VRChat is Way More than just Chat

A brief intro - I finally got an Oculus Rift around Christmas because of a price drop and have been absolutely obsessed by Virtual Reality since (well, in all fairness, I've been fascinated by VR since I was a kid, but now that the technology has caught up a bit and I have finally experienced it first-hand, I am obsessed!)

I could go on and on about VR in itself, but there's one thing I just want to rant about a bit, and it's a fun little free app called VRChat. It's a social platform where users can create their own avatars and worlds, and it's a bit of a freakshow at times, but that is what makes it great.

Picture going into a bar with Spider-Man in a wheelchair, the Iron-Giant, Peter Griffin, a baboon and more trap-loli "girls" and furries than you can shake a stick at, all while being insulted and hearing various racist ranting from a KKK member and a gang of Ugandian Knuckles. This is very typical.

It's not all crazy though, you can find more laid back, relaxing and slower paced rooms and worlds, or join up with friends in private worlds of your own creation if you see fit. It's a hodge podge of everything you'd ever want, and a lot you probably never thought about and definitely don't want. But that's kind of what makes it fun.

I couldn't even begin to go into the fullest depth of all you can do, but there are game worlds, role playing worlds, hang-out worlds and everything in between. The imagination is the only boundary, and as long as players can create their own content, the scope of this (game? app? experience?) is limitless.

Last night, for example, I ventured into VRChat to see what was going on. I spent a good while in an 'Open Mic Night' world and heard some talented people playing guitar and singing, but it eventually divulged into an almost riot-like enviornment when a rapper took the stage (in the form of a Goron from Zelda's Ocarina of Time) and spit some bars about his wildly explicit homosexual escapades. That experience ended up with a bunch of people using Shaders and blasting music and insulting Cookie Monster, who ended up crawling into the corner and not talking to anyone. Very sad.

After that I went into one of the main-stay locations in VRChat, The Pub, which is the bar I previously mentioned. There was a good time had when a red skeleton, a miniature Mario and an unnamed female anime character were tossing bottles and mugs back and forth trying to catch them. But this all ended up with a group of 4 or 5 shadow-men who ran around the bar harassing any 'white' avatar, calling them 'crackers' and shouting various other racist epitaphs. Fun times. I decided to leave around the time a 20 foot tall Loli in a bunny outfit started picking up random avatars and using them like puppets, shaking them around the room.

My next venture was into a "spooky" world, that was crafted like a haunted neighborhood of sorts. After showing off my Alien and Freddy Krueger avatars and talking about all things horror with a few people there, we somehow ended up all being dancing Raptors, riding on each others backs and flying through the sky on what we dubbed a Raptor Pyramid of maybe 5 people (dinosaurs). Around this point, it was already past midnight so I had to log off for the night.

These things sounds, perhaps a bit odd, but in VRChat this is the norm, and it is more fun than I can even explain. I can't wait to jump in tonight and see what wild adventures and experiences lie ahead.