You are in a bookstore. To the North, you see Mickey Rooney signing copies of his autobiography.

In Press the Buttons, MattG discusses online book signing events in MMORPGs.

This is most intriguing. In this game, you can not only acquire a copy of an actual book and read it, but you can have the author “sign” your copy via his in-game avatar.

“Imagine if your favorite author, actor, or musician appeared in virtual public. Unlike appearing in the real world, if the fans became too wild the celebrity could just sign off, fizzling away into nothingness and leaving the fans to brawl and swarm amongst themselves.”

Or the celebrity–for the sake of an example, let’s say Ted Nugent–could unsling his rocket launcher and lay into the fans with abandon, prompting them to respond in kind. Or maybe Nugent could invade a virtual appearance by, say, Gwen Stefani and engage her in combat.

I don’t mean to imply that the primary apppeal of virtual reality is the opportunity it presents to blow things up. The nearly unlimited potential of a virtual environment enables us to…hmm. No, actually, that is the primary appeal of virtual reality.