I get the general impression that READY PLAYER ONE is kind of a crapsack world, so that much tracks. On the other hand; if online existence is so burdensome, maybe log off every so often. And on the gripping hand: the world of READY PLAYER ONE isn’t actually going to happen anyway*. So maybe it’s not a Torment Nexus thing, as much as it is an attempted cash grab. Those at least are tolerable.
*I haven’t read or watched it, but from the Wikipedia entry it’s pretty clear that the author relied on all those dystopian fiction disaster tropes that get yet more hilariously outdated every year. I also have thoughts about who would actually be running the planet under these circumstances, but I’m retired.
#commissionearned
Eh. The book is pretty good. It doesn’t live up to the fanboy hype, but it’s solid, probably the best choice for “normie’s first cyberpunk”, and absolutely dripping with nostalgia for those of us who grew up in the ‘80s.
I have two very petty objections to the book:
I do not believe it was possible to visit a bowling alley in the early-mid ‘80s without hearing Kenny Rodgers singing “The Gambler” on the jukebox.
The second one is strictly personal. “Parzival” was my old CB handle, and I continued to use it online from Usenet forward. Until I suddenly couldn’t because of this bloody book’s main character using it as his online identity. (And where I already had it locked in, I got deluged by fanboys.)
To clarify, the “real world” of the book was crapsack cyberpunk. The virtual world was a (mostly) an idealized version of the ‘80s.
If anyone else is a puzzled about the term “Torment Nexus” as I was, Know Your Meme can help.
Gah. “As puzzled”.