyze its potential effects on society. VR culture is already an established structure in society, though it is somewhat amorphous. We are seeing entirely new ideologies develop out of social VR, such as people who believe social VR to be more real than real life, as well as the disproportionate growth of existing ideologies, such as Transhumanism. I will not be focusing on the ideologies currently present in social VR because they are subject to change. In fact, they have been constantly changing since the beginning of social VR. Because of this, I will dive into the underlying substance of social VR and its effects on the individual. Any effect on the individual can then be extrapolated to society in order to determine whether social VR is detrimental or beneficial to society.
So, of course, being a man of numbers and statistics, I first wanted to know if there was any demographic data pertaining to social VR. Sadly, there was not much due to this field being fresh; however, there were apparently two popular influencers in the social VR community, Virtual Bishojo Nem and Mila, who ran a survey with 876 participants. Considering that I later found most academic papers to have sample sizes of 30 or less, with little more than convenience sampling from neighbors who own VR, I would consider this to be one of the best sources we have at the moment. In this survey, it was found that “almost half” of participants had experienced harassment, which was a “higher proportion than [in] social media and online games” (Morrissy). According to the survey, 69% of all reported harassment in VRChat was due to people switching into “inappropriate avatars,” and 43% of all reported harassment involved “sexual touching.” This data simultaneously surprised me, due to how much harassment is sexual on the platform, and was predictable, given my limited personal experience in social VR. As an interesting side note, over 74% of the respondents had female avatars, regardless of biological sex, according to the study. This means that over 74% of males use VR with a female avatar which, assuming a majority of males identify as male, could mean any combination of these three things: identity experimentation is especially encouraged in VR among males, or at least not discouraged, being a social norm; males, in VR, are insecure about their masculinity and wish to see the other side; or males wish to have a female body for… inappropriate reasons. Given what was found in harassment reporting, I am inclined to believe the last conclusion; however, the others may just as well be true. It is odd that we don’t see, for example, 70% of females wearing male avatars. It is a lop-sided statistic. I can see this being a problem for anyone under the age of 18 due to the adult content, and actions, available to users of social VR. Further, I can see that, if this is not used in moderation, social VR could open the door to body perception issues. If a user has long exposure, or attachment, to a virtual body, it may be perceived as better than the user’s real body.
Following this train of thought, I wondered about the young people currently adopting Virtual Reality and stumbled upon a study conducted at Stanford University, by Kathryn Y. Segovia and Jeremy N. Bailenson, about VR’s effects on children’s memories. According to the study, VR was able to stimulate the creation of a limited number of false memories, or partial false memories, in elementary school children. They mistook VR simulations for events which really, physically occurred in their past, “But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition” (Segovia). In this case, IVET is the term they use for a VR system and the idle condition is to have the child sit in a room for one minute. As an anecdote, I personally experienced something similar when I got VR as a late teen, and so have my brothers. You see, when I bought the VR headset, though I knew what I saw wasn’t real, my mind did not know how to process it. Should it be treated like a dream or like reality? These were things my mind had to learn. It also had to relearn how to distinguish reality from virtual reality because the only time it naturally does this is for detailed dreams. Dreams are never as detailed as VR, so the mind is inclined to classify the experience as real even if you rationally know it to be fake. I would think back to piloting a tank and go, “yea, I piloted a tank… in VR”. I knew the memory was from VR and that I never stepped foot in a tank, yet the way the memory was recalled was unlike a dream or video game because my mind classified it as real. I recalled the memory as though I was really there and had to intentionally say that it was fake before my mind treated it that way (I eventually adapted a third intuitive category of memory aside from dream and reality, specifically for VR, after my mind had intuitively recognized the signs of a Virtual Reality). Similarly, new adopters to VR will be in the real world, trying to use gestures or actions that only work in VR, instinctually mixing reality with falsehood. I have seen this involuntary action in family members and people online before they get used to VR. Finally, new VR adopters commonly have what I call “VR Dreams,” where your dreams act like VR, as your mind tries to categorize VR as a dream and not reality. The dream is lucid and somehow assumes properties of VR, leading you to believe and remember the dream as a VR experience. Waking up feels the same as taking off the headset, which is one of the first steps in overcoming the strange cross section VR has with reality in your mind (because it's trying to classify it as a dream). I went through this process, my brothers went through it, my friends went through it, and all the people I talk to online went through it. Ironically, there are people who have admitted to being too embarrassed to admit this to others because they thought they might be the outlier; however, this is the normal way the body adapts to an unnatural environment like VR. Despite this, I can’t help but think that there may be people who never get out of this reality-confusion blend in an intuitive way, especially minors, who may be less developed in their sense of reality, or adults with a mind that is too rigid. If I, as a mostly developed adult with a good grasp on technology and reality, had these drifting moments over the course of my first week in VR; I can only imagine how it may be for other groups of people. Luckily, it would appear, anecdotally, that most people get over this in their first month of VR at most.
Since I am thinking about psychology, what about social VR’s effects on mental health? While I could not get a study specific to social VR, Alessandro Siani and Sarah Anne Marley did research on VR and its effects over the pandemic lockdowns. It contained 646 respondents from all age groups and 47 countries, though 535 of the respondents were male (Siani). According to the study, a majority of those who responded, who had VR access, said that their VR use increased over the lockdowns. Due to this, we can see that VR is being used as a coping mechanism and as a social activity, in this case replacing real-life interaction when it is otherwise inaccessible. Within the study, 48.1% of respondents with VR used it for socializing, with a majority of all respondents with VR headsets stating that it improved their mental health. Though no clinical tests were performed on respondents, VR at least feels like it improves the mental health of the user. Due to this, we can say that it is a great form of interaction during pandemic lockdowns and can act as a mental health booster. These can likely be extrapolated to any other time that physical contact is impossible, such as long-distance conversations with friends, etc. We can find that social VR is helpful in this and similar cases.
