Life in Virtual Reality: Exploring lived Experiences and Social Interactions of Long-Term VRChat Users

How do people live and interact in Cyberspace? Scientists and sci-fi writers have tackled this question for decades, yet the idea of a spatially distinct social site ›inside‹ the internet remained an imaginary for the longest time. In the 2010s, this changed: the proliferation of affordable virtual reality hardware and the emergence of social VR platforms attracted a growing number of tech enthusiasts for whom social life in VR has by now become a mundane, everyday reality. During his four-year ethnography, Felix Krell lived among, observed, and interviewed long-term users of the platform VRChat to explore what using VR technology really feels like for those with years of lived experience, and how members of emergent virtual communities negotiate their social interactions.

Felix Krell (MA), born in 1994, works as a research fellow at the chair of Media and Communication Science at Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen. The media sociologist is a chair and co-founder of the Working Group “Sociology of Digital Games” within the Media and Communication Section of the German Sociology Association. His research focuses on internet culture and ethnographic inquiries into emergent communities and lifeworlds in new media environments.