Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 2

Content warning: sexism, misogyny, references to online harassment.



Wade is now in the OASIS as his avatar, Parzival, in his virtual high school. The OASIS is described as being breathtakingly realistic and awesome, and the real world has become so desolate, disorganized and neglected that the US educational department has termed the OASIS as a legit public school system and place of learning for children, with scholarships available, not just for the privileged kids.

Basically, the OASIS is reality now. Deal with it, like you can't be bothered to deal with real problems in the real world. Hail James Halliday as your lord and saviour.

There is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as a group photo in Wade's school locker (which also contains a Princess Leia poster with her blaster - thankfully there is taste and restraint enough not to include her in her infamous slave bikini from Return of the Jedi.) This is a reference that does actually come back later in the book and is significant to the plot, unlike a lot of other references.

There is exposition on how OASIS users can choose their avatars, how anonymity works, privacy, etc. Then there's naming your avatar:


Students weren't allowed to use their avatar names while they were at school. This was to prevent teachers from having to say ridiculous things like "Pimp_Grease, please pay attention!" or "BigWang69, would you stand up and give us your book report!" (Page 29)


Yes, teachers having to call out "dickrapesfeminazi" and "fuckingcuntbuster" wouldn't sound very professional. What? It's the internet. The OASIS would get abused like this in real life.

Oh but this isn't real life, is it?

So on the way to class Wade gets called out and insulted by another avatar, to which he hurls an equally childish insult - he acknowledges that it is childish, but "this was still high school--the more childish an insult, the more effective it was". (Page 30). Except that trolls typically don't want to listen to words at all, reasonable or not, no matter how skilled and witty the person speaking is.

He also mutes the avatar so he can't hear what else he has to say.


The ability to mute my peers was one of my favorite things about attending school online, and I took advantage of it almost daily. The best thing about it was that they could see that you'd muted them, and they couldn't do a damn thing about it. There was never any fighting on school grounds. The simulation simply didn't allow it. (Page 30)


Muting players is optional in this virtual reality game. Gee, is the author aware of what kind of harassment female gamers put up with in interactive games in real life? And violence is not allowed in some areas of the OASIS - could one of the reasons be to protect female avatars?

The mute option is never brought up again, and the disadvantages and dangers of being female on the internet is an issue that never comes up - not seriously, anyway. So consider this another example of social commentary that is lost.

The OASIS - Wade has no social skills because of it. He is a "painfully shy, awkward kid, with low self-esteem", thanks to spending his childhood in virtual reality. Talking to people online is fine for him - in reality, it is his personal hell. He is an OASIS addict; an overweight kid subject to a limited time spent outdoors and exercising - because apparently going up and down the stacks almost every day doesn't count as exercise.

And we are meant to view the OASIS as a good thing. As good for our "hero".

Then there's this gem:


Even so, I tried my best to fit in. Year after year, my eyes would scan the lunchroom like a T-1000 , searching for a clique that might accept me. But even the other outcasts wanted nothing to do with me. I was too weird, even for the weirdos. And girls? Talking to girls was out of the question. To me, they were like some exotic alien species, both beautiful and terrifying. Whenever I got near one of them, I invariably broke out in a cold sweat and lost the ability to speak in complete sentences. (Page 31)


Girls are "like some exotic alien species". Are you serious? Are you serious? Could you be any more cliche and pathetic?

Girls are not some pretty, mysterious hive mind who exist only to arouse and intimidate you! Read some feminist articles and books from the OASIS! Or just read anything written by women! Or has Halliday deliberately not included them there or in any other archive he has control over? That wouldn't surprise me.

Not once in the book does Wade think that maybe the problem lies with himself, not other people. In the fake fantasy world of the OASIS, he can talk to the female of the species; as long as they are not real and are not of the scary real world, with real human feelings and consequences to deal with, right? You socially-challenged, eighties-emulating geek?

Truly, my heart bleeds for you.

So because Wade can't talk to girls, he has enrolled in an OASIS school. There are hundreds of school campuses there, and travelling within the virtual world costs money just like travelling in the real world does.

