VRChat Now Has Its Own Voluntary Police Force

thegamer.com:

There are 11,000 LPD Discord members that play VRChat. LPD doesn't stand for what you'd think, though - it means Loli Police Department. As in the underage-looking anime girls. They're a role-playing group that polices the servers of VRChat and they've been active since 2018.

It started with the Ugandan Knuckles meme who, according to former LPD captain Hrólfur (thanks, Input Mag), "everyone in the VR world found super-annoying." The LPD were arresting anyone who dressed up as Ugandan Knuckles, but now it's spiralled into a whole role-playing faction with thousands of members.

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"We have two-hour patrols where we break up into squads, go out into the world of VRChat, and interact with people to start role plays," LPD sergeant Jura said. "They even use sound effects to make it sound like they're speaking to people through a radio."

But it's not all fun and games. Systemic racism and police abusing power is a growing problem, something that has sparked countless protests from groups like Black Lives Matter. But the LPD frames this as something 'fun' to roleplay, going as far as to pin crimes on people that they didn't commit.

"I can pull out a bag of weed and make it look like it came out of someone's pocket," one of the LPD members said. "They always say it's not theirs." This kind of behaviour has offended many, leading to a stigma against the LPD in-game, as Hrólfur pointed out.

"We absolutely get abuse," Hrólfur said. "Especially when there's police violence going on in the US. We get a lot more people responding and saying curse words to us, like 'Fuck the police.'" Some then tried to use the role play to actually moderate, but they're just players