The Rise of the ‘Immersive Virtual Online Avatar Society’: Does an Online Community Established in the Virtual Space Constitute a ‘Real’ Society?

This video article series investigates the emergence of a ‘digital haven’, that hosts a new type of society. These people are converging in digitally constructed realities for multiple reasons: some seek refuge from the harsh realities of the contemporary social order, others investigate new ways to socialise, or seek somewhere where the limitations of the real world don’t apply. Both science-fiction media and academics predicted that once virtual reality technologies (vr) reach the general consumer, society would change (Caddy, 2019; Gibson, 1984; Heim, 1993; Virtual Reality Society, 2017). In recent years the number of households with vr devices has increased (Bol, 2018; Petrock, 2021). This article suggests that vr technology has given birth to an ‘Immersive Virtual Online Avatar Society’. This society harbours many occasional visitors, but also some permanent virtual residents. Important questions arise; starting with: “Does an online community established in the virtual space constitute a ‘real’ society?” This will be investigated with sources from virtual worlds developed with the social multi-user vr software VRChat, drawn from academic research, from video recordings of interactions in VRChat and from philosophical inquiry into the author’s personal experiences and the experiences of other users.