The Sandbox

Shakespear was noted for, among many other things, sticking a play inside his plays.  Thus, we have Pyramus and Thisbe working out their tragic, comic fate while the "real" play is The Midsummer Night's Dream.  The story of Pyramus and Thisbe also makes fun of another Shakespear play, Romeo and Juliet.

Movies often have different levels of truth and story-telling, as characters either flash back or make stuff up.  We see these alternate, less-true stories portrayed on-screen, usually with different colors or film-stock to let us know which story thread is, for the purpose of the movie, real.

Then comes the online world.  Giant collaborative video games, really.  One of the big ones, Second Life, has spawned an internal game of its own.  Wired just ran an article on it, the conclusion of which is ironic.  (really). 

In essence, it was classic libel against video games: That they encourage isolation, with each player staring glassy-eyed at the evil, hypnotic screen. The irony here, of course, is that these complaints were coming from players who themselves were spending hours staring at their own computer screens while they played Second Life. Dig it: People were complaining that a game was ruining the quality of virtual life inside a game.