Virtual reality (VR)’s newly virtuous identity as the ‘ultimate empathy machine’ arrives during an overtly xenophobic, racist, misogynist, and Islamophobic moment in the US and abroad. Its rise also overlaps with the digital industries’ attempts to defend themselves against increasingly vocal critique. VR’s new identity as an anti-racist and anti-sexist technology that engineers the right kind of feeling has emerged to counter and manage the image of the digital industries as unfeeling and rapacious. In this article, the author engages with VR titles created by white and European producers that represent the lives of black and Middle Eastern women and girls in Lebanon, Nairobi, and Paris. She argues that the invasion of personal and private space that documentary VR titles ‘for good’ create is a spurious or ‘toxic empathy’ that enables white viewers to feel that they have experienced authentic empathy for these others, and this digitally mediated compassion is problematically represented in multiple media texts as itself a form of political activism.

中文翻译：

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对感觉不好的感觉良好：良性虚拟现实和种族同理心的自动化

虚拟现实 (VR) 作为“终极移情机器”的新美德身份出现在美国和国外公开的仇外、种族主义、厌恶女性和仇视伊斯兰的时刻。它的兴起也与数字行业试图保护自己免受日益激烈的批评相重叠。VR 作为一种反种族主义和反性别歧视技术的新身份已经出现，它可以创造出正确的感觉，以对抗和管理数字行业冷酷无情和贪婪的形象。在本文中，作者使用了由白人和欧洲制作人创作的 VR 作品，这些作品代表了黎巴嫩、内罗毕和巴黎的黑人和中东妇女和女孩的生活。