Ryan Schultz : EDITORIAL: Old Age in Virtual Worlds and Social VR—Why the Representation of Aging Matters in the Metaverse
"I’ve been active in the virtual world of Second Life for over 14 years now, and one of the things I have learned (which also applies to the newer crop of social VR apps and the suddenly-ubiquitous NFT metaverse platforms) is the following lesson: people are willing to invest a significant amount of time, energy, and money in their avatars!
But what I do find extremely interesting about Second Life (which has a userbase which skews significantly older than, say, VRChat or Rec Room) is that people almost uniformly confirm to looking as young as possible! In my peregrinations and perambulations across the grid, I can often go for weeks at a time before I see another avatar who appears middle-aged, or (God forbid!) a senior citizen. SL is full of clubs and nightspots where everybody seems to be young, pert, taut, and beautiful (even the men!). Why is that? Why does nobody question the status quo?"
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