Abstract This contribution positions perceptual and behavioral traits of long-term Social VR users as acculturated instead of predetermined, outlining developments in which newcomers to platforms such as VRChat become power users over time. Grounded on 32 semi-structured interviews as well as observational data derived from a four-year life-world-analytical ethnography, processes of ‘becoming’ are described and analyzed from a phenomenological and interactionist angle. Sociologist Howard S. Becker’s writings serve as the theoretical basis for this text – in particular his paper ‘Becoming a Marihuana User’. Analytical findings suggest that newcomers to VRChat adapt to perceptual and behavioral concepts of established communities over time. Long-term users impart to their peers the ability to emphasize (inter-)corporality in their social encounters when embodying avatars. Furthermore, enthusiast users contextualize the phenomenal experience of intense Social VR use for newcomers, mitigating the negative impacts of invasive perceptual phenomena, such as sensory mismatches or phantom sensations. By collectively mitigating major hurdles to prolonged VR-use, VRChat users slowly acclimate to extremely long VR-sessions, develop resilience to motion sickness and ultimately become able to engage their platform as a genuine social site – traits that initially differentiated them from power users.
Felix Krell (Tue,) studied this question.