The sand was violently hot as it flooded into my foam Birkenstocks on the cruel walk from the boardwalk to the shore.
I was high strung. I’d just moved to Los Angeles. I felt guilt for enjoying myself, considering there was so much still to be done to feel settled in a new place.
I had no job. I had no understanding of the city. I didn’t know where to grocery shop. I didn’t know how to dress—hence the foam Birkenstocks. Driving made me nervous. Parking made me sick. And when people asked me what I was out here for, I had no clear answer for them. I was fodder for the city that swallows up dreamers day in and day out.
Anyways. We’re at the beach. We plop our towels down—my friend X and I—and we’re taking in the view and I feel the ocean breeze and for just a brief moment I can breathe and my head is clear.
“Wanna smoke this joint?” X asks.
The voice inside my head gives contradictory answers. “No,” it says, because I don’t smoke much, and I fear the paranoia I may have if I smoke the all-powerful California herb. “Yes,” it says, because I’m at the beach, it’s legal here, I need to let loose, and for god sakes, when in Rome!
“Yeah I’ll do a little bit,” I say without confidence.
I was scarce on willpower at the time. We smoke about half of it. I’m obliterated. Panicking. I’ve made a grave mistake. I tell X this.
“Yeah that was reeaaally strong. I’m like very high right now,” he tells me.
I do not want to hear that. X smokes a lot. So if he is like “very high right now,” then I’m doomed. I scan the scene, the ocean is no longer calming, it’s just a symbol of disbelief—that I’m in a new place—I realize what a massive decision it was to move across the country. Every possible doubt and degradation comes ringing through the canyons of my mind.
I look south, I see the Santa Monica pier—the rollercoasters, the Ferris wheel, the tourists and the tourist traps. I look east and Santa Monica is towering above. Tall white office buildings with pitch black windows, colorful hotels, and disgustingly cute apartment complexes all peer down at me with intense judgement from atop their cliff. Where am I? Why do I feel like I’ve been here before! And why doesn’t it feel real?
I remember a video game I used to play. Grand Theft Auto V—a game in which the characters romp around in a near replica of Los Angeles, called Los Santos.
“Jesus Christ I feel like I’m in Grand Theft Auto!” I proclaim with equal parts fear and relief.
X laughs, finding amusement in my angst. He didn’t understand that I was genuinely grappling with the nature of my reality.
What a scary experience it would be, to believe you’re in a video game—particularly one whose story both embraces and challenges criminality, corruption, greed, and consumerism at its extremes. The world is better than Grand Theft Auto isn’t it? The world isn’t as dark and vapid as those programmers made it out to be…
…Right?
That ball-tripping beach day was almost two years ago.
I’m a veteran parallel parker now, but I still wear foam Birkenstocks. I also have a job on a television set as a lowly grunt.
We shoot in a warehouse turned sound stage on the industrial side of LA. Every day on my way to work I traverse pothole ridden streets, which are lined with abandoned warehouses covered in graffiti—almost all of which have signs that say “FILM HERE.”
Recently at work, I was standing in a unused parking lot, taking in the post-apocalyptic urban architecture, drifting into daydreams. The sun was beating down, and the SFX crew was preparing to blow up a car. And once more I was reminded, this time as a sober man, of Grand Theft Auto.
“This is the kind of place you’d stash a get-away car in GTA,” was a nerdy thought that popped into my head, and began the wave of nostalgia for a simpler time—before I moved to California—where you’d have found me in my bedroom at my mother’s house, driving around Los Santos.
That was a long time ago, though. The game hit stores in September 2013, and upon its release, GTA V was praised for its hauntingly realistic representation of Los Angeles. But that meant little to me at the time. I was eighteen, I knew nothing about the city the game hoped to emulate, and I just wanted to drive around and blow stuff up. I would have never suspected, that eight years later, I’d be living in Los Angeles and that this particular game would still be relevant.
Coincidentally, when I logged onto my Xbox that evening I saw that there was a massive spring sale, and that GTA V—the most current version—was on sale for $15. Well that’s a no brainer! Take my money, and let me relive my past already!
The 96 gigabyte open world game took hours to download, but come Saturday morning, it was ready, and so was I.
Within five minutes of play, it became quickly and abundantly clear that Grand Theft Auto’s reputation as a murderous game with hookers and drugs is a laughable generalization—and that me purchasing this masterpiece of digital design to “blow stuff up” was equally shameful.
I was dumbfounded to find how disturbingly real the experience is, and how even its sick and twisted humor is only a commentary on the perverse elements of our own world.
