Vice Reality and the Virtual Presidents’ Debate 2016
At the announcement of vice presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, I with millions of fellow netizens rushed to Google wanting to know at least something about them. We learned they’re both seasoned politicians of a race, gender and religion highly typified of this public office. One is homophobic and from Indiana, the other not. And that was the shameful extent of my knowledge about them until last night’s debate. As with last week’s event, I felt it worthwhile to see the VP edition because, if, God Forbid, the unthinkable should happen to one or (fingers crossed) both of the American presidential candidates, then one of these silver foxes will be our next president.
But as debates are an inherently disingenuous platform of over-rehearsed messaging, denialism and attempted sound bites, one could be forgiven for treating the Veep Debate as a second-tier event in which candidates must defend the claims and records of their running mates. AltspaceVR seemed to anticipate a low interest, so they wisely funneled all of the early guests into the same pre-event where we could watch comedic Youtube clips of Trump and Clinton. Our welcoming committee, the amicable Lisa and Steve, were again on hand to welcome people to the event, reminding us to take selfies and send tweets. The audio issues from the last debate were remedied and I could clearly hear Kate McKinnon’s Clinton and Alec Baldwin’s Trump from any section of the square. Once the satiric debate was done, the iconic Youtube loading symbol appeared and transitioned to the finale of Trump’s appearance on The Tonight Show in which Jimmy Fallon tousled his hair. This is the clip that caused a social media uproar since presidential politics is of dire consequence and shouldn’t be treated like a joke or reality TV. Right? Right. The hosts accidentally loaded and played the Fallon clip a second time; it was 3:55AM (EEST), perfect time to break for a coffee.
The debate started and a sidebar appeared next to each candidate during their initial camera shot. I thought there was a technical mistake since it claimed that both men have been married 31 years and have a son in the U.S. Marines; they also both worship Christ, but disagree on how best to do so. And then came the usual list of talking points to which they responded in and out of turn. They mansplained to the moderator and the nation the problems of the economy and the police force. The captive audience stayed silent for a good hour before they broke into a murmur. Someone who clearly hadn’t read pg. 1 — bullet pt. 5 of his Oculus manual (i.e. he was drunk) suddenly approached me from the front and said, “Lance. Hey, Lance. Robots can’t vote. Oh, I see how it is.” It was somewhat odd, but still fun, to be called out by name in a crowd of strangers while in the guise of a flying robot. It was a pot-and-kettle situation since he too was a robot, but I didn’t react other than to mute his existence.
Rather than stick around in the main event, I searched the user events and found three of them related to the debate. Two were called USERNAME + Debate: Republican and the other was USERNAME + Debate: Other. I was curious as to this self-partitioning according to political ideologies. Since it was a viewing party during which the crowd was very unlikely to challenge your political ideals, it seemed unnecessary to break off into small politically motivated groups. However, each of the user events only had a single attendee. I visited all of them in turn and found they were still screening the debate in Democracy Plaza, but there were much fewer avatars. In Debate: Other, the event creator informed me of an audio feedback problem and I thanked her.
About an hour into the main event, I checked the event page and found that Reggie Watts was coming for a third standup set in two days. I immediately celebrated this news by marking it on my calendar and taking a short nap (at 5:15AM EEST). As nice as it is to be in Altspace, these events do rely on user interest and I didn’t feel it as much this time. I’ll be at the next Presidential Debate and, needless to say, the Reggie Watts set. But the VP in VR debate might have finished in a duel for all I know.
P.S. If you want to read about the First Debate and a description of Democracy Plaza, it’s in an earlier post.
Quote of the Day: “Donald Trump is a ‘you’re fired’ president, but Hillary Clinton is a ‘you’re hired’ president.” By Tim “Sound Bite W***e” Kaine
