>>323248448
This shit was long. Honestly it was nothing special but the 5th chapter onwards was good, probably because that's the part that relates to him the most.

Overall it had a very positive viewpoint on the game especially as a way to explore identity but placed far too much emphasis on gender than any other aspect of it, to the point that identity was only relevant in seperating people between the 'avatar is me' and the 'avatar is controlled by me' types. Maybe growing up with anonymous imageboards gives me an unsual perspective but I've always thought that the ability to choose which parts of my identity to reveal at any time is empowering, you only know things about me by what I choose to post and so too can you do so with my avatar choices. The ability to manipulate identity goes far beyond gender, especially for mutes.

There were a few interesting things that he acknowledges or barely touches on that really deserved some attention in my opinion. Like why make a long video talking about why people choose to be anime girls, hint that there's some social pressure to do so and then never explore it? The responses in this thread even make it clear that there's an aspect of social utility to some people's decision whereas the only utility he mentions is describing the ease of importing MMD models. Likewise he touches on fantasy and escapism at the end but not really anything about the ways people might deal with this disconnect between their percieved identities within VR and those in the real world. The 'gender is performative' framework kind of restricts him there and it's one of the reasons I don't agree with it.

Kind of sad that it can only be summed up as: VRChat lets you be whoever, the community will let you be cute without repercussion, it gives some people a new perspective and others are using it for escapism. I guess it's okay for people who don't know much about VRChat but I had hoped for more.