VR Social and The Evolution of Decorum

Even during these early days of mass marketable VR, I can see how social applications (like VR Chat and Second Life) are going to suffer a period of time with obnoxious users who love nothing more than to harass others' avatars.  VR will be a forum for completely letting the id run wild.  It will take time until we see an evolution similar to what we've seen on browser based social platforms like Facebook.  I do have hope that there will be a time when your virtual avatar will have a reputation worth curating.

As with all novelty and early technology, users will quickly get bored of the limited interaction and explore all of the different ways, obnoxious or not, to create social substance.  Since we're essentially learning how to communicate in a new world,  any interaction will degenerate to neanderthal levels of grunting and poking