Long story short:


On my first day at OPS #1873, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Now, instead of running a gauntlet of bullies and drug addicts on my walk to school each morning, I went straight to my hideout and stayed there all day. Best of all, in the OASIS, no one could tell that I was fat, that I had acne, or that I wore the same shabby clothes every week. Bullies couldn't pelt me with spitballs, give me atomic wedgies, or pummel me by the bike rack after school. No one could even touch me. In here, I was safe. (Page 32)


The OASIS is explicitly stated to be safe for everyone - this is later confirmed, as well. Safe from bullying and ostracize-ing. Where anyone can be themselves and express themselves however they want.

Remember this, as this is going to bite this book in the arse many, many times.

Is the OASIS really safe, though? It is a system like any other; one that can be easily corrupted and abused. Furthermore, the above line implies that losing yourself in virtual reality is good and healthy. It isn't. But reality sucks, and that justifies everything in this book.

Also, "atomic wedgies"? What the hell?

In Wade's World History classroom (I almost typed in Wayne's World there - this book is a bad influence), he logs on to the Hatchery, one of the most popular gunter message forums. He says it's cool, so we have to take his word for it.

Then:


I didn't see much of interest this morning. The usual gunter flame wars. Ongoing arguments about the "correct" interpretation of some cryptic passage in Anorak's Almanac. High-level avatars bragging about some new magic item or artifact they'd obtained. This crap had been going on for  years now. In the absence of any real progress, gunter subculture had become mired in bravado, bullshit, and pointless infighting. It was sad, really. (Page 32)


Wow. Wow. Just, wow.

Never have I encountered a sentence that seemed self-aware but at the same time completely unself-aware. I mean, "the "correct" interpretation", "In the absence of any real progress", "gunter subculture", and "It was sad, really". This is a satire, right? It has to be. This must have been included as an intentional rebuttal on our own internet culture - on our fandoms -  and all its microaggressions. If not, then... wow. That is an achievement all on its own. Even if it is meant to be ironic, it comes across as annoying, patronizing, and pretentious.

Then there's infodump dedicated to bashing the Sixers, a derogatory term gunters give to the employees of the Innovative Online Industries (IOI). It is an eeeeeeeeeevvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiillllll corporation hellbent on a hostile takeover of the OASIS and its Gregarious Simulation Systems, by way of exploiting a loophole in Halliday's will.

IOI (pronounced eye-oh-eye, as the author unnecessarily points out) is evil and capitalist and monetary and an enemy of free speech and so on and so forth. Wade and other gunters hate it because it wants to take over their internet "safe haven"; their "safe, happy refuge".


These days, most gunters referred to them as "the Sux0rz." (Because they sucked.) (Page 33)


Thank you, author, for informing us idiot readers that that's what Sux0rz means, and for explaining the joke.

So, are the Sixers a military organization? A commentary on military procedures and how its recruits are like mindless soldiers and drones? Especially in a virtual world where individuality and free-thinking becomes easier to suppress and eradicate?

The Sixers' avatars all look the same, and are all male, regardless of the real person's gender. Hmm, social commentary on how some female gamers and internet users would present a male identity in order to avoid sexist and misogynistic harassment? Commentary on how male is always seen as the default?

Are we going to come back to this? Ever? No? Okay then, thanks for nothing.

Wade, in unflinching disgust and hatred, refers to the Sixers as evil drones, with no respect for other users, and "whose goal is to hand the OASIS over to an evil multinational conglomerate intent on ruining it." (Page 34).

Hypocritical much, novel? Halliday was just as evil as IOI if not more so; he was just less honest about his goals. He was as selfish as they are, and so is Wade, as we shall see.

Wade is still going on about the Sixers, by the way:


The Sixers gave gunters a common enemy, and Sixer bashing was a favorite pastime in our forums and chat rooms. A lot of high-level gunters had a strict policy of killing (or trying to kill) every Sixer who crossed their path. Several websites were devoted to tracking Sixer activities and movements, and some gunters spent more time hunting the Sixers than they did searching for the egg. The bigger clans actually held a yearly competition called "Eighty-Six the Sux0orz", with a prize for the clan who managed to kill the largest number of them. (Page 34)


This is glorifying killing people you don't like, even if it's not real. It desensitizes people from facing the reality and consequences of violence. Wade and the other impressionable young gunters have become desensitized from a lifetime spent in the OASIS. It reeks of toxic masculinity and entitlement, and it enables a violent "us-vs-them" mentality. There is no awareness of this presented in the narrative, ever.

