Why VRChat Players Love Looking at Themselves in VRChat-Based Mirrors

In case you were wondering what inspired Nylon Pinkney's latest comic about VRChat, reader "Cake" has some more context for you in Comments:

The mirror is a big social area in your typical VRChat room. People stand in front of it and talk like they would if they were primping with friends in a bathroom. Shaders also look slightly different in different maps depending on what you're using--so even if you have one set for your avatar, you still go to the mirror to check out what you look like on that particular map.

That's actually a fascinating analogy, and does a lot to help explain VRChat's popularity:

In real life, lots of people love socializing in front of a mirror in the bathroom's club or bar, but not everyone can afford to do that -- even if they lived near a decent nightclub or bar, which many don't. And in the end, you're still hanging out in an actual bathroom. Which, you know, ew.

Stereotypically it's women who socialize in front of bathroom mirrors, but given VRChat's strong skew toward male users, clearly it's an activity many men enjoy too -- especially when they have the anonymity of their avatar to avoid gender norming judgements of other males.

Comments

[Cake]

I'm Aemeth Lysette, I just call myself Cake because I don't really like my username much anymore.

I make content in VRChat as a hobby when I'm not working on comics. I'm probably going to blog my experience and comparison between that and Second Life soon. I don't believe they're exact rivals--Sansar and VRChat are, though.

[Geek squad support]

This is a very interesting and beautiful post, keep sharing more

[Wagner James Au]

Thank you for the very complimentary spam.

[Adeon]

Yeah, I've always known mirrors would have that effect on a virtual world. You want to feel like you ARE your avatar - seeing yourself in a mirror kind of solidifies that.