Here's the latest VRChat interview from Syrmor, the platform's best embedded reporter, another poignant slice of virtual life, this one of a woman whose real life relationship fell apart because of the virtual world, where she found someone new. It also comes with a surprise: The Canadian dude behind Syrmor's avatar cat avatar appears on camera to read fan mail -- yes, he gets actual fan mail on paper from the post office, that's how beloved he's become -- and introduce the VRChat segment:
"I wanted to test it out with this recent video and see how it went but I think it's something I'll do more consistently from now on," he tells me. "It just gives me an easy way to talk to the audience since I never really communicate with them I'm gonna try it with the next video too and see how it goes."
Makes sense. Now with nearly 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, Syrmor almost certainly has more followers than VRChat itself has actual users:
Last I checked last May, the VRChat site had about 430,000 unique monthly visitors. By contrast, VRChat currently gets about 7,000 peak concurrent users on Steam per week, with total peak from other platforms probably 2-3x that amount. So this is another example of how much social media and streaming video sites are integral to the life of a virtual world: At this point, it matters less how many people are logged into the world, than how many people are watching that in-world activity on YouTube and Twitch, or talking about it on Discord.
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