Not to mention it's a further hypocrisy - how do we know that any gunter who might win the egg hunt might turn out to be like a Sixer? Again, there is abuse and corruption in positions of power, and the privilege in gaining control of the whole of the OASIS is a very powerful one indeed. Wade is not immune to this, either.

After the Sixer bashing/Stormtrooper bad guy fodder intro, we are introduced to the book's love interest, Art3mis:


After checking out a few other gunter forums, I tapped a bookmark icon for one of my favorite websites, Arty's Missives, the blog of a female gunter named Art3mis (pronounced "Artemis"). (Page 34)


Why point out how her name is pronounced when it is obvious?

Art3mis - might as well be called "Lov3 Int3r3st". We are told that she is smart and funny - hysterical, even - that "She wrote with an endearing, intelligent voice, and her entries were filled with self-deprecating humor and witty, sardonic asides." (Page 35)

Gee, it would be great if we were shown a sample or two of these so-called amazing and entertaining written essays. An example of why we should think that Art3mis is awesome and not just a Manic Pixie Dream Girl? This breaks a slew of "show don't tell" rules of storytelling.


It probably goes without saying that I had a massive cyber-crush on Art3mis. (Page 35)


A girl writing stuff on the internet?! Such a thing is unheard of!


I sometimes (always) saved them [her avatar screenshots] to a folder on my hard drive. (Page 35)


Ew.

Wade goes on to describe Art3mis's avatar face as real-like, and pretty, but not "unnaturally perfect". She is "unbearably attractive". What a prince, and not a creepy stalker. He says she doesn't have a supermodel's body - it's "All curves"; she chose her avatar to look "natural". Again, what a Nice Guy Wade is. He isn't objectifying and judging a girl he doesn't know at all!

He is aware that his crush on Art3mis is "both silly and ill-advised", for anyone can look like anything they want in the OASIS:


What did I really know about her? She'd never revealed her true identity, of course. Or her age or location in the real world. (Page 35)


"This makes it even harder for me to stalk her!" is what this passage comes across as saying.


She could be fifteen or fifty. A lot of gunters even questioned whether she was really female, but I wasn't one of them. (Page 35)


"I couldn't objectify her and fantasize about her otherwise! No homo!"


Probably because I couldn't bear the idea that the girl with whom I was virtually smitten might actually be some middle-aged dude named Chuck, with black hair and male-pattern baldness. (Page 35)


Am I even needed here? This whole thing speaks for itself.

Wow is Wade insecure. "She isn't a middle-aged, ugly bald guy because I couldn't bare the thought of her not fitting into my poor, lonely, pathetic male fantasies!" "She has to look like her avatar because I say so!"

What wish-fulfillment BS.

As an aside, there is no mention whatsoever of Art3mis ever being trolled and harassed online as she became more popular and a "celebrity", as the book puts it. Not even in passing. She is a woman on the internet. A sign of 2040s progression? Doubtful. Cline ignores reality as much as Wade and Halliday do.

Now, to be fair, Ready Player One was published in 2011, before movements such as Gamergate existed. However, Reddit, 4chan, and other sites, forums and methods of trolling and abusing marginalized groups of people online - lives being destroyed by online harassment - have existed long before Ready Player One was published. There were articles discussing the problems - the risks - of being female or anything other than straight, white and male on the internet, even back then. When reading Ready Player One, you'd think that Cline had never heard of Twitter before writing it. Indeed, hardly any mention is made of any other internet access than the fictional OASIS.

Anyway, Wade talks about Art3mis's famous blog posts, specifically her essays on John Hughes movies and why they're awesome, at least as fantasies (again, told and not shown). Or as "Dorky Girl Fantasies" and "Dorky Boy Fantasies" (excerpts? No? Okay, we'll take your word for it then, as usual). Why is she a fan? It's not explained.

So the chapter ends with the first mention of Aech - Wade's only friend in the OASIS. Yes, even as a confident and witty virtual reality boy, he still has only one friend in the entirety of the virtual world. I totally believe that he is happy and not lonely and pathetic like he is in the real world.

He enters Aech's chat room, conveniently with enough time before his class starts. End of chapter 2.