Time Magazine’s VR cover is so horrible it almost ruins VR
41 replies, posted
[QUOTE]Virtual reality is coming — and it’s coming fast — but there are still plenty of barriers holding it back from mainstream acceptance. No matter how many breathless stories we post about the awesome experiences delivered by the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus, or Microsoft Hololens, writers never do the tech justice. To really get this new wave of VR, to truly appreciate it, you need to strap a headset on your face, open your eyes, and see what it’s all about.
But if this image pops up, flush your eyes out with water and run to the nearest E.R.
[IMG]https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/ZCHm5ipCBGuUT8Xh9g0TaQ--/YXBwaWQ9bWFnYXppbmVzO3c9ODAw/https://s.yimg.com/os/publish-images/games/2015-08-06/54a9cd90-3c76-11e5-94a5-0d02143faac8_time-cover-vr.jpg[/IMG]
That’s the August 17 cover of Time Magazine. Inside this issue are a handful of stories about VR, interviews with the big creative names, and insight into how it all works.
But you won’t get that far, because unless you’re related to Oculus founder Palmer Luckey (he’s the guy in the blue shirt), you will see this cover and be overcome with an upsetting blend of sadness, anger, amusement, confusion, and disgust. Also maybe you’ll be relaxed, because that looks like a nice beach.
Let’s start there. Is Palmer actually squat-leaping in the sand? If so, why is he wearing a headset? He’s already at the beach! Maybe he’s using his Rift while waiting for someone to join him on the weirdly empty shore, though that’s confusing because there’s a cord trailing off to the right. What’s that plugged into? This?
And why are his arms doing that? Is he pretending to fly? That’s not really how VR works, a fact that Palmer himself should know since he invented the Rift headset. Bare feet? Maybe he’s at the beach after all, though why is he wearing jeans? At least roll up the cuffs, man.
Perhaps this is an indictment of VR's escapism. He's at the beach, but he doesnt even notice because he's too busy playing Flappy Bird VR.
I’ve stared at this thing for a half-hour and I’m still mystified that both Time and Oculus owner Facebook were cool using this image to promote VR to a national mainstream audience (for reference, here’s Palmer on the January 2015 cover of Forbes). And everyone else seems to be flabbergasted, too.
.....
Once you get past the cover, however, things only get worse. Here’s how Time describes their cover star:
[I]Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift, is not your typical nerd…
He’s cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand. He was homeschooled, and though he did drop out of college, it was California State University, Long Beach, where he was majoring not in computer science but in journalism. He prefers shorts, and his feet are black because he doesn’t like wearing shoes, even outdoors. He doesn’t look like a guy who played Dungeons & Dragons so much as a character in Dungeons & Dragons. He’s a nerd from a different century, working on the problems of a different century.
“He’s cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand.” What year is it, 1983? Did we learn nothing from Revenge of the Nerds 2? Even Ogre turned out to be a nerd. Way to immediately reduce the (admittedly young) CEO of a game-changing tech company valued at $2 billion to a dorky, outdated stereotype. [/I]
I don't mean to take shots at Time's editorial department. I don't know author Joel Stein and don't count myself as an avid reader of the magazine. But I can't help but wonder how, in this day and age, this condescending tone and weak portrait of a 'typical nerd' is still okay. Nerds and geeks and college dropouts run the show these days. Comic books dominate Hollywood. Vin Diesel founded a video game company. We are legion. Stop pretending we all talk like Francis.
Some of my peers are convinced this cover marks the End of Times for the nascent VR movement, and while it’s easy to see why roughly 95% of Twitter is freaking out, I’m guessing this will eventually blow over. The people currently most interested in VR aren’t getting their info from Time, and those new to the tech aren’t going to write it off based on one crappy photoshoot. But it sure doesn’t help.
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via [URL="https://www.yahoo.com/tech/bp/time-magazine-s-vr-cover-is-so-horrible-it-pretty-much-ruins-vr-200313010.html"]Yahoo! Tech[/URL]
virtual reality is over
Literally everything there is awful. And yeah "Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand."
I blame you for this, Chuck Lorre.
'Cheery and talks in normal sentences' are you fucking kidding me
[QUOTE=Doctor Zedacon;48397830]Literally everything there is awful. And yeah "Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand."
I blame you for this, Chuck Lorre.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Mellowbloom;48397845]'Cheery and talks in normal sentences' are you fucking kidding me[/QUOTE]
not feeling the cheeriness here tbh
It's so horrible I actually love it
He's wearing a VR-set at the beach so he can pretend he's at home, playing videogames instead.
"Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand."
Because nerds talk funny, am i right guys?
[QUOTE=Amiga OS;48398326]Did this fall out of 1994?[/QUOTE]
The readers probably did, so I'm assuming the article's trying to play toward the clueless dense-asshole section of the older generations.
[QUOTE=megafat;48398327]"Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand."
