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Over attachment in Virtual Reality chat rooms

Hey everyone.

Keep in mind that for this article I don't have any hard numbers, It's just my impression after meeting people almost every day for 9 months.

I'm a full-time creator active on twitter and twitch. I'm a bit of a social butterfly, I adore expressing myself and meeting new people. You could say that I have an abundance of self confidence.

For about 9 months I've logged on to VRChat, the most popular virtual reality chat room. In my time there I've actively approached users who I believe seemed like they felt left out. I created a small community of about 200 people by approaching people for 2 months straight in 2017, this was almost completely separated from all other groups in VRChat.

After 9 months I've lost count on how many private conversations I've had about people feeling broken after VR friendships. Some have even mentioned suicide. I feel concerned about how friendships and relationships are perceived in VR. Users who suffer from the lack of experience, anxiety or overall insecurity may feel more than overly attached to friends found in VR than in usual situations. I've encountered a lot of users with numerous forms of autism as well who have difficulty coping with communication in VR.
It is a chat room but it is quite a lot more detailed than just using text or voice. It is even possible for some users to feel the sensation of objects being close to their virtual body, this is dubbed "phantom sense" and is perhaps an interesting topic for a separate article.

Just in under a month or less, people reveal a large amount of information about themselves and fall in love in an instant. This of course occurs a lot outside of VR as well, though this world only has about 5000 concurrent users logged in while in ordinary situations there are millions are chatting every day. The ratio of users suffering after VR incidents is actually quite scary.
This is perhaps also very related to the invite system used by VRChat, I'm writing a separate piece on that later this week aimed at the VRChat community and developers.

My message here is for everyone to please look around you and realize that when you or your friends are in a VRChat or similar platforms, you are in a chat room. You meet new people almost every day just being there and you have the ability to participate in private and secluded events with almost 0 effort. For your own sake, please watch out with growing attached with people in a short amount of time.

VRChat also has their fair share of 'celebrities', people who may be able to influence the users logging into vrchat. Personal issues between famous users can result in a lot of harassment from one fan-base to another. This is very common usually, but I have been wondering if the effects of such incidents can have a much stronger effect on people when they experience it in VR. It would be very assumptions of me to say as I have not been around famous users as much as I've been around those left alone.
My piece isn't written to tell you how to behave. I honestly wanted to express myself on this and view how other VR users have experienced the build up and loss of friendships and relationships while in VR.

Here's how I personally like moving forward in VR and IRL. Of course I don't actually measure the exact time, it's a rough estimate based on my experience in life.

1. I do not reveal information about myself that can hurt me to someone I've had not trusted for longer than 3-6 months. The time is extended if I have reason to doubt.

2. I do not become heavily emotionally attached to someone I've not dated for a while. Having a crush is amazing but wanting to spend my life with someone I've known less than 6 months is just dangerous for my mental health.

(People enjoy role playing a lot in VR as you can import almost any 3D model or create your own, but this counts for usual chat rooms as well.)

3. I do not role play with someone if I cannot trust my feelings or their feelings to exist beyond the RP. This is extremely difficult in practice as even professional actors can't always do this. It is natural for us to grow attached to those we spend the most pleasurable time with in quality and quantity.

When starting a relationship online or offline. If you or your friends or partner are not emotionally stable you may experience a lot of issues in the short and long term, being positive is not a necessity but don't overestimate the importance of just feeling good.

Follow me on twitter for VR related content: https://twitter.com/ArtsyVRC