It has been nice to see comments on the internet that touch on the idea of how our outlook on the world affects the enjoyment of technological experiences as it is something that I have been thinking about constantly and that I’ve come to believe is an elephant in the room of escapism. In response to a recent post regarding one Reddit user’s disappointment with the pre-consumer version of a new virtual reality technology called the Oculus Rift, user roythomasbaker had this to say:

“Your concerns are very valid. Some of us are natural skeptics while others are happy optimists. This decidedly will color your experience. But I sincerely believe VR is headed in the right direction: just that some of us will arrive at nirvana a little later than others.”

His use of the term “natural skeptics” is clearly a generous way of addressing what is all around us in the threads, videos, and posts about technology: the inability to enjoy something as a result of a negative outlook. I should clarify right away that I firmly include myself in the category of people whose depression has led them to the desire of escaping reality by means of technology and who sometimes struggles to appreciate this very technology through the haze. The problem is that some of these escapists act out more destructively than others.

As an example of non-constructive criticism specific to the Oculus Rift, I should point you in the direction of a YouTube review posted on June 4, 2013; not long after the company had made the development kit available. What I find most fascinating about this video is how, even in the pros segment of his pros-and-cons, the reviewer cannot fight the desire to cast a fog of negativity across the duration of it; never mind the fact that he examines the cons first. In one key moment, he visits the topic of the cable which leads from the head set to the control box and concludes the thought with, “I don’t know what they were thinking”. Perhaps most alarming is the sheer amount of positive support that this review garnered from fellow (ahem) “enthusiasts”.

One might say, ‘So what? The volatile divide between the depressive, hard-to-please escapist and the optimistic innovator has been around for centuries’. What makes the current climate of emerging virtual reality special is that, for starters, a young visionary has chosen to release early iterations of his product to independent developers and made himself accessible to an unprecedented degree via the internet during the entire process. Knowing that he could not do this without also including non-developers in the affair, Palmer Luckey—the product’s inventor—is now having to deal with a growing number of non-contributing participants who are taking advantage of his accessibility by hurling everything from unwelcome critiques of the developer’s kit to attacks regarding his alleged neglect of the internet community which follows his company’s every move; people to whom he has repeatedly reached out in the middle of his busy schedule by politely correcting them on such ludicrous accusations. This is just one example of how the toxic relationship between the dreamer and the depressed masses creates a catch-22 that can jeopardize innovation.

‘So why would you attempt to launch such a sanctimonious guilt-trip’, you might ask. My struggle with clinical depression prevents me from enjoying anything for the duration of my temporarily unstable episodes. As such, I believe it to be time for a conversation about this lack of insight that is not only preventing us from enjoying the most exciting things around us but, in some cases, acting out in ways that prevent the optimistic innovators from wanting to share their discoveries with us at all. There is an analogy that comes to mind that has to do with the practice of lucid dreaming. In lucid dreaming, the act of remembering one’s own dreams (“dream recall”) is a commonly underrated skill; the importance of which determines whether or not a person is able to remember if s/he had a lucid dream in the first place. This applies to the problem of depression and the escape to virtual reality because it poses the question: what good is an other-worldly experience if we haven’t done the self work needed to enjoy it?