Because nerds talk funny, am i right guys?[/QUOTE]
Affirmative, We nerds are well known to talk in anomalous methods.
[quote]Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift, is not your typical nerd. He’s cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand.[/quote]
How it can be 2015 yet the press still thinks nerd culture is like a 1980's television commercial is beyond me. It's either that, or every nerd is Sheldon Cooper.
What bothers me is that someone out there was payed a ridiculous amount of money to make that cover.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48398461]or every nerd is Sheldon Cooper.[/QUOTE]
i sure hope they think we're 1980s television commercials instead
One of the other photos from the shoot is about as awkward and poorly shot as the first one. What is this, amateur hour in the Time Magazine photography department?
[thumb]https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/vr-pioneers04.jpg?quality=65&strip=color&w=746[/thumb]
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48398461]How it can be 2015 yet the press still thinks nerd culture is like a 1980's television commercial is beyond me. It's either that, or every nerd is Sheldon Cooper.[/QUOTE]
Yep. Nerd culture for us these days comes down to when is the perfect time to say "bazinga".
[QUOTE=BackSapper;48398925]Yep. Nerd culture for us these days comes down to when is the perfect time to say "bazinga".[/QUOTE]
What nerd culture?
Nerd culture these days is about loot crates.
God forbid they write the article in a way that caters to people that actually still read magazines. And the cover really isn't that horrible. It gets the concept of VR across very simply, very much time magazines style. A pose that represents differentiation from gaming in a chair with a controller, a place where video gaming typically doesn't take you. A very barebone representation of VR, and yes, pretty damn cheesy, but its more than "whys he on a beach where is it plugged in xD so stupid".
[quote]cheery and talks in normal sentences[/quote]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uhSm0lC720[/media]
The cover has spawned a flood of edits.
[url]http://uploadvr.com/internets-funniest-tweets-time-magazines-vr-cover/[/url]
[QUOTE=megafat;48398327]"Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand."
Because nerds talk funny, am i right guys?[/QUOTE]
Fucking nerds, always talking about their mass spectrometer and their physics and stars!
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;48398461]How it can be 2015 yet the press still thinks nerd culture is like a 1980's television commercial is beyond me. It's either that, or every nerd is Sheldon Cooper.[/QUOTE]
I think that's just the thing. This is the press we're talking about. I mean the literal press. Christ, paper? What is this the 1980s?
[QUOTE=3picFail;48398960]God forbid they write the article in a way that caters to people that actually still read magazines. And the cover really isn't that horrible. It gets the concept of VR across very simply, very much time magazines style. A pose that represents differentiation from gaming in a chair with a controller, a place where video gaming typically doesn't take you. A very barebone representation of VR, and yes, pretty damn cheesy, but its more than "whys he on a beach where is it plugged in xD so stupid".[/QUOTE]
I don't think that the only people who read magazines are people who are 90 years old and think that it's still the 1980s.
I prefer what the cold war russians thought VR would be like. (Around 2:00)
[sp]The animation is from the cold war, the audio is not[/sp]
[video=youtube;iDFdtI4VN7s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDFdtI4VN7s[/video]
You know, the cover being so bad that it's essentially become a new meme via all the edits being spawned could actually be a good thing.
Memes have pretty much become mainstream in recent years, and even though they're mostly made for cheap laughs, they're actually pretty good at spreading awareness of things. This leads to curiosity (people want to know where the meme originated), which then leads to information (they find out what Oculus is). Though realistically, the chances of that happening could be rather low, every little bit helps.
But yeah, fuck the opening line that in the Time article. I'm having flashbacks to that horrible Law and Order episode about GG because of the writing being that bad. Which also reminds me that Time listed Anita Sarkeesian among their most recent 100 most influential people.
I think that cover is great. It's funny.
And pretty successful as well. They wanted to attract attention with it, and that's what happened. It's not some boring promo-pic of the oculus, it has character. People at Time magazine know what they're doing.
[quote]Palmer Luckey is not your typical nerd. He's cheery and [B]talks in normal sentences that are easy to understand.[/B][/quote]
Man, shut the fuck up.
Too hard to understand? :v:
[editline]a[/editline]
Though I will agree with the lack of cheeriness part I am a cynical piece of shit.
[QUOTE=gk99;48405114]Man, shut the fuck up.
Too hard to understand? :v:
[editline]a[/editline]
Though I will agree with the lack of cheeriness part I am a cynical piece of shit.[/QUOTE]
It's stupid and unintentionally hilarious because that sentence is actually insulting to literally everyone involved.
Luckey is cool tho
[img]http://i.imgur.com/8EmYz7Y.png[/img]
Fuck Chuck Lorre for creating "nerd culture", fuck Mark Zuckerburg for absolutely fucking this up with his greedy, scheming ways, and fuck John Carmack for literally selling Oculus out.
lol lets blow a gasket everyone because this average-at-best cover is an insult to "nerd culture"
Why is this journalist so sensitive
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