By: C Icart, Humour Editor
Have you ever been told not to judge someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes? The Making Ends Meet Poverty Simulation (MEM) that will be held at 312 Main St. on February 11 is seemingly designed to let participants do just that. According to their event page 50–80 participants will spend one hour trying to “‘make ends meet’ for a simulated month.”
This description reminded me of the virtual reality (VR) simulations academic Lisa Nakamura criticizes in her article, “Feeling good about feeling bad: virtuous virtual reality and the automation of racial empathy.” Nakamura is a leading scholar whose work centers around race and digital media. She noticed that VR was being marketed as an “empathy machine” because it claims to allow users to experience marginalization. Users just need to put on a headset and they are suddenly transported to a refugee camp or a prison, for example. She argues that this encourages a toxic embodiment that makes users erroneously believe they have experienced authentic empathy for marginalized others.
“One of the key differences between a simulation of marginalization and the reality of it is control.”
I don’t see how the MEM Poverty Simulation can do anything other than reproduce that problematic dynamic. Participants will be “sorted into one of twenty-six diverse families with their own unique economic challenges [ . . . ] and navigate various [. . . ] systems and procedures designed to represent the daily experiences of those who live in poverty.” Not unlike VR simulations, this gamifies the issue of poverty by turning into a novel activity people can choose to participate in. It is in no way similar to the experience of living in poverty.
In his criticism of VR as empathy machines, Paul Bloom states one of the key differences between a simulation of marginalization and the reality of it is control. Participants get to choose to be a part of the simulation. It has a set start and end time, and presumably they can stop participating when they want. This is not the case for living in poverty. Pretending to have been evicted for one hour simply doesn’t feel the same when you know you’re heading home later, and instinctively we know this. Think of a time someone responded, “I know how you feel” when you were telling them about a struggle you know they don’t have. Instant eye roll, right?
Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes may not be possible, but that does not mean that we can’t be empathetic. It is possible to discuss the “potential causes, consequences, and solutions for poverty”without feeding into the illusion that simulations affect us the same as lived experience or give us the authority to speak about living in poverty.
