Sharing
Hubs
Sorting in rough order of what I've personally found most practical:
r/VRChat gets a new post fishing for communities (and now Groups) every few months, it seems?
The official VRChat Discord has a vetted "community-servers" channel listing to check out
Annual giant event “VRCon” hosts a world spotlighting communities large enough to apply for a plot
Official Forums: mostly boards about content creation, but actually also has a general one for the rest.
Searching websites like Disboard and other Discord-advertising services, use their filters and sorting!
Although sometimes featuring defunct ones, VRChat iceberg videos and the wiki’s Groups category
Past Journeys
Ancients of VRChat (NA) – 18+ Player Community I started into by signing up for the weekly Newbie Night and Game Night events and crossed my fingers, unsure how it’d go! But at present? It's arguably become like a home base for me! As one person's put it: "It can be difficult to find your tribe, so to speak, presently -- but if you're older and that's why you feel out of place, this is a pretty great group to join!"
Virtual Relics – also took a brief peek over at this sister server for EU players, very welcoming.
StemVR – moved to Lessons for their primary focus on educational topics. 👍
Working through the hubs of Discord servers, the bulk of which I admittedly don't click with… I believe due to most being relatively more on the joiner to keep inserting themselves. Unless it's a server around an activity that happens regularly beyond solely an unfocused chitchat group.
Those are great and all, but also a dime a dozen, many either in their own bubble or a ghost town. I have found a few gems at least! (Mostly in other sections of this log!)
One change I didn't expect was how I began passing on some servers altogether due to waning energy to stay open-minded. Felt eerily like reviewing a stack of job ads or resumes. So I might space server joins out where possible... at least with specialized ones I want to give the best chance of clicking with me. Worried about being too clinical and detached!
VRCon’s 2021 “community festival” visited nearly a year later: world filled with 100+ group booths! The liminal vibe walking through a ghost town despite it being a year young, making me very curious if we will get another this year, or if there were ones in years past? And if so, what names stick around most... at first the space seemed not too crazy, but actually ended up taking several nights to catalog down all the groups! It really gives me a lot of insight into the strands of EN-side content I see in 2022.
Something of concern: how easy it will be to get in and out of feeling out whether a group clicks with me? There are a few categories (mostly in Roleplays) that seem tied to long term commitments... might be smarter to scope those out by viewing Twitch streams/VODs? The milsim / avatar PvP and the "mystery school" both feel like cool concepts for creating fresh ideas (relative to most things I've seen out of other user generated content games and social VR platforms) but heavily raise that commitment question for me as I feel like there is a high chance I bounce off them personally
huh, so, in the VRCon booths, there's a "The Wanderer" house that just goes to a map, no discord or twitter. Feels very "why get a booth?" But seeking up the name, I found an ARG-tier rabbit hole from searching up that name -> its content creator -> the inn’s hashtag -> an avatar maker I had just encountered for the first time at the community roundup just that weekend!
I even then found an old name of a streamer I knew from my past life as a viewer in the vtuber community years ago. I'm guessing it was back when they streamed VRChat, who was talking to the old owner of the vrchat maps/safari server back prior to the current owner TheKally.
Organizing a tour + adventure meetup for my Discord friends who saw me spending too much time on VRChat
patterns of things I've seen people host either in communities or with friends
Nights to play game worlds or sing at karaoke together
Media watch parties and music listening parties
Gatherings for meditation, musicmaking, drawing together, interest-sharing, book clubs
a variety of mixers for birthdays, for newcomers, for non-newcomers
Just generally broadcast an activity you're doing because you're interested in it with or without others!
It can have a structure to it, e.g. something where everyone gets a turn to go,
or just unstructured chaos, whatever works for you!
