Long before MegaTokyo drifted into an examination of the zeitgeist of extreme fandoms, one of the earliest recurring themes that Fred inserted into the comic of was that of the personal reality, most commonly exemplified by "Piro-vision" and "Largo-vision", and examined explicitly in comic [132]. Over time and as the plot evolved, most readers started to view "Largo-vision" as "aware of the masquerade" and "Piro-vision" as "not aware of the masquerade", but it's not supposed to be that simple. For one thing, the entire point of Largo seeing the masquerade so easily is that he has always expected all that stuff to be there in the first place. In fact at times he expects quite a bit more to be there than the TPCD actually deals with. Piro, meanwhile, has other things to worry about and therefore just isn't paying enough attention to see anything he would consider out of the ordinary. (This is, by the way, exactly what Douglas Adams was satirizing with the Somebody Else's Problem field, the actual human tendency to auto-censor things of low priority, no outlandish technology needed.)

Where am I going with this? Monday's XKCD comic at first glance was cool just for being an Illinois joke (I live there). But upon viewing the mouseover alt text, I immediately had to grab Fred to take a look. "Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds. Everything about you shapes the world you inhabit--from your ideology to your glasses prescription to your web browser." That sums up the personal reality principle incredibly well.

If you check wikipedia, the term umwelt seems to be applied more to the animal kingdom than to humans, if only because the difference in sensory organs is actually significant as you cross species. Check the "See also" listing though, and you will find Reality Tunnel. "Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality." – Robert Anton Wilson

This is exactly the moral of the story that Fred was going for when he laid out the divide between Largo's reality tunnel and Piro's reality tunnel as a recurring theme. (Note that we speak of "Piro-vision" and "Largo-vision" because those two are MT's earliest main characters, but it applies to everyone equally, every character in the comic and every person in real life.) It's still a theme, in fact, alongside the newer fandom theme that has sprung up. Combine the two and you get the fanboy reality tunnel, which is most definitely a factor in the recent storylines.

On an unrelated but timely note, conventions! Since there are some coming up, I will mention them. (We've fallen down on doing that, at Ohayocon I heard several people say they didn't know Fred was going to be there.) Fred plans to be at both the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention this weekend and Anime Central at the end of the month. If you are in either area, please do stop by, bring an MT book to get signed, buy a t-shirt or art print or bracelet while you're there.

Update: I have been informed that the real gag behind the 4/2 XKCD is that the comic you see is dynamically generated according to your location and the browser you are using. I guess the joke's on me, since the comic I get using Firefox in Illinois is titled Umwelt and is on its own consistent with the theme of umwelt, a California native makes fun of an Illinois native for making a big deal of an earthquake in Illinois, then the reverse happens when a tornado strikes. Fortunately the larger point I made above relates to umwelt itself and not the particular comic I saw.