#Virtual metaverse

[anirobot]

Mamoru Hosoda - Ryū To Sobakasu No Hime - Belle

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since the virtual reality service’s launch in 2021, the so-called “successor to the mobile internet” became the recipient of a kind of soaring hype few things are ever blessed with. According to Insider, McKinsey claimed that the Metaverse would bring businesses $5 trillion in value. Citi valued it at no less than $13 trillion. There was only one problem: The whole thing was bullshit. Far from being worth trillions of dollars, the Metaverse turned out to be worth absolutely bupkus. It’s not even that the platform lagged behind expectations or was slow to become popular. There wasn’t anyone visiting the Metaverse at all. The sheer scale of the hype inflation came to light in May. In the same article, Insider revealed that Decentraland, arguably the largest and most relevant Metaverse platform, had only 38 active daily users. The Guardian reported that one of the features designed to reward users in Meta’s flagship product Horizon Worlds produced no more than $470 in revenue globally. Thirty-eight active users. Four hundred and seventy dollars. You’re not reading those numbers wrong. To say that the Metaverse is dead is an understatement. It was never alive.

[humanoidhistory]

The future of VR, brought to you by AT&T, 1993.

[fuzzyghost]

[captain-acab]

Oop just had a prediction. The "Zuck vs Musk" cage fight is going to be super hyped up, get some cushy deals to livestream it with Twitch or whatever, also be set up to stream live on some major tv news channels, and then when it finally happens...

It'll be in the metaverse fighting with vr "avatars" or whatever

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

CUPRA DarkRebel Concept, 2023. A virtual design study that is the ultimate interpretation of the brand’s vision. The DarkRebel is the first show car presented through Metahype, CUPRA’s space in the metaverse. CUPRA’s Hyper Configurator enables users to create their own versions of the show car and influence the final design of a physical model that will be presented in the near future.

[wronghands1]

[illustrawrrr]

I played VRChat and VR the majority of my time during covid from 2020 - 2022 and it became a legitimate addiction... it was bad.. this is my Vent artwork on how isolating it really made me feel in my real life and how desperate I was for a real life.

[sophieinwonderland]

VR, Plurality and Virtugenic Systems

Before we begin, I want to talk about roleplaying tulpas or autojects.

Different groups of plurals have different names for the phenomena, but the basics remain consistent. You roleplay a character long enough and eventually, your brain may start to see that character as someone else entirely. It dissociates from the character and the character may start to develop a life of their own, acting on their own terms, even talking to the host at different times thrpugh the day when not roleplaying. They've gained independence, autonomy and sapience.

Right off the bat, you can imagine how VR could lead to this type of experience being common, especially with characters who are vastly different from the core. What really made me interested in this concept though was this video from The Virtual Reality Show, where the host (of the show; she's not a system as far as I'm aware) pretends to be a guy for a week in VRchat.

"I mean, when in your life have you ever looked down and not been you? Never."

Okay, yeah, she's DEFINITELY not a system. 😜

I am not going to read too far into Phia's wording because much of it seems off the cuff and it's impossible to know how this really affected her exactly without being in her head or at least getting an in-depth interview.

But the short of it for anyone who doesn't want to watch the video is that it only took her four days to feel incredibly dissociated, start talking about this character as a separate person with his own thoughts and feelings, and to start talking about herself in the third person. Seven days later, she describes the character as becoming a part of her that will be always be there.

Again, I cannot possibly speculate what these words might mean to Phia or what she experienced. It obviously sounds reminiscent of system language, but it's just impossible to know what this really means to her.

But what I think this does show is what can happen to others. That you can have people with completely different avatars that they'll strongly identify with in the game and then outside of the game still identify with their physical bodies.

Remember, this is how the experience started affecting Phia in only four days.

For others in VR, they're existing in these worlds for months or years. We may have a new generation brought up in a virtual world from the age of 13. There's no telling the psychological impact that could have.

For existing plural systems, the propagation of VR is a massive boon. Apps like VRchat can allow headmates to present themselves to others in something close to their actual forms.

And I really want to take a moment to appreciate how amazing of a concept that is. This is something that has never been possible for plurals at any point in history.

But something I've never seen brought up is the potential for new systems to be created through VR dissociation. Virtugenic Systems.

Yes, I'm just coining that right now!

If this technology becomes as common as is hoped, this might actually become one of the primary ways accidental endogenic systems will develop in the future.

There have been studies into the characters of writers showing them possessing a degree of autonomy and separateness, and even the ability to speak to their creators mentally.

What I would love to see is an equivalent study to this for VR. How many VR players see their avatars as separate people? Do they hear the voice of their avatar on its own? Do they feel like they become someone else when in VR? Do they use reflexive or non-reflexive pronouns when they think of their non-VR self while in VR?

These are all topics I would love to see explored at length in future research.

I would love to hear other's thoughts on this and to hear if anyone has developed headmates in this way! 😁

[anirobot]

Mamoru Hosoda - Ryū To Sobakasu No Hime - Ryū & Belle

[tomemrich]

“As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation,” Tuvalu Foreign Minister Simon Kofe told the COP27 climate summit.

Tuvalu will become the first nation to replicate itself in the virtual reality world known as the metaverse.

[humanoidhistory]

Brenda Laurel on the possibilities for real drama and radical transformation in future VR, as seen in Colonizing Cyberspace, 1991.

[orchidblack]

In the 90s, this is what an office drama about workplace sexual harassment looked like.

[overwritexr]

[aurosoulart]

quick poll cuz I'm curious...

[thebananmonkevrofficial]