Virtual reality games had perfected realistic, believable experiences to such an extent that they were indistinguishable from "real" reality. In fact, players were subjected to a temporary amnesia when they spawned in these simulation reality worlds. It was like being born.
These games were Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG), meaning you shared experiences in worlds with other players.
Some worlds were border regions between different paradigms. Ideologies, worldviews, beliefs, customs, values, norms, and mores clashed in these worlds. Different tribes vied to win new converts to their home worlds, thus expanding territory.
One tribe was a group of men (in real life) who liked to play women in the simulation reality MMORPGs. In fact, they played so much that they were confused as to who they really were. Their addiction to playing the simulation game, and in particular playing characters so unlike who they really are, caused a damaging mental illness.
Their tribe insisted that whatever character a person was currently playing was their true, authentic self. They enforced this rule with draconian measures that had severe side effects, to include delusions, derangements, and violent behavior that they tried to conceal. They were a people who were so used to deception as a way of life that they not only couldn't recognize truth, they didn't even believe in objective truth.
In the dream I actually owned several computer servers and the simulated reality worlds hosted on them. I "dropped in," suffering the customary amnesia, to investigate firsthand some of the problems that were reported to me in waking life.
I tried to talk sense to them and other troublesome tribes. (Another tribe, for instance, enslaved players and surreptitiously destroyed worlds, but tried to hide what they were doing by erasing memories just before players woke up).
Those who came to their senses and agreed to play by the rules I established for the worlds hosted on my computer servers were allowed to continue playing. Those who did not were permanently removed.
One of the rules was that men could only play men and women could only play women. That made some angry, but my worlds, my rules.