Future Journeys
<disclaimer> These aren’t vetted for quality yet and so have had Discord invite links pulled. I fully encourage doing individual research, e.g. consider using a throwaway to check a server out first. Just either names that came up semi-regularly, or, had personal interest to me. </disclaimer>
From my survey of the VRCon 2021 community festival world’s booths:
Creator Collectives: Merry Men (meme avatar makers), Art-Avatars (primary furry focus), @OfficialArtifex ("Artifex Talent Tree" on YT), Laughing Lizard, GenshinVR (avatar makers), VRCValve (import/recreation effort), @VRosity (same on YT), VRCTraders
Filmmaking: @TheVRFA, VRChat Rewind "2020+1" (didn't release…?)
Isolated Premises: Happy Hill therapy worlds (Orbis Unum LLC), VRC Car Community, @ExploreVRChat (2023 edit: initial impressions here, now my secondary community after Ancients!), podcast @BucketListVR, EN/JP Language Exchange, Cult of Jar (murder support and game nights), VR Worlds Safari (now led by streamer TheKally), StemVR+MoVART, the social anxiety club "NoFriendsFriendsClub" (Friday night streams by OkayKuro, idea from the "Hagani" anime), @FemboyCamp, VRChat Italia (Official), Laserdome (for the popular lasertag world), @max_recovery annual charity events since 2018 (MystcianCyan + Profit Lemon), VRChat Escape Project aka VRCE Project (does the VRCE:## map series), VRC Kmart
For RP groups, this iceberg video indicates 3 styles: informal, formal, combat.
Dance: VR Dance Academy founded by user dustydustbunny (self-presented here and interviewed here!) – a peek led me to also find IDA Official [1] [2] (founded by jjfx-multimedia)
Furry: I would probably just watch streams rather than go personally for their stuff until I can experience and appreciate the vibe a bit better?
Improv: Legacy Improv Team, Entertainer's Guild @TEGVrc (multiple open mic worlds), GobsImprov.com, also Munchies' stream
Mute: Tadayoshi's Phantom Touch(?) Community Garden, MrDummy_NL Sign & Fun (cooperates w/HH), and Helping Hands (VR Sign Language variations, lesson site, lesson VODs - daily classes for free, 3k+ mem, also weekly movie/game/club social events)
Official VRC Discord’s "community-servers" channel: Cult of Jar, Hololive VRC, Undernet, Snowdinverse, StemVR, 2017ers, mil-sims (army RPs), Half-Life 2 RP, VR Mystery School, furry servers, VRCon, VRC Traders (avy buyers, but also "for those wanting to learn"?), Laughing Lizard (creators/raves/events, see "6G Experience" world), SCP sim, Merry Men (shitpost avatars/memes but they are creators), HorrorConVR, Rollthered's creators, Star Wars Clonetroopers, Poiyomi Shaders (I've seen a couple friends mention this discord too--holy wow that member count), Gob's Improv Emporium ("previously VRChat Improv"), the Purple Lotus (the freeform RP worlds), Midnight Munchies Manifesto ("open mic style talent show"), Loli-Police RP sim, Town of Salem (for the gameworld), VRC EN-JP Language Exchange.
Furry outside VRCon: main 3 seem to be FurLounge (“chill”), Furry Talk and Chill (“small”), and FurHub (“rowdy”)? I wonder if a visitor could tell the difference. Muted players allegedly accepted more vs. other hangouts? Later also learned about the Furality convention from friends, which while I couldn't attend streamed its panels to their Twitch and have put recordings on that linked YouTube!
Language Learning: moved to its own sections on the Lessons page!
VRChat in other countries: Japan, Germany, Italy, France; I've seen Discord servers around – but a short glance at Twitch and YouTube shows more and more players from different offline cultures!
Dancing Communities: see bottom of Clubs for a video presented by several such groups!
Somewhat also migrating this to the Lessons page having gotten a bit further into them \o/
Avatar raid groups (e.g. Kitten Marching Band + Hoppou community booths spotted in VRCon 2021-2022), although to a point I wonder if that just ends up counting as roleplay...?
Section Credits
Credit for this section to: communities mentioned above and the content creators covering them.