As someone who's played a good amount (eyes steam hours suspiciously) of VRChat, I often find myself wondering what draws me into the game so much.
Wow yoodie, second post on the blog and you're already pulling out the capital letters? So much for being lazy.
Yeah yeah, occasionally I can pull some effort from deep within to make something slightly more readable at the expense of having to hold down shift a bit.
Anyway, VRChat. There are the obvious things of course: the pseudo face to face interaction that is so rare on the internet, the feeling of community and belonging, and the fact I have friend groups within the game. But I think a part of what pulls me towards VRChat is the same thing that had me sit down and bash my head against the MDN web docs and write plain ol HTML and CSS for the first time in fourteen some odd years. I don't know exactly what to call it, but it is the exact same thing that draws me to the "old web" of sorts. VRChat feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to so much of the current internet landscape. The content is user generated. Communities are formed and passed on by word of mouth instead of being shoved in front of you by an algorithm. People use it as a space to express themselves and show off their Blender and Unity skills.
VRChat feels like the "new frontier" of digital spaces. It has the same spunky and scrapwork feel the early internet had, just people being creative and doing things because they love it. You work on your new avatar because you want your friends and the randos you meet to see the cute new outfit you picked up, you dump hours into your custom world because you want to create a cool space for people to hang out in. You aren't doing it for views or engagement.
I spend a good amount of my time in the virtual club scene, even dipping into VRDJing recently. And sure, it has some of the drama and other bullshit that you would expect out of any online space. But it's also so... pure. Ran by the community, for the community. No money changes hands, no ones trying to find the hot new way to bleed the experience dry for profit. Just a bunch of people coming together around their love for music. And man, in today's day and age, that's just pretty fuckin cool to see.