The Socio-Cultural Phenomenon of Virtual Communities

The article delves into the study of social and cultural aspects of virtual communities on the Internet, which real-ize an important social function of creating a specific space for communication. Digital environment challenges physical reality, it competes for the attention of individuals, providing them with new opportunities to change their identity. Therefore, the topic of this article is relevant since today there are significant changes in the de-velopment of human civilization due to the introduction of digital technologies. Our main task is to understand the risks and consequences of these changes in the socio-cultural aspect. The aim of this study is to theoretical-ly comprehend the levels of functioning and interaction of the two realities, to substantiate the impact of virtual reality on human life and society. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that during the research pro-cess key aspects of the functioning of virtual communities were identified and characterized, the influence of artificial intelligence was justified, metaverse was described as a new stage in the development of the Internet. The results of the study can be used to analyze the impact of virtual communities on building real communica-tion in modern society.