Palmer Luckey: “And then I started receiving death threats”

Sympathetic voice in the background: “aaaw”

Me: “hahahaha!”

*awkward second of silence.

Yes this actually happened and there is a record of it(check out the Supercast from Reverend Kyle at Road to VR!). My first time meeting Palmer Luckey was 99% positive and 1% awkward. I’m going to tell you about the awkward part.

But first, I gotta say the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference and Expo was an astounding success, thanks to Karl Krantz, Nana Usui, Cymatic Bruce and all the awesome volunteers that made this happen.

One day I will be telling my grandchildren about the time I went to the “first virtual reality expo”, at which point my grandchildren will respond condescendingly: “oh grandpa, virtual reality is so 2020’s” In my anger towards their apathy I will reply. “Bitch! That’s why your still having sex with that robot! Why, when I was your age they called me doctor love; do you know why? because I used to cure the neurological disease called love with my penicilin”

Anyways, nevermind my ungrateful and apathetic future grandchildren. My experience at SVVR will remain in my memory forever and the connections and friendships I’ve made, I intend to make them last my whole life time. My only point of criticism is that I wish it lasted longer.

I spoke to the security guard because she looked lonely and she told me “this is the first conference I’ve worked, where people actually want to be here, it was hard getting them to leave on the first day”.

Its true, Cymatic Bruce had to manually herd people out of the expo floor on the second day because people wouldn’t leave.

It’s almost a year since I started EnterVR, I honestly never thought that this industry would unravel before my eyes so quickly. To me VR will save and improve people’s lives, bring about a new breath fresh air to a stagnant gaming industry and eventually change life on earth as we know it. I’m positive of all this and its all a matter of when these things will happen.

How do I know this, you ask?

I’m from the future.
Before I continue forward with my story on Palmer. I gotta thank you to Reverend Kyle for having the huevos to go up to Palmer and ask him to join us in on a Podcast. I gotta admit, I don’t think I would have had the balls to approach him, I guess I didn’t think recording a podcast would be worth his time. Good thing I was wrong.

So here I am, sitting next to Bullardo, with Reverend Kyle across the table from me and Matt Stompz sitting next to the Rev. As we started recording, in the back of my head I was thinking” I hope I can say the word FUCK on this podcast, I like the word Fuck”.

Some 5 minutes into our conversation Palmer Luckey walks in and we began recording one of the coolest podcast I’ve ever done. To be frank, I wasn’t sure what to expect at first. What kind of guy is Palmer after all? Would he be snobbish? would he be mean? did the money get to him?

The answer is nope, nope and nope. In fact I was really surprised by how quickly I warmed up to him. This might be a no brainer to some of you reading this but I have come to the conclusion that Palmer is a human being and he’s pretty “normal”.

So, at one point during the conversation someone asked Palmer how things have changed since the Facebook deal and at some point during his answer he says ” And I’ve also received death threats”

In the background I hear a sympathetic voice saying “aww” meanwhile I let out a nice and hearty three syllable “hahaha”. There was a quick awkward second of silence in the room, to me it felt like a lifetime, I was already thinking to myself “damn it I broke the podcast…now everyone thinks I’m weird”

Thankfully all went better than expected and my laughter seemed like water off a ducks back to Palmer. (at least I hope so)

On the ride home, I thought to myself. “damn why did I do that?”

I have two theories :

1: I’m an asshole

2: Laughter is my healing mechanism when I try to get over bad memories and it has become a reflex even if the memories aren’t my own.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, I am often the only person laughing when people share their uncomfortable experiences when i’m in a group. Laughing and joking doesn’t work every time and for every circumstances but it has helped me. Death threats aren’t funny but in the right setting, with the right joke structure and the ideal circumstance in which no one was physically harmed, we can start a healing process through laughter.

To me, it feels therapeutic to laugh at your own misfortune in the presence of good people. If I ever have Palmer on my podcast I’ll make sure to tell him some of my most unfortunate experiences (like the time my monkey bit me, or the time I almost got arrested for showing my butt cheeks to the police, or the time – you get the idea…)

Don’t worry I don’t usually laugh at strangers when they share bad memories, but Palmer had become so approachable that I just started seeing him as a “bro”.

Anyways, being a part of the virtual reality community has taught me a lot about technology, entrepreneurship and ultimately myself. I’m truly grateful.

The only thing that excites me more than what I’ve already seen, is thinking of all things I have yet to witness.

Thanks again to Palmer for being a true scholar and gentleman of Virtual Reality.

Here are a couple of highlights from the conference:

Don’t get forget to check out the Ubercast!