The VRChat documentary gets VR right, but already feels old

pcgamer.com:

We Met In Virtual Reality(opens in new tab), HBO's documentary that was filmed entirely in VRChat, struggles to capture the reality outside of itself. VRChat has been ahead of its time since 2014: it's the non-corporate metaverse for catgirls and memes. It's a first-person online game where you can do just about anything you'd do in real life as long as its community of developers and animators can make it. You've probably seen clips of it featuring everything from VTubers(opens in new tab), Sonic characters(opens in new tab), and anime protagonists(opens in new tab). 

Naturally, it attracts a lot of people that, for whatever reason, don't feel comfortable in the real world. VRChat is a space where gender, sexuality, and especially bodies, are truly fluid, and, as a result, it's incredibly queer. It's not Facebook's vision of VR, or as People Make Games(opens in new tab) put it in May, the «sexless, Zuckerbergian, brand-friendly presentation» of Meta's billion dollar metaverse. It's a place for people to explore their identities, meet others, or painstakingly recreate big box stores(opens in new tab) and roleplay as the cashiers.

To its credit, We Met in Virtual Reality is able to communicate the charming absurdity of VRChat over its one hour and 33 minute runtime. But sincere, documentarian footage of anime characters and furries vibrating through their chairs isn't the whole story. Director Joe Hunting locks the virtual camera on a handful of people who spend most of their lives in the online game and who see it as a necessity after Covid locked them inside. 

Hunting follows a woman that teaches ASL to deaf and hard of hearing players every day of the week in a replica of a college classroom, two couples who are