Why We Met in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty deserves the Best Doc­u­men­tary Oscar

In a new series, we’re cel­e­brat­ing the films we loved that aren’t like­ly to dom­i­nate the awards race. Over the new few weeks, our writ­ers make pas­sion­ate argu­ments for the per­for­mances and craft that stood out to them, from block­busters to art­house and every­thing in between.

The inter­net is unrec­og­niz­able from how it exist­ed at the time it was invent­ed. We’ve gone from dial-up modems and IRC to its now-omnipresent lin­ger­ing spec­tral pres­ence influ­enc­ing all cor­ners of mod­ern life. If you want to accom­plish vir­tu­al­ly any admin­is­tra­tive life task, it’s now a require­ment that you hook your­self up to the World Wide Web. Peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate and meet new friends more through social media and online mes­sag­ing apps than in per­son – a trend only accel­er­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic. Dat­ing prac­ti­cal­ly requires the use of Tin­der, Bum­ble, Grindr or any num­ber of dat­ing apps to meet peo­ple beyond your close inner cir­cle of friends and colleagues.

So why do many peo­ple, includ­ing those who came of age in the inter­net era, view the idea of immers­ing your­self into a dig­i­tal world through VR so bizarre?

Call it judg­ing a book by its cov­er, but many take a look at a vir­tu­al con­gre­ga­tion of ani­mé girls, anthro­po­mor­phized ani­mals and Hot Dogs talk­ing in a dig­i­tal class­room before dri­ving fake cars around a self-built coast­line world, and see noth­ing oth­er than a cringe­wor­thy play­house that caus­es shame by asso­ci­a­tion. It’s cer­tain­ly one way to look at this new fron­tier, but it’s a shal­low one, ignor­ing the deep­er con­nec­tions under­pin­ning this far more whole­some cel­e­bra­tion of what it means to exist and be human – real­i­ty made unreal.

We Met in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty is a doc­u­men­tary that’s as much a chal­lenge to the unini­ti­at­ed as it is a deep dive into the many com­mu­ni­ties and rela­tion­ships formed by those whose chance to meet new peo­ple went from chat rooms and cafes to the dig­i­tal realm. That afore­men­tioned descrip­tion of an amal­ga­ma­tion of copy­right-infring­ing vir­tu­al char­ac­ters, sex­u­al­ized avatars and ani­mals play­ing in toy cars is actu­al­ly what plays out dur­ing the open­ing scenes of this unique film. It’s a way to meet the film’s sub­jects and accli­ma­tize us to this world via immer­sion. The movie goes one step fur­ther when explor­ing this soft­ware and takes the unique step of film­ing and inter­view­ing its sub­jects entire­ly with­in the VR Chat pro­gram the fea­ture cen­ters itself. It accli­ma­tis­es both the famil­iar and the unini­ti­at­ed with the visu­al appear­ance of this world before we are intro­duced to the peo­ple who view this soft­ware as a sec­ond life.

It’s a per­fect exam­ple of using the tools at a filmmaker’s dis­pos­al to enhance the sub­ject mat­ter. Cre­at­ing with­in VR forces a dia­logue with the lim­i­ta­tions of the soft­ware as well as its poten­tial, and a win­dow into this world with­out the breaks in immer­sion that could come from tak­ing the head­set away. Immersed in this land­scape you begin to under­stand just why these peo­ple thrive here. Sign lan­guage class­es, bel­ly danc­ing tuto­ri­als and strip clubs don’t require vir­tu­al real­i­ty, but with­out the judge­men­tal stares that linger on our phys­i­cal exis­tence and the bag­gage of our lives those bod­ies car­ry, VR can be a fresh start and a chance to be who we always want­ed to be.

The immer­sive film­mak­ing makes horns and tails a fact of life, strip­ping the visu­al anom­alies until only the human sto­ries behind the avatars remain. Jen­ny is a sign lan­guage instruc­tor in the Help­ing Hands com­mu­ni­ty, and also suf­fers from audi­to­ry pro­cess­ing dis­or­der. Ray is anoth­er instruc­tor who’s com­plete­ly deaf, yet has found friends in a com­mu­ni­ty of thou­sands with­in Help­ing Hands that are hard­er to find in real-world spaces, as well as a sup­port network.

Then you have IsY­our­Boi and Drag­on­Heart, from the UK and Mia­mi respec­tive­ly, work­ing as sexy demons in a strip club. For IsY­our­Boi, dig­i­tal sex work is a chance to find a men­tal high that encour­aged them to go sober after a heavy sub­stance depen­den­cy fol­low­ing the death of a fam­i­ly mem­ber, and find love with some­one despite the thou­sands of miles between them. Sim­i­lar­ly for Dust­Bun­ny and Toast­er, they met through dance class­es and fell in love in a way that may have been impos­si­ble with­out VR, and main­tained a phys­i­cal close­ness in spite of real-world dis­tance and bar­ri­ers made hard­er by COVID.

In a year filled with doc­u­men­taries focussing on extra­or­di­nary peo­ple and the ways they changed the world, it’s these mun­dane yet ulti­mate­ly human sto­ries only made pos­si­ble by reject­ing the human form that lin­gered far beyond the clos­ing cred­its that my mind kept return­ing to. With­out the expec­ta­tions made often on appear­ances alone, VR becomes no dif­fer­ent to any oth­er social media or cha­t­room, thriv­ing as a space to con­nect and form com­mu­ni­ty. For some, when real-world com­mu­ni­ty spaces and the places to meet like-mind­ed peo­ple are closed by the pan­dem­ic, pol­i­tics or eco­nom­ics, it may be the only town square they have left.

These peo­ple become free to explore self-image, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty out­side of the lim­i­ta­tions of soci­etal expec­ta­tions, and con­nect with peo­ple regard­less of the pres­sures to con­form that may exist else­where. Of course a dog in a bowtie and a hot dog will have com­plex ideas about gen­der, just like the ripped demon in a suit and the ani­mé girl with huge breasts will find con­nec­tion. Even stripped of human­i­ty, a per­son remains.

We Met in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty is a doc­u­men­tary wor­thy of recog­ni­tion not because it rec­og­nizes the human behind the head­set, but because there’s no more noble cause than being there for the peo­ple you care about, no mat­ter the real­i­ty those peo­ple exist with­in. It’s per­haps telling that in this world of wish ful­fill­ment and pos­si­bil­i­ties, the thing most of these peo­ple want more than any­thing is a gen­uine con­nec­tion. It’s bright, it’s beau­ti­ful, and it’s hon­est. Away from the cor­po­ra­tized dystopia of Zuckerberg’s Meta, the promise of a vir­tu­al uni­verse chang­ing the world is already here.