Nah, this is a lot worse than most, both because it's surprisingly popular and because Cline is much much worse about it than all but the most dire white male nerd fantasists. He has drilled white male nerd fantasy to its hollow quaking bones. He is to nerd fantasy what John Ringo and Tom Kratman are to jock fantasy.
Like, check it out; traditionally, even the most sketched-in, hackneyed, paper thin power fantasies at least pay lip service to the idea of the Hero's Journey of Self Discovery, but Cline doesn't even do that much. You can see him cludgily stealing the framework of such stories from other media, but he does so in such a half-assed way he wrecks them utterly. Take Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a movie this book is often compared to because they start from similar premises. If RPO was just a bad copy of Willy Wonka, that'd be all right. But it actively undermines the main thrust of WW's moral, and it does it in an amazingly toxic way. In Willy Wonka, Wonka's factory is presented by its quirky creator as a fantasy dream-land, but it's actually a kind of moral crucible, weeding out the bad, selfish, arrogant, and greedy children with hidden traps until only Charlie, who displays optimism, tenacity, and honesty, is rewarded for his purity of spirit by gifts beyond his wildest dreams.
Halliday's Puzzle at first looks like a similar set up, with one major difference; there's no moral crucible. There's no value judgment whatsoever. The whole idea of moral value judgments seems toxic to Cline. The quixotic mystery man at the heart of the story is literally doing exactly what he said he was: testing his audience's tolerance for rote memorization of useless trivia and capacity for obsessive compulsion. It is a game that can only be won by being as good at the video games of Halliday's childhood as Halliday was. The ultimate prize, complete control over a billion dollar corporation, goes to the person most capable of narcissistic emulation of a man trapped in a vision of his own past. Think how creepy that is: to live your life entirely within the shadow of someone else's childhood, and then imagine what it would be like to voluntarily dive into that fate. Wade Watts doesn't prevail in the end because he's pure of heart, or because he has unique talents or insights, or because he learns the power of friendship, but because he's the biggest, nerdiest, hikikomori-est loser in the world.
The fundamental message of the book is that if you ignore your friends and the outside world and keep doing exactly what you've been doing and don't change in any way, you too can earn a billion dollars and be famous and gently caress the nerdy non-threatening girl next door.
