VRChat was the first time since the 2000s that I felt the “magic” of the old internet. It had the promise of quirky, unique, and individual (not “personalized”) experiences. It came with the ugly parts too, and a little risk, and it was kind of beautiful.
Sad to see the direction they’re taking. I guess easy product placement is more important than community.
I feel the sentiment in my soul. Both the awe and wonder at the sense of adventure and unbridled creativity of it all, and the mourning at the knowledge that this is the beginning of the end.
The ugly parts have taken over. The Second Life users have moved in and now dominate many spaces, along with tons of kids ("Questies") and the usual always-online contingent of furries, extremists of various sorts, and adults being creepy around young kids.
There's still cool stuff there and unique and positive interactions to be had, but it's a slog.
We Second Lifers moved in over four years ago, long before anything went viral, and long before any of the people doing the complaining. We've been here from the start.
"Second Life Is Plagued by Security Flaws, Ex-Employee Says; A former infosec director at Linden Lab alleges the company mishandled user data and turned a blind eye to simulated sex acts involving children."
A certain type of community is drawn to a particular kind of platform.
In this case, an exploitable platform filled with children and near-zero moderation of sexualized content. As you know, VRChat doesn't even have an NSFW tagging system or option for users to filter such content out (without hiding all custom avatars, i.e. disabling VRChat's core functionality).
The lack of an NSFW content filter is mind-boggling. They have offered an "NSFW" checkbox when uploading avatars for years, but still to this day have given users no way to filter out avatars tagged "NSFW" in game. They could solve most of this problem fairly easily by blocking users from wearing avatars tagged "NSFW" in public instances. NSFW content doesn't belong in public instances and indeed it's a bannable offense already - so why they have not made this a priority is a mystery. Guess the developers are too focused on implementing EAC.
VRChat doesn't reflect human nature overall, just those who fail adapt to the mainstream and hide out online 24/7. High overlap with Second Life, 4channers, and heavy Discord users, less of an overlap with people who play competitive games or contribute to society.
I very much doubt this point. My reference is political comments on Facebook: these beautiful people, who otherwise do pay taxes, have kids and maybe even a picket fence, can spew hate and nonsense like there's no tomorrow, and they do so with their face attached. So while VRChat might not be a statistical representative for the population of the particular things you can encounter there, it really is just human nature and if everyone would be there, you'd see a similar level of unacceptable behavior, just maybe a different of that.
What I think happens in places like this is similar to what happens in the crypto world. Money and financial situations can be abused hard, and it has been for a long time, so we have a good amount of rules, laws, international agreements and so on regarding it. Then crypto came, it kinda resembled money, and had none of these restrictions. So every trick is new again: market manipulations, all the different kind of frauds, all unprotected from the existing legal framework that we have for regular money. I think online communications enjoy a similar situation, or at least it did, for quite some time.
The slice of humanity on VRChat is significantly more neurotic and hypersexual than the average Gen-Xer ranting on Facebook. They’re also more OK being inappropriate around young children, the other large VRChat constituency. It’s worse in VRChat than in any other VR game or online multiplayer experience I’ve had (and I’ve had a lot) except maybe Second Life.
The Facebook crowd would be just as bad in VR, probably, but VRChat is its own sort of hive of scum and villainy.
Exactly, all thes useless people are wasting their life. Imagine how much they could accomplish if they joined the Russian military and successfully conquered Ukraine, they would be heroes.
