I married someone I had never met in person
that I had known only in virtual reality.
You can definitely have sex in VR.
You feel almost anything in VR like people
touching you.
Sexual harassment in virtual reality
is unfortunately pretty much as prevalent
as sexual harassment outside of virtual reality.
So, my partner's name is Aidan,
also known as FuzzyFuzion.
How we first met is in virtual reality.
Hey, my name is Jasper.
This is my partner.
Hi, I’m Aidan.
He's very camera shy, sadly.
So, that's one of the reasons
why he couldn’t make it on today, with the in-person interview.
Three, two, one, smile.
We definitely spend more time
in virtual reality with each other
rather than, you know,
being together in person.
VRChat is a socialising game in VR,
there's endless possibilities.
You can go mini golfing in VR.
It went in the water.
Come on, in you go, yay.
You watch movies in VR.
You can make coffees in VR.
We do kiss, hug in VR definitely we do.
You develop senses in VR.
Which help you feel like almost anything.
I can feel like people touching me.
You're going very in me. Oh right, whoops.
A hug feels very like a natural hug.
Just hug. Hug.
Kissing in VR,
definitely does feel like
a natural kiss.
Full body tracking.
It actually mimics your action movement
and it puts it to VR.
It uses two base stations here,
which tracks the individual movement
of these three trackers,
which enables me to have full body
tracking and full immersion in VR.
I just made an espresso shot, I think.
You can definitely have like sex in VR,
if you got the right equipment.
Me and Aidan,
we never really try it.
When I met him in VR
he seemed like really sweet.
For me like looks don’t really matter.
It's definitely like personality for me.
I'm a ghost.
I felt a spark.
And then I say, okay,
I believe this might actually work.
The whole relationship
has been like, the best.
We actually met in person as well.
Both VR and in person
is just for me, the same feeling.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate this.
So, what attracted me to Aidan
is just his like overall ongoing personality.
Most people, like, talk to me for
a little bit and just go off
with their life.
But for him he actually stuck around.
Today has been pretty pretty
alright so far. How about you?
VR very much
helped me with my social anxiety
and it can like block out the world
and like whatever has been going on in life.
I wouldn't have met
Aidan if it wasn't all for VR.
Bye, love you. Love you too.
Bye
When I was 18 years old,
I married someone I had never met in person
that I had known only through virtual reality
and Second Life.
Second Life is a program
that's quite similar to virtual reality’s
desktop elements
where people just hang out, talk,
watch movies.
We did dedicate
90% of our time to one another.
I'd be working,
but I would always have
to have a window of VRChat
or Second Life open.
Seeing that he was there
that would legitimately go on for seven days
straight night and day, fall asleep
in virtual reality.
The topic of marriage came up very suddenly.
He initiated it, I believe two weeks
after we started talking.
As a short-sighted 18-year-old,
I was ecstatic initially.
Part of me just went,
‘Oh, this is logical
if I spent all my time with him,
surely I know the person I'm talking to
even if they're not physically
in the same room as me.’
I was in Melbourne, Australia.
He was all the way in the United Kingdom.
So I thought, right I guess I’m moving to the
UK and I guess I'm getting married.
My entire life revolved around this man.
It was my job to walk several kilometres
to get him his groceries,
sort out the money, to cook, clean.
I was for all intents and purposes,
a housewife and a carer.
The council flat was not the best
living conditions.
The sheet on the floor that I slept on
eventually became a big health issue,
which I found out
by waking up in the morning,
coughing up blood several times.
And it turns out the entire mattress
was black with black mould.
There were holes in the walls
and in winter snow came in.
I had no money of my own.
The catalyst for me leaving
that situation was a very dear
friend of mine.
He said, whatever's
going on over there isn't right.
And I broke down
and within a week had decided
I had to get home to Australia.
Two and a half years is the amount of time
I spent over there.
The relationship fell apart as I left
and we separated.
Romantic relationships
have occurred in online spaces
for as long as there’s been online
spaces, really.
I expect that once the technology
becomes a little bit cheaper,
there will be more instances
of romantic relationships in virtual reality.
Online romantic relationships
can be really beneficial
to certain groups of people.
So, particularly if someone is socially anxious
or geographically isolated
or is coming to terms with something
like sexual identity
or gender identity.
One of the really big issues
around dating in VR is privacy.
If you spend 20 minutes in a VR headset,
the headset collects roughly
2 million unique points of data
about your body language,
and that amount of data can tell
you really specific things about yourself
sexual orientation, gender identity, age,
mental state.
So in a romantic relationship context,
someone might not be aware
that they're giving that data away
with something like Meta’s history
around privacy and privacy violations.
I think that's something
to be really concerned
about what they're going to do
with that data going forward.
This is something
that we're really going
to focus on.
Privacy and safety need to be built
into the Metaverse from day one.
Sexual harassment in virtual reality
is unfortunately pretty much as prevalent
as sexual harassment outside of virtual reality.
There was a case
just last year with Meta’s
Horizon Worlds.
Where a researcher was sexually assaulted
while she was in one of the
Metaverse spaces.
Big companies
definitely should be doing more
to moderate spaces,
but on top of that, I don't think we can trust
tech companies to moderate
their own content.
I think there also needs
to be government laws
that protect users in virtual spaces.
Sexual harassment is something
I've experienced quite a lot
in VRChat specifically.
It is quite uncomfortable,
especially if there's someone
you don't know that
just touches you in a way
that would get them arrested in the real world.
My advice to people who are intending on
starting a relationship with someone that
they've initially met through virtual reality.
If it feels or seems too good to be
true, it very likely is.