Note: There are some pretty massive spoilers in here, so, in the unlikely event that anybody is actually reading this post, you’ve been warned.

When the self-loathing bug strikes, it’s Xbox time. For a fleeting moment, I get to replace my boring, effectively anger-managing self with a badass digital avatar, shooting up anyone dumb enough to get in my character’s way. There’s just no feel-good pill better than old-fashioned visceral combat. But eventually, my hands cramp up and my stomach tells me that I was supposed to have lunch four hours ago, so it’s back to reality. Of course, it’s not like I have much of a choice in the matter. I don’t think my landlord will accept XP for rent. But in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, there are no such constraints. People are free to leave their worldly husks behind in favor of hyper-advanced virtual reality. While we might call gaming “escapism,” becoming new people in virtual reality isn’t how we get away from our issues. Only by reconciling our true and ideal selves as well as our true and ideal realities can we find lasting happiness.

In 2044, everything sucks. The Great Recession is still going strong (thanks, Obama), the Earth is falling apart because nobody actually decided to do anything about Global Warming (way to go, Republicans), and an immoral Internet service provider is the world’s most powerful company (and, surprisingly, it’s not Mediacom). So humanity retreats into the OASIS, a virtual world brought to you by billionaire extraordinaire James Halliday. Society’s problems have no meaning inside the greatest video game known to man. While Earth appears a lost cause, Halliday sets up an elaborate puzzle within the OASIS promising boundless fame and fortune to whoever figures it out. As the so-called gunters try to solve Halliday’s easter egg, we explore the always-expanding treasure trove of content within the OASIS. The content in there is user-generated, meaning that whatever you want, you can build. It’s everything Earth isn’t–lively and optimistic with near-limitless opportunities for all.

These opposing worlds serve as proxies for how we view ourselves: outside we’re who we are while inside the OASIS we’re who we want to be. In there, players get to be their ideal selves via their self-created avatars. They keep what they like about themselves from real life, remove what they don’t, sprinkle in a few missing pieces, and voila!, they’re now the person they’d like to be. Essentially, life blows, we hate ourselves, so we make a better world where we can be who we want to be.

And our three heroes certainly have good reasons to want to become new people away from a corrupt reality that mirrors what’s going on in 2016. Wade grows up as verifiable trailer trash in the “stacks” with an abusive family and no real-world friends. He’s too old to be a virgin, and thanks to a broken economy and class system, he’s destined for life as a bottom-feeder no matter how hard he tries in school. Thankfully, the OASIS is a meritocracy in which the sharpest thinkers will earn victory in Halliday’s hunt. So Wade devotes more and more of his time in the game world as Parzival, where he can actually do something about his social status.

His best bud, a guy avatar named Aech in the OASIS, is actually an overweight black lesbian named Helen. As she describes it, it’s just easier to present herself as a straight, white male in the game world. She can avoid the hardships of her identity by choosing a brand new one. And the last of our core trio, Samantha demonstrates exactly how pervasive and damaging beauty culture is in targeting young girls’ insecurities. She’s mostly fine with her body except for that pesky purple birthmark mucking up her face. No amount of makeup could ever hide that shameful blemish, but as Art3mis, she can just create her good-looking face minus the deformity. For each, the OASIS acts as a welcome reprieve from their deepest insecurities.

But eventually, the OASIS dries up. As real as it seems, it isn’t. Running away into the virtual world doesn’t fix the society left behind nor make us like ourselves more. As Parzival earns more in-game recognition and a damned-good living, the results make Wade feel worse about himself because, as it turns out, financial success isn’t a silver bullet laden with happiness. He’s still the socially reclusive, loveless loser at the bottom of the totem pole like he was before. The only difference now is that he plugs into the OASIS pretty much 24/7, turning himself into an overweight, vitamin D-deprived ghoul who’s more in the dumps than ever.

And when he meets Helen in the real world near the end of the quest, she hurts as badly as he does. She’s ashamed for who she is, as if being a black lesbian implies that she’s inferior to the white guy that her online representation is. Society has conditioned her to feel embarrassed over her very existence. Masquerading as Aech has done nothing to resolve those underlying issues; people tend to be less homophobic, sexist, and racist when they know a member of those marginalized groups on a personal level, but when they meet Aech, others are exposed to yet another straight white guy who blends into the background.

For Samantha, it’s a similar deal. When Parzival prods Art3mis about her real-world identity, hoping he doesn’t have a crush on a 39 year-old steelworker named Steven, she refuses to discuss her actual appearance. Making a hot avatar with a clear face hasn’t lessened the burn stemming from her insecurities over her birthmark. She’s still forced to abide by beauty standards no matter what world she resides in. The OASIS doesn’t actually erase self-loathing for anyone, it just distracts them from it for a short while until, in due time, the societal undercurrents resurface along with a newly strengthened wave of self-contempt.

It’s only when they take on reality directly that the heroes gain the self-affirmation they seek. When Parzival, Aech, and Art3mis discover Halliday’s secrets and win the hunt, they finally earn not only the spoils of victory but a chance to meet for the first time all together as Wade, Helen, and Samantha. Here they are, as they are, and nothing’s different than before. Wade still has a crush on Samantha, Helen and Wade can still go toe-to-toe in 80s trivia, and the three can laugh and coexist happily as friends without hiding behind their avatars. They’re each capable of seeing the best in each other in spite of the society that codes them as unfit and worthless.

And though they can’t fix everything about the Earth they’re stuck on, Wade gains the power to shut down the OASIS if he so chooses (although we don’t see if he does or not) and Samantha has always dreamed of donating her share of the winnings to ending world hunger (though, again, we don’t know for sure if this comes to fruition). Hopefully they’ll make life just a little bit better for the next generation, so that others may find the acceptance that these three have discovered among themselves. A utopia may be unattainable, but that doesn’t mean they can’t try to enact some positive changes.

The world is a far cry from how most would like it. It’s a rough place with a broken class structure, racism, homophobia, a toxic beauty culture, and numerous other issues that breed self-hatred for its inhabitants. But running away from our issues doesn’t work. Our baggage will weigh us down wherever we go with whomever we meet unless we realize that neither ourselves nor our world will ever be exactly as we want them. We should strive to be the best selves that we can be, to make a positive impact on others when we’re able, and not dwell on the fact that some issues will linger for awhile. Nobody perfect, and that goes double for the universe itself. But out here, we don’t respawn when we die, so we may as well do our best with what we’ve got.