As I drove my stolen car around, I saw real LA landmarks everywhere—the US Bank Building, the Griffith Observatory, In N Out, Hollywood Boulevard, the Hollywood Bowl, LAX, Venice Beach, the Santa Monica Pier, and more—all renamed and subtly tweaked.
In the car, I can shuffle through 16 different radio stations, each with their own genre, which collectively have 441 songs, plus two that exclusively do talk radio. Each DJ has their own flawed personality, which mocks and mimics their real world counterpart. The pop stations are superficial, the rural talk radio is bullheaded, and the punk station is embarrassingly try-hard. There’s also ads—just as cringe worthy as real radio ads—which treat the listener like a helpless dumbass.
And every once in a while there is a news break, one of which I have transcribed below:
Anchor: The plan to extend the Los Santos metro to other areas of the city has some wealthy residents crying foul. Carl Kelly is on the scene.
Carl: I’m here at city hall, talking to an unhappy rich person.
Rich Person: It’s a safety issue. They want to tunnel under things like schools…underground, we’re not opposing it because of some race thing, haha that’s absurd!”
Carl: But it is a race thing isn’t it?
Rich Person: Well yeah…okay.
The news segment closes with an announcer’s voice: Weazel News! Confirming your prejudice!
The realism of the radio is but a snippet of the deep well of detail.
The game has corrupt FBI and CIA agents, annoying fitness addicts, backwater hillbilly meth heads shouting about what it means to be American, venomous paparazzi, and soulless celebs.
You can fly planes and helicopters. You can drive any car you’ve ever fantasized about driving. You can play golf, tennis, darts, and go to an amusement park. You can ride bikes, go swimming, get a haircut, get a tattoo, and buy new clothes. You can get high and the character’s anxious insecure thoughts will begin ringing out of your TV speakers. You can use social media; GTA’s version of Facebook/Instagram is called LifeInvader. You can access the app on your “iFruit” cellphone. You can bet on the stock market, which fluctuates based on current events. You can go to strip clubs and get lap dances, and you can only touch the strippers when the bouncers aren’t looking. You can shoot guns, rob banks, and you can certainly blow things up.
Oh, and you can even go to therapy.
I am not exaggerating when I say, I played for ten straight hours. Just like that, one of my precious days off went poof. But I didn’t feel bad about it—it was an enthralling experience—if it wasn’t, I would have lost interest. And driving around in virtual supercars and amassing fictional wealth seemed more desirable then doing laundry, going to the grocery store, and writing a rent check.
And when I came up for air, I looked at my messy desk and my messy room and thought about how the next day was Sunday, and how dreadfully boring it all felt in comparison to what I was living out in Los Santos. For a moment I thought I might dive right back in. Why suffer the real world when the world Grand Theft Auto created is much more fun—one with no consequences, but one based off the depravity of our own world, and thus comfortingly familiar.
No, no! I have to do laundry. I can’t just play this video game forever. Even if I tried, I’d eventually have to attend to my physical needs or perish.
But it made me wonder…if a game from eight years ago can be so stunningly real, then what does the future hold? Could people one day choose between two realities, virtual or physical—each of which are respected as a viable way to live out one’s days?
I used to tell myself that “the physical will never be matched by the virtual,” but perhaps I was only saying it to calm my worries over the dystopia we seem to be barreling toward.
For the moment, there is a discernible difference between waking life and virtual reality.
The virtual Ferrari does not feel like “the real thing.” Because the virtual doesn’t have the same enveloping engine roar, nor the touch of leather on the steering wheel, nor the vibration of acceleration, nor the G-force pressing against your body as the tires grip the asphalt around hairpin turns. The virtual Ferrari has none of those things.
And when you’re walking on the digital sand, you can’t feel it’s sharp, violent heat against the soles of your feet as it becomes trapped in your foam Birkenstocks. You can’t feel any of that.
Not yet.
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As the digital realm first emerged, without its maximizing light-speed hyperdrive to accompany it, there seemed to be no way someone could substitute 0s and 1s for flesh and blood. The subsequent emergence of that hyperdrive, that is arguably the most disruptive innovation known to mankind, including the wheel 👀…became the chemical X ingredient that conjured a delicacy far more addicting than any cultural cuisine on Yelp, served to you, anywhere, not with forks or bowls but 0s and 1s. Of course, this disruptively maximizing light-speed hyper-driving innovation is the World Wide Web that has now formed the delicacy dish of Digital Dimension which will soon consume all higher sentient life. 👀👀.
Not to run on anymore than I already have, but Ready Player One suggests a very real future. 👀👀👀.
Wow! Another inquisitive and thoughtful piece. Interesting that not being able to touch the strippers stood out to you... Really enjoyed the break up of the writing with photos and the transcribed news break. Keep up the good work!