The Background

I’ve been curious about VR Chat for years now, but until a little while ago we didn’t have any VR gear in our home, and I’ve never been so drawn to VR that I’d shell out the money. Now though, my wife got herself a nice rig and suddenly playing around in VR is a real option.

The Rabbit Hole

I’ve mostly ignored the possibility of actually diving into VR Chat because having a good avatar would be important to me, and it seems like most of the things people do in social games like that are anathema to me: obnoxious kids, obnoxious men, too many people talking, etc.. But then while talking about learning ASL (American Sign Language), I happened to talk to someone who learned the VR Variant of ASL via the Helping Hands group, and then learned traditional ASL.

That piqued my interest, especially since I’m currently mute and desperately wishing my wife and I both knew more ASL so that I could communicate more easily. That sent me down a rabbit-hole of watching videos on VR Chat. Not just “how to” videos, but video essays by people like Derafog who’s spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of VR Chat and what it represents.

There was something that caught my attention; something I couldn’t quite articulate. It wasn’t until one of their videos where they started talking about “third spaces” that it finally clicked. Every time they filmed something in a quiet, beautiful world that someone had created, I felt a sense of relief, and “Yes. I want that”. Even when it was just a tiny bit of B-roll as they were discussing some topic.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I’m a covid-conscious trans woman living in a semi-rural area surrounded by trump supporters. My state is mostly safe, but I live in a country where a road trip out of it could get me arrested or assaulted for stopping to pee. Because I watch the numbers I know that covid is alive and well, killing tens of thousands of people every year, and permanently disabling more. As a result, I don’t go into places I don’t need to.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a nice house, with enough land to take the dogs for a decent walk, but my world is small: my house, my wife, our pets. I’m a house spouse, so I don’t have coworkers to chat with regularly either. Lately - owing to a surgery gone wrong - it’s gotten even smaller. I’ve been in too much pain, or too exhausted to actually do anything outside, and barely anything inside. Now my jaw is wired shut and I can barely communicate with my wife or pets. So, the loneliness has been weighing even more heavily than normal on me.

Having somewhere I can go that’s safe, and quiet, where I can explore without exhausting myself, where I could find a community of people to talk with in silence, or find other trans people to hang out with? That’s pretty appealing.

Third Spaces

We need third spaces more than ever, especially in the US. Not just because queer people need somewhere to find each other and hang out without being harassed, but because we’ve been systematically eliminated them since before I was born. The few that do exist require a car to get to, and that means money (and parents), and assumes there’s even anywhere to park.

The outdoor places went a long time ago, but we moved indoors. Kids hung out in Arcades, and Malls. We skated through the concrete jungle, but all those options have been taken from kids, and kept behind the gate of parental availability and financial wherewithal. Adults would hang out in bars, but those are closing at a rapid pace, because alcohol is expensive and many of us - probably women especially - don’t want to subject ourselves to being hit on in noisy environments just because we want to hang out somewhere. On top of that, we’ve got plenty of ways to entertain ourselves at home.

It’s a horrible cycle. The lack of accessible third spaces leads to staying at home, which diminishes the demand for third spaces, which causes municipal ones to be abandoned or sold, and commercial ones to close.

For many people VR Chat is their third space. Having a good experience in VR is unfortunately only an option for the privileged right now. You need a good gaming rig to avoid motion sickness, but AI Data Centers have made GPUs more expensive than gold (possibly literally), and the headsets that can actually render beautiful things are sold in such small numbers that they’re expensive too, and then there’s the hardware for body and face tracking, which is sold in even smaller numbers.

There are more people unemployed in the US right now than in the Great Depression. You literally can’t afford to live on minimum wage, and disabled people who dare to make more than $16k USD a year lose access to federal disability support, which also isn’t enough to live on.

So, VR Chat may be a great option for people living socially isolated lives, but not most of them, and that doesn’t even begin to address the dystopian implications of people retreating into VR because their real world sucks too much.

Caveats

Now, before anyone says it, I know that VR Chat is usually anything but “quiet” and “safe”, but those places do exist, and I’m not afraid to aggressively block the ass-holes and teens with no sense of decorum or self control. But, I think I want to try it on, and go explore. I want to find those quiet worlds, and people who might be interest in wandering through them with me.

Alas, I know me. If this works out I’m going to want full face tracking, because the idea of talking - when I eventually can again - without a mouth that moves with my words is obnoxious. Fortunately adding mouth tracking isn’t too expensive, and wifey’s already got a “VR treadmill” so that’ll hopefully keep me from wanting to get a set of body tracking pucks.

Who knows, maybe I’ll even learn how to sign in there, and start a YouTube channel sharing the nice places I find. That’d be cool, because apparently their system for finding good worlds is absolute dog shit.

Want to Learn More?

I’d recommend starting with two of Derafog’s videos: What can you actually ‘DO’ in VR Chat, as well as The good, The bad, And the truly ugly of VR Chat. The latter is a great, although somewhat depressing look at it.