Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 5

Content warning: references to mental illness.



Wade heads for his Advanced OASIS Studies (no! no more, stop!) class after lunch. This is where he explains in excruciating detail everything that he knows about James Halliday. Details which I will spare you from, for the most part.

Halliday was a geek god, a legend. One who nobody had initially cared for when he died; him being just another self-indulgent billionaire in a world ravaged by poverty, but the book doesn't want you to remember that.

Wade only studies Latin because Halliday did. His life is revolved entirely around Halliday. He idolizes him, and we are meant to, as well. Halliday was "a god among geeks", as Wade puts it. Wade's actual goal in the book is to become a clone of Halliday - his Mini-Me. Which is what Halliday had intended with this contest - for his Easter egg hunt "winner".

Hell, the lesson in the classroom is about Halliday and how great he was!

We get a giant bio-dump on Halliday. All you need to know is that he was a poor, unappreciated nerd cliche. He came from an abusive, dysfunctional home, and was obsessed with everything pop culture, but especially Dungeons & Dragons and video games, to the point of actually being willing to give up his humanity and any human contact in order to escape reality altogether. He dedicated his life to creating games, and was a pioneer in virtual reality development software.

It is here where we are also introduced to Halliday's former, lifelong best friend and game developing partner, Ogden Morrow. Here is a description of him as an adult and successful game businessman:


At every Gregarious Games press conference, Morrow grinned infectiously from behind his unruly beard and wire-rimmed spectacles, using his natural gift for hype and hyperbole. Halliday seemed to be Morrow's polar opposite in every way. (Page 55)


The "rotund" Morrow is described to look like George R.R. Martin. Is this intentional?

So Halliday was just "eccentric", huh? So socially inept and bizarre that in the rare times when he actually talked to people and gave interviews, he behaved terribly, making everyone around him uncomfortable. This does not excuse certain actions, like:

He would lash out and fire any GG employees who didn't know as much about eighties obscure trivia as he did; who weren't as obsessed as he was. He was so selfish and self-absorbed that when Morrow rehired the employees, he didn't even notice. Why would anyone idolize someone like that? I know that famous men who are considered "geniuses" and "talented" are frequently excused for absolutely anything, like this abhorrent behaviour, by the public, bending over backwards in the process. But this is just brushed aside and glossed over as another of Halliday's "eccentricities". This manchild is still a hero, according to history, no matter what.

No matter how you may try to make light of it, James Halliday will always come across as a comic book supervillain.

Then there's this:


As the years went on, Halliday's already-stunted social skills seemed to deteriorate even further. (Several exhaustive psychological studies were done on Halliday following his death, and his obsessive adherence to routine and preoccupation with a few obscure areas of interest led many psychologists to conclude that Halliday had suffered from Asperger's syndrome, or from some other form of high-functioning autism). (Page 55)


Leaving aside how clunky this paragraph is written, I find it extremely hard to believe that Halliday had not been tested and diagnosed as mentally ill during his lifetime. No psychologists talked about him then? Or analyzed him? One of the world's richest and most famous businessmen?

Now, on the other hand, I am glad that Halliday is not explicitly stated as having a mental illness, and that he isn't an intentional villain, for that matter. Because it means not vilifying mentally-ill people. This is a harmful cliche in pop culture, and one of the reasons why it has taken so long for most of the general public and social circles to finally start treating mental illnesses just as seriously as physical illnesses.

However, realistically Halliday's "eccentricities" would be taken more seriously, especially in the far future of 2040.


Despite his eccentricities, no one ever questioned Halliday's genius. The games he created were addictive and widely popular. By the end of the twentieth century, Halliday was widely recognized as the greatest videogame designer of his generation--and, some would argue, of all time. (Page 55-56)


Ugh!

Halliday is the luckiest loser of all time, more like.

Ready Player One = white male privilege, the book.

The infodump keeps going and going and going. Additionally, it is in this chapter where it clearly states that anyone can be and sound like whatever they want in Halliday's and Morrow's new internet creation that will change the world, the OASIS:


In the OASIS, you could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity, because your anonymity was guaranteed. (Page 57)


Yeah, as long as you narrow yourself down to the narrow-mindedess of straight white dudes, you'll be fine, of course. How un-creative in a creative world. Even in the future, cultures have not changed, and feminism has made no progress.

More exposition on how the OASIS works. Then:


At a time of drastic social and cultural upheaval, when most of the world's population longed for an escape from reality, the OASIS provided it, in a form that was cheap, legal, safe, and not (medically proven to be) addictive. The ongoing energy crisis contributed greatly to the OASIS's popularity. (Page 59)


Medically proven to not be addictive, huh? Sure, that won't be contradicted at any moment in the book.

With the OASIS, Halliday turned the world into his own personal fantasy and video game. He and Morrow took advantage of the failing real world to set up their business in virtual reality. They took advantage of people's vulnerability and hard times in order to manipulate them into their highly-questionable reality simulator operation. They promised a solace from reality.

This doesn't fix any problems: ignoring problems altogether will only make them worse in the long-term. Not to mention it will only go on to create new, more difficult problems.

"Reality sucks" is practically Halliday's motto.

His paradise is realistically everyone else's nightmare, made to cater to him and his likes alone. In the OASIS, everyone is his prisoner, without them even knowing it. He created a dystopic world, but the book doesn't realize it.

Last line, and keep in mind that the book wants you to think this is a good thing, since it paints Halliday as a good guy:


Before long, billions of people around the world were working and playing in the OASIS every day. Some of them met, fell in love, and got married without ever setting foot on the same continent. The lines of distinction between a person's real identity and that of their avatars began to blur.
      It was the dawn of new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a videogame. (Page 60)


How utterly terrifying.

The typo in "It was the dawn of new era" is in my copy of the book, BTW.

So that was the Halliday chapter, and the more I learn about him, the more I hate him.

And the madness and the absence of a plot don't stop there. To be continued in chapter 6.