Virtual Spaces, Real Encounters

True-colour view of Earth from space, showing North America, swirling white clouds and the blue oceans. — “Blue Marble 2002”: a composite of natural-colour satellite images gathered over four months. Image: NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Can you really meet someone in a place that exists only on a screen? Many people answer with a quick no: a "real" encounter needs real bodies in a real room. Others, who have spent years in online worlds, answer just as quickly with a yes. This post tries to take both views seriously. It asks what virtual spaces such as Second Life can offer for genuine encounters, what we can say about it with evidence, and where the limits lie.

What a virtual world can offer

Second Life was launched in 2003. According to Linden Lab, the company behind it, more than 73 million accounts had been created by 2023, the year of its twentieth anniversary, and around 750,000 people were using it each month. These are the company's own figures, and they need care: an account is not the same as a person, and the monthly figure is about one hundredth of the total number of accounts ever created. Still, a platform that was still active after twenty years has clearly given many people a reason to stay.

The reasons are not hard to guess. A virtual world removes distance: a conversation between a living room in one country and a living room in another needs no flight and no hotel. It lowers the threshold for shy people, who may find it easier to speak when they do not have to be seen. And it gives a shared place to meet, such as a garden, a hall or a discussion circle, which a plain text chat or a video call does not.

Who may benefit most

Some of the most striking examples concern people for whom leaving the house is difficult. A 2018 article in the Daily Pilot reports on research by Tom Boellstorff (University of California, Irvine) and Donna Davis (University of Oregon). The two researchers got to know about 200 players with disabilities. The article describes how some of them use Second Life to socialise, form relationships and find a calm place at difficult moments. Davis speaks of a "bright side" of technology.

Boellstorff adds a warning that deserves attention: digital technology is often built with able-bodied users in mind, and virtual worlds can repeat this. A world that is open in principle still needs a capable computer, a stable connection and the ability to operate its controls. For some people, the same technology that opens doors also closes others. This is a first limit, and it is worth naming.

Friendship takes time, in any medium

It is easy to assume that a good conversation online is already a friendship. Research suggests that friendship needs more than that. Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas studied how long it takes adults to form new friendships. His 2018 study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships estimated roughly 50 hours together to move from acquaintance to casual friend, about 90 hours to become a friend, and more than 200 hours for a close friend. Time spent socialising counted more than time spent working together.

These numbers come from people who had recently moved to a new place and were looking for friends. They are not a study of virtual worlds, so they are a rough orientation and not a prediction for online friendships. But they point to something we can take with us: the medium alone does not create closeness. Regular, relaxed time together does, whether that happens in a café or in a virtual hall.

Where the limits lie

A virtual encounter lacks what only bodies can give: a handshake, a shared meal, the sense of being in the same weather. Our own view is that even good avatars transmit less than a face does, and that this matters most in difficult conversations, where small signals decide whether people feel understood.

A second limit is dependence. A virtual world belongs to a company, and its rules, prices and even its existence can change. A meeting place that you do not own can disappear. Communities that live there should therefore keep a second way to stay in touch, such as a group, a mailing list or a blog like this one.

A third limit is that the form of a medium shapes how it feels. Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford argued in a 2021 paper in Technology, Mind and Behavior that video calls are tiring for four reasons: too much close-up eye contact, constantly seeing oneself, reduced movement and a higher mental load. His paper is about video calls, not about avatar worlds, so it does not tell us how a virtual hall compares. But it shows that "online" is not one thing. Whether a digital space helps or tires us depends on how it is built and how we use it.

A few guidelines for real encounters in virtual spaces

Treat the person, not the avatar. Behind every figure is someone with a life, a mood and a limit. Politeness and patience are as important here as anywhere.
Give it time. Short, regular meetings in the same place build trust better than one long evening.
Keep a second channel. A group message, an email address or a shared page makes a community more robust than a single platform can.
Mind who is left out. Ask whether everyone can take part, and offer other ways to join if they cannot.
Take it into the world when you can. A phone call, a letter or a real meeting can add what the screen cannot.

Both, not either

The honest answer to the opening question is therefore neither a plain yes nor a plain no. Virtual spaces can make real encounters possible, especially across distances and for people who cannot easily travel. They cannot replace everything a shared physical room offers, and they bring dependencies of their own. The most helpful view may be to see them as one place among several where people meet, and to use each for what it does best.

What are your experiences? Have you met someone in a virtual space who became important to you, or did the screen get in the way? Everyone in the Denkraum community is welcome to send us their own text on this question for the blog. You can also look at the World Map to see how far our conversations already reach.

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