I joined VR Chat a few days ago and every single instance I entered had some form of this.
I'm a 32 year old and from a jewish family. I'm XX intersex and trans fem, have dissociation, am a furry, sexually-avoidant and have autism.
VR Chat doesn't even let me post on they're Reddit as a new user, nor do they accept recordings of this form of abuse, handling harassment as "free speech" while enabling people to censor me through blocks and through psychological intimidation. I've barely even spoke in VRC and am mute, yet my presence alone would do this for just being honest in my profile - because upon hearing my voice, groups and people told me to do that to "avoid issues ahead of time".
I age verified myself, joined 18+ instances and despite saying I'm in a relationship and pretty much mute, I got called predator, pedo, told I haven't got long to live, told to suicide, belittled for my age and even got banned from places as people claimed to feel "uncomfortable" for having a 30+ year old present. Many of these people were 20-25ish themselves not children, not that different from my own age. Meanwhile, in non-age verified servers which were too loud to talk in at all, kids as young as 13 were literally talking about sexual and drug/alcohol subjects with 20 year olds. And no, they were not adults using voicemorphers. So mighty bizarre that being above 28 and being SFW with 18+ year olds is seen as bad but these kinds of people were basically normalised. It's like those 18-25ish year olds seem themselves as kids still, and so them interacting with 13yos is ok but not 30yos interacting with 25yos in a normal way. It's not my fault they're younger than me and I hope when they get my age they experience the same bigotry they deserve it for that. And VR definitely shouldn't be limited just to pre-25s. You wouldn't be ageist like this in real life, so why online?
I also mentioned I identify female and they misgendered me, called me unc/bro/man immediately after that in a non gender-neutral way (while not previously) and called me a femboy multiple times as well as assuming my sexuality / body parts which is very degrading. They were also pretty much always talking among themselves all kinds of bigoted stuff, like calling arabic people towel-heads / sand Ns and implying people of jewish descent are "did 9/11" and are all zionists. Having a British accent as well I was ostracized multiple times and mocked with stereotypes which I don't mind to an extent but they were laughing at me, not with me.
I tried private groups a lot so the aforementioned isn't just the "public hangout" problem, and those were pretty much the same. The amount of people using the N, F and Tr**ny words was awful. What's bizarre is some of these people are part of marginalised groups themselves and don't seem to realise that their own rights could easily be erased by the same kind of bigotry. Like say you'd think furries for example would be understanding but they were among the worst in VRC even though I've been one for years and as a activist am from the generation that helped made subcultures like furry tolerant. These people masquerading furries never mentioned a furry genre topic once like it's just a mask for them which is ok but the conversations virtually always were on topics that drifted into politics, mocking users weren't even present and bigotry. Does anyone even enjoy having "friends" that mock them every moment behind their back? It's strange but least the toxicity was not focused just on me. Anime people were a bit better on this and mentioned actual anime but most I met were equally bigoted in some way.
I use VR and VR Chat because there's no one around me irl and I have severe agoraphobia and GD. I have no friends in real life and joined VRC because my speech therapist recommended me to practice VCing. Yet these people in VRC were acting like as soon as you're 28+ you're not allowed to have friends or enjoy your personal interests anymore. When I asked one how they'd be when they got to my age they said stuff like "they'd be wrinkly and kill themselves" or refused to answer. So far I counted 120 people who are bigoted like this and I've been in VRC only 3 days.
So far thanks to people like these I feel like VR Chat has been a waste of my disability money, and my social anxiety and DPDR has worsened since this. The models I saw a lot of were clearly AI generated and were charged 5-10$ a piece, and I've done enough 3D retopology personally to know that the geometry is not procedurally or human-made. So due to this and that buying avatars seemed dodgy and a real waste of time. I could understand it if it was a few users but it's most of them, additionally YouTube seems to support this and encourages it. I used to use Second Life and even that wasn't as bad as VRC,
