Humans are innately self obsessed. We can think, we can feel, and naturally we want to see ourselves represented in the things we care about. This extends from the supremely simple aspects of, for instance hiring black actors to play the role of the President of the United States to mirror Barack Obama, to more complex topics such as equality in media and inclusion of all people who don't fall into pre made factory settings of Boring White Straight Male Protagonist, in a way that wholesomely reflects social sensitivities and encouraging nurturing growth for people facing discrimination in their day to day lives.

Self insertion into media isn't a new trend either; the more our technology evolves, the more ways humans can find to experience generated world with our own eye. This includes thousands of authors and fan fiction writers who take the first person point of view-although really self insertion hit its peak after the cult internet sensation "My Immortal" surfaced circa 2006. Video games adapted to this style, bringing to the table a whole successful subculture of games with a first person camera; from first person shooters like Blizzard's Overwatch, Activision's legacy behind the Call of Duty franchise that's dominated the industry for almost a decade, action oriented adventures similar to Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls series, and of course the trend for getting the Royal bejeebus spooked out of you in indie horror games like Five Nights at Freddy's, Amnesia the Dark Descent, and countless other "jumpscare" centered games to which many YouTubers make their careers.

2016 is taking the idea of self insertion and rapidly multiplying it. VR headsets have begun to be a normalized way of playing games, as more and more developers rush to fill a new wave of technological advancement. Oculus Rifts and the HTC Vive dominated the marketplace, but Samsung's release of the Gear VR and Sony's much anticipated PlayStationVR, it won't be long until a VR headset is just as expected as an iPhone and functioning social media presence. Ringling students know this as a fact, the first ever VR class introduced this summer indicates our campus' eagerness to complete on fresh territory. But until VR becomes a standard, more and more corporations push toward blending realities. Hardcore Henry brought first person to cinema in a fast paced action thriller shot entirely in first person, and the latest Blair Witch remake shot it's trailer in VR for new levels of spook factor. Niantic's explosive introduction to the Apple Store has prompted new ways of utilizing AR through smartphones with Pokemon GO.

It goes without saying, therefore, that the Baby Boomers and Generation X will find a new way to paint Millennials as pariahs to society with their freaky soul sucking goggles.


Now of course not every "old" believes into the (largely Alt Right driven) belief that Millenials are a blight to the world, and indeed this type of xenophobia of the new and exciting has always existed as a backlash to breakthrough discoveries. There are, of course, denizens of the world stalwartly refusing to purchase an iPhone through some half baked argument that a flip phone is somehow better to utilize if you want to call somebody-some nonsense about actually talking to people. Completely subjective, but to each their own. Galileo was caught in between a rock and a hard place too after proposing the Earth isn't flat.

It is pretty intriguing though that the generation responsible for the early 2000s "save our children from stress and too much literal back breaking homework" panic has done a complete 180-Millennials are all lazy and selfish once we got old enough to compete in the workplace. And our new age technology is at the heart of it all; they blame our phones for somehow making us out of touch with real communication, our video games for turning kids violent, and our social platforms for making us too sensitive and entitled. Before that, it was rock music. And prior to rock it was driving big bad muscle cars.

The summer of 2016 was the dawn of Pokemon GO, the quarter in which a small developer's stock skyrocked while they rushed to stabilize a game completely overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of players. Thousands of people rushed to go outside to catch all the Pokemon they loved from the 90s. And of course Fox News found a way to ridicule Millennials for running around doing the exact thing the olds pined for: seeing people actively outside.

So to end a long winded rant, will the VR come under similar scrutiny as Pokemon GO? Oh almost definitely, but at this point it's to be expected. However, to CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood, simplifying the soaring development of Virtual Reality as a reality to a quirky new millennial ability to take a "surroundie" does nothing more than to reiterate my first point: that we humans really are silly and righteously self obsessed.