Cute, goofy, and wholesome: Inventing social media otherwise in virtual reality

Recently, the hype around the Metaverse has faded, with artificial intelligence taking the spotlight. Although the Big Tech vision of the Metaverse never materialized, under the radar of this mainstream discourse, thousands of users have quietly built thriving communities across various social VR platforms, forging identities, social practices, and collective imaginaries that diverge sharply from this vision. Taking the popular social VR platform, VRChat, as its case study, this article explores how these grassroots communities still experience and imagine these social VR environments from a bottom-up perspective. Drawing on over 1.5 years of digital ethnography in the platform, conducted since January 2024, this study reveals that for many—particularly queer, neurodivergent, and disabled individuals—VRChat offers a reprieve from the normative aesthetics and toxic cultures of traditional social media, fostering alternative modes of self-expression and social connection. Here, a significant number of users prefer “cute” avatars over hypersexualized appearances, embrace “goofy” and “clumsy” gestures over polished embodiments and nourish a “wholesome” environment of care over polarizing and isolating dynamics. Conceptualizing these emergent communities as a counterpublic, this article contends that these practices offer a glimpse into a social media otherwise more queer and crip in its aesthetics, rhythms, and relations.