The VR Station at Lola's Compilation - Vive VR
Channel: Mars Malo
Date: 2017-05-30

This weekend will mark 4 months since we started taking The VR Station all over the city. We have been to flea markets, birthday parties, graduations, local stores & business events, pro wrestling shows, fundraisers, rock shows, downtown bars and we are always a surprise hit. The big question is always, "Why the hell would anyone want to put on some goofy goggles and flail around like an idiot?"

Stop reading if you don't want to really know why I started all this.

A few weeks ago, I saw an ABC News Special from 1988 about the Nintendo craze happening around America at the time. The clip ended with Barbara Walters saying "Now I know how you're spending your holidays, WATCHING Nintendo." She's corrected, "...PLAYING Nintendo." It was a time that many people around my age look back on with great nostalgia. We grew up along side this new technology and although it continued to grow in popularity among us, the youth, the older generations was generally very hostile toward it because it wasn't a part of their culture growing up. They grew up in a different era of passive television watching and the previous generation grew up listening to the radio and before that, the general form of entertainment was reading books.

We are now seeing that expansion of the digital experience again.

Every time we arrive to set up at a new location, I hear people say, "Oh, look we're gonna be playing that Virtual Reality thingy." As soon as they take off the headset, the language of the conversations changes and it becomes, "I was IN it! Listen to me, you have to try it! I seriously felt like I was really there. I was really IN it."

We have transitioned from reading entertainment to listening to the radio as entertainment and then, we not only listened to Television, but we were WATCHING television. Then we started, not just watching video games but PLAYING video games. And now in this new era, we are not just playing Virtual Reality, we're IN Virtual Reality. It's a sensory experience in which we incorporate more of ourselves with digital technology than ever before (and it's rapidly growing better and better).

So I am eager to continue to be a part of the exposure for this technology because I hope that it continues to inspire and develop larger, cooler, better realized experiences and fantastic, imaginative worlds that I can enjoy when more digital creators see the potential for a financially viable future once VR becomes more widespread. At the same time, I hope that the technology develops to spark a cultural shift through better ways for us all to share our common experience and existence, so that we can grow to learn to be more empathetic, understanding and less judgemental and punish-seeking with one another.

Also, I guess what I mean is that, I get bored with things outside of myself easily and the things that others happen to find interesting or worth thinking and talking about obsessively these days, I might find ordinary and mind-numbing - I don't care that others might believe that the world is in such a terrible state...but VR...man, this cool shit is happening right now, and people can enjoy it today, in our lifetime. It's no longer a sci-fi dream...and that to me, although it might be controversial, is more important than the doom and gloom attitude that I see, read, hear, and watch in the current culture and I would rather not contribute to that hostile mentality and instead live, enjoy, and share this great advancement because VR has improved my life immensely this year and it will continue to contribute to the mental, physical, and social well-being of many more of us in our near future.

It's VR. It's Marvelous & Kick Ass. Your kids are growing up with it and they love it. If you haven't experienced premium VR yet because you think it looks silly, you are missing out because this is already the future, just like the kids of today are the culture of tomorrow.

Let's all enjoy our time being alive and well, or helping ourselves and others become well, and also this compilation video from our time at Lola's Trailer Park yesterday.