"Mirror Dwellers": Social VR, Identity and Internet Culture

Abstract

VRChat is a popular social virtual reality (VR) application with a strong user base and count less virtual worlds to explore and avatars to "wear". The breadth and popularity of this social VR game, and the forms of interaction that it allows, makes it a fascinating case study for investigating the effects of VR experiences in the creation and communication of online identities. In this study, we focus on a specific phenomenon that enshrines several nodal points in the evolution of VR experiences: virtual mirrors. Fiery debates between players reveal polarised responses to playful uses of virtual mirrors. We use a body of discussions from the VRChat Reddit community to look into such discourses, practices, and positions. Due to the rhetoric adopted we chose to contextualise our findings within Internet Culture, highlighting how the novelty of the medium explodes some of the contradictions of this media ideology and challenging and reshaping online identity.