The world in RPO is pretty nonsensical and the whole thing is a vehicle for nostalgia with a fairly formulaic plot. Nothing wrong with that it’s a fun beach read, particularly if you’re of a certain age. I was mildly terrified by the number of people I met a few years ago whilst working in VR who considered it aspirational. We’ll absolutely get a dystopia if the metaverse is based on teenage fantasy. Particularly with an AR vision that is rushing to put glorified ads for Disney and Marvel into the world.
You'd think the creator would have thought of something like that, but nah, he wanted to leave it to the coolest teen. Or, in the movie version, the teen most able to identify weirdly personal details from the author's private life.