In conclusion, social VR is not for everyone and should perhaps be age restricted. If it is not age restricted, then it ought to be monitored or have features and policies preventing certain inappropriate actions. Moreover, kids who are underdeveloped may risk blurring reality with the virtual, as evidenced by the Stanford University study and my anecdotal evidence. There may be evidence for disproportionate sexualization in social VR spaces, given that most harassment is sexual in nature and, potentially, given that most men use female avatars. Hypersexualization can be unhealthy for people of any age and may occur due to the freedom granted by full-body anonymity. People, in general, may also develop unhealthy body image problems, or have an altered sense of self, from using social VR. Aside from these points, social VR is great for hooking up with people who you cannot otherwise meet in person, acting as a decent substitute for real interaction. It can also be beneficial for mental health reasons because it is similar to real-life interactions with others, aside from the inherent anonymity of certain avatars. The only downside is that it may become an unhealthy coping mechanism, generating a self-perpetuating reliance on social VR due to a lack of real-life friends. In the end, now that I think about it, most of the benefits of social VR derive from its similarities to real-life social interaction, thus making real life social interaction superior. This is down to opinion, however I think it is commonly held that sexual harassment in the form of touching others or people shapeshifting into inappropriate bodies, to the point of flashing impossible sexual fantasies, is much less likely in real life than in VR. The only benefits that social VR has, over normal interactions, is telecommunication capabilities and novel customizability, such as for avatars and worlds. On the whole, social VR, much like social media, may be detrimental to society if it is used incorrectly and without moderation.
Works Cited
Morrissy, Kim. “Multilingual Survey Finds Most Harassment in Virtual Reality Is Sexual.” Anime News Network, 17 Nov. 2022, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2022-11-17/multilingual-survey-finds-most-harassment-in-virtual-reality-is-sexual/.191921. This news article from the Anime News Network provides a summary of the results from a survey conducted by two large Virtual Reality Youtubers. It was supported by the NPO Virtual Rights group, the VNOS Corporation, the PANORA news outlet, and the Metacul-Frontier news outlet. The survey was conducted in English and Japanese, revealing that a majority of harassment events are sexual in VR. It specifically looked at users of social VR platforms, including RecRoom, VRChat, NeosVR, etc. who had used a VR headset “at least five times in the last year”. Users with avatars depicting females were the main targets of this harassment (51% cite this as the reason for their harassment). A majority of males (74.1%) and females (77.2%) use avatars depicting females. In the sample size of 876 participants, 84.8% of participants were from Japan, with 8.7% of participants being from the USA. Among sexual minorities in the survey, 31.5% of US respondants had been harassed, as opposed to only 8% in Japan. A majority (83%) of respondents were unphased by harassment events and 86% of respondents want a safer “metaverse”. Interestingly, 77% were opposed to legislating towards these ends, wanting tools to be provided for individualized protection and for platforms to enforce their own guidelines.
Segovia, Kathryn Y., and Jeremy N. Bailenson. “Virtually True: Children's Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality.” Media Psychology, vol. 12, no. 4, 2009, pp. 371–393., https://doi.org/10.1080/15213260903287267. This research published to the Media Psychology journal was used to study false memories in 55 children of elementary and preschool age. It was also used to study the efficacy of certain methods of inducing false memories. Essentially, children were told a narrative about an event which did not occur two years ago and were then asked if they remembered the event. This was done before stimulus, immediately after stimulus, and five days after stimulus. The children were told that said stimulus may help them remember and then were administered the stimulus. IVET is the name of the VR system used in the study. The randomly selected stimulus could have involved sitting alone, telling the participant to imagine the event, watching another child participate in the event through an IVET system, or participating in an IVET simulation of oneself in the event. In any given scenario, the immediate aftermath of the stimulus yielded false memories for preschool children; however, the imagination and IVET simulation of oneself yielded significantly more false memories in the immediate aftermath of stimulus. Further, imagination and the IVET simulation of oneself also retained the most false memories after five days, however the difference in answers between the initial and five day interviews shows that imagination may be more effective at the retention of these false memories than IVET.
Siani, Alessandro, and Sarah Anne Marley. “Impact of the Recreational Use of Virtual Reality on Physical and Mental Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Lockdown.” Health and Technology, vol. 11, no. 2, 2021, pp. 425–435., https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-021-00528-8. This research was published to the Health and Technology journal describing the effects of Virtual Reality on physical and mental health during the lockdowns of COVID-19. The study was conducted on 646 respondents through convenience sampling on the author’s personal Facebook and Twitter accounts, Facebook VR groups, and Subreddits relating to VR. The plurality of respondents were from the USA (255), with the next greatest group being from the UK (153). A majority of respondents were male (535), with respondents from all age groups. Most participants who had access to VR reported an increased use of VR over the lockdown period, with a majority (~90%) citing that it helps keep them occupied. The study found that respondents used VR for video games (98.7%), fitness (75.7%), and socializing (55.2%) most, among people with access to VR. Most people spent less than one hour on these VR activities, except in video games where respondents (46.6% of those with VR access) played for one to two hours. The study found that many (36.4%) participants whose sex was identified as “other” spent one to two hours a day socializing, while males and females spend no time or less than an hour a day using social VR. Those who were 18-19 found social VR most popular (72.1%), while those who were 25-29 found it the least popular (47.7%). A majority of respondents found VR to be useful for mental health and exercise, labeling it as more vigorous activity than traditional video games. There seemed to be little difference in weight gain between users of VR and traditional game consoles over the lockdown period. Overall, the study concludes that VR is a useful mental health tool and can be used to encourage physical activity during times of lockdown.
