Stir Crazy Cabin Fever? Try Virtual Reality

I know what it’s like to turn off the TV after a long binge and be startled by my return to reality. But that’s nothing compared to removing my VR headset after even five minutes within it. As vivid as big-screen TVs have become, there’s still a frame around the picture. You never lose context entirely even on an all-night binge.

VR is different. No frame anywhere you turn your head. It’s completely immersive and entirely convincing. If you’re getting a little restless these days or if your children are bouncing off the walls, I encourage you to invest the relatively modest $300 for an Oculus Quest 2 and the $20-40 per game application. It’s a new technology you might think is meant for other people but no, it’s here and I’ll argue it’s for everyone.

I’m 64. I’ve always exercised, though as the years have passed, less enthusiastically. It’s harder for me to get into the zone anymore. Exercise had become a boring chore. I missed my younger days playing racquetball.

Racketball doesn’t require self-motivation. It’s not a push-yourself sport. The flying ball draws you to it and before you know it you’ve worked up a sweat. Before Covid-19, I had stopped getting that at the gym. Weightlifting and machine-aerobics felt more boring and annoying than compelling.

Around the time the gyms closed, my daughter recommended I try exercising in VR. Now I do it enthusiastically for at least a half-hour a day, working up a serious sweat chasing virtual balls in programs like Supernatural and FitVR.

These programs are not really games, but they’re as fun as games. It takes me no self-discipline to don the VR headset. I’m drawn to it. I’ve canceled my gym membership. Exercise has always helped me with my mood and energy buoyancy. A VRcercise session a day keeps the lassitude away.

I’m just a few years too old to have taken to video games. I assumed they were a technology for other people. I never played one before VR but now I’m playing. The immersion is a joy—escapism at its best. I like one in which I mow down malfunctioning robots. Since I think and write about robo-envy, the dangerous cultish know-it-all appetite to be programmed to run the muck of life smoothly, the game resonates for me.

My daughter and I have face-to-face visits by VR too. Last week, we sat together in a plush, gorgeous old-time VR living room with a fire crackling in the fireplace, wainscotting, and a cat playing the window. When we wanted a change of scene, we moved the conversation to some rocks in a river in springtime Yosemite and then to a cozy snow campfire.

In VR chat, instead of seeing each other’s faces, we’re seeing cartoon avatars that look like us. Still, when moving our hands in reality, the avatars gesticulate too, and when we talk our mouths move. Ice camping in VR, when we speak, virtual steam comes off our lips. We talked for hours. It felt much cozier than phone or Zooming.

In another VR chat program, we donned wilder avatars and entered a public lobby before finding a room for our one-on-one catch up. Her avatar was a sprinkled donut with legs and geet. When she spoke, the donut hole moved like a mouth. My avatar was a hairy man-giant in a pink tutu.

Interaction in such public spaces is perfectly safe. We can talk to strangers without worry about theft or bodily harm. A young guy from Chile wandered over to us and struck up a conversation in Spanish. I mentioned that I was the donut’s father. He said, “Funny, you don’t look related.”

I'm a big fan of safe escapism. I think reality is too much for any of us to handle 24/7. Anyone who claims to be an absolute realist is kidding themself.

Escapism is inescapable. I see safe escapism or "optimal illusion" as a necessary antidote for too many reality checks, which you may be getting these days with more frequency than COVID-19 stimulus checks.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 Essential Reads

Update on COVID-19 and How It Changes the Brain

How Political Partisanship Can Be Deadly

If we use escapism to take a break from our worldly woes, VR is a powerful everyday therapeutic tool. Since the escapist immersion is so convincingly, so too is the excursion away from our troubles.

As with drugs, VR escapism is so convincing I suppose it could become a danger. One could exit reality and never want to come back. But for checking out daily to take a therapeutic breather from reality, VR is well worth checking out.