The RVR Phenomenon
- srinath_ravikumar
- Apr 14, 2020
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 22, 2020
This post is going to be slightly different. Here I'll be writing about a concept which has been troubling the world silently for quite a while. This issue is not known to most of the people around the world. In some way, even you and I may have had thoughts about this topic at some point of time. This post can contain some content which might be disturbing to you. So please proceed with caution.
What is RVR?
RVR stands for Reality - Virtuality - Reality.
We live in a real world. This is our reality. We live according to laws of nature and physics. There are a lot of rules and regulations that everyone needs to follow in order to ensure that life is fair. Reality is bound by various restrictions. Some natural, some artificial. For example, a person who is amputated cannot ever become an army soldier, even if he/she wants to be. Reality is bound by the laws of nature and physics.
Virtuality is a artificially generated world. The laws of nature and physics may or may not be obeyed here. Human can essentially play God here. We can be anything, do anything that we cannot do in the real world. Virtuality was created with a positive intention, much like most of the technological developments in recent times.
Examples of virtuality can be video games, movies, series etc. The idea is to be able to become something which may or may not follow the laws of nature and physics. This choice is what differentiates reality and virtuality. The only differentiating factor among video games, movies and series is the interaction between the user and the virtual world. In video games, this interaction is comparatively higher.
In today's time, video games, movies and web series play a very important role in our lives. The video game industry itself worth more that $100 Billion. The highest grossing movie of all time, Avengers : Endgame, made over $2.79 Billion. The highest selling video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto 5, made over $6 Billion. And we all know how big the cinema industry is. Adding to that, with the introduction of Netflix and other OTT (Over the top) streaming platforms, web series have also become incredibly popular.
I agree that all the above content is created solely for entertainment. Especially during the lockdown time, people are able to remain sane mostly because because of such entertaining content. But let's dig a little deeper that that.
We users approach video games, movies, series to get entertained. Most of us interact with such content in the appropriate limits. But, the world has all kind of people. More importantly, there is a lot of seriously disturbing content out there. Some of us are bound to interact with them extensively, way more that the recommended time period. And there begins the problem.
The small percentage of people who interact with such content are bound to get addicted. We all know that addiction to anything is bad. To get a clearer idea, lets take a simple example.
Reality - Jack is a guy whose parents have divorced and he has gone through a bad break-up. Thus, he is depressed and looks for a way to recover.
Virtuality - He spends a lot of time playing FPS (First Person Shooter) games, GTA 5, watches various movies like Joker, Se7en etc. and watches web series like Black Mirror, 13 Reasons Why etc. He does this extensively for long periods of time. He begins to think that maybe the virtual world is better than the real world. Thus he becomes addicted to such stuff.
Reality - Now whenever he'll go and interact with the real world (which is inevitable), his mindset is still believing that he's in a virtual world, and starts behaving accordingly. This might lead to disturbing actions like car jacking, rash driving, blackmailing, or even worse, rape or murder.
You might be thinking that I am exaggerating and such stuff won't happen in the real world. But sadly that's not true. Later we'll see some examples where people have been inspired by movies or video games to conduct incorrect actions in the real world.
Lets back up for a second. Media content was never designed for such a purpose. GTA 5 was not developed to encourage people to do illegal stuff in the real world. Its intention was to deliver a thrilling experience which cannot be had in the real world. This intention is fine. But due to addiction, everything goes haywire.
The human mind is designed in such a way that, when it spends a lot of time in the virtual world, it starts to believe that it is real. This concept has been explored in the famous sci-fi thriller Inception, which deals with dreams being the virtual world. There is even a scene which shows how, for some people, dreams have become their reality.
So we can safely say that this is a very vital man-made issue and has to be dealt with.
Lets look at some real life examples of such events:
Aurora, Colorado shooting - A man entered a screening of 'The Dark Knight Rises' dressed as 'The Joker' and started shooting the audience. 12 were killed and 70 were injured. The man admitted that he was inspired from the Joker character that appeared in The Dark Knight, for which the actor Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar.
Grand Theft Auto 5 - This game inspired a teenager to steal a pickup truck and crash into 9 cars while trying to flee. He rationalized the crime by stating he wanted to "feel like a character in Grand Theft Auto"
Grand Theft Auto 4 - A 19-year-old high-school student stabbed and killed a taxi driver in Bangkok, Thailand. Thai law enforcement stated that he wanted to discover if robbery and theft was as simple in reality as it's presented in Grand Theft Auto IV.
The Matrix - Two tenants killed their respective landladies and later told the police that they thought they were in the matrix and therefore believed that the people they had killed weren't actually dead in real.
Drishyam - This film inspired a man to kill and hide the body mysteriously. The body was found in a dam, just like in the film. The accused had also confessed that he was inspired by Ajay’s character.
Dhoom - A gang of 4 robbers made a hole on the floor of a bank and managed to loot the bank of 80 kgs gold and 50,00,000 rupees. Also they confessed to being inspired by the movie.
Darr - A 24-year-old girl who was an employee of Snapdeal, was stalked by a man in Delhi and later kidnapped. The man, whose intention was to ‘marry’ her, later confessed when interrogated by the police that he was inspired by Khan’s character in Darr.
There are many more cases where movies or video games inspired people to commit crimes in real life.
There is a Chinese saying that, when loosely translated, goes by this:
Too much of something is not good
This cannot be more true over here. Almost all of these incidents have occurred due to some kind of addiction to such disturbing content. The main point here is that films, video games have the power to manipulate the mind of the audience. Studies have shown that our mind is biased towards negativity and negative news. Subsequently, our mind starts thinking that such negative stuff is what qualifies as 'good'. For example, the 2019 movie Joker, while being brilliant, invited a lot of criticism over the fact that it promoted negativity as the way to go.
Blame should not go towards the industry. This is the entertainment industry. Its job is to entertain people. If people are more entertained by negative content, it makes sense that the industry will also side towards negative content. Also the industry did not intend on such illegal activities to be committed in real life by getting inspired from films or video games. What started out as a cure to disturbed people, turned out to be the cause of many crimes.
the cure becomes the cause
I feel that the entertainment industry should shift towards creating positive content, even though people might not like it. It is for the greater good. The industry should portray positive content in a way that the audience feels that this is the way to go. We as the audience should watch more positive content, which would encourage the industry to make this shift.
I hope you liked this off-beat topic. Let me know if you would like to read about more such under-reported topics in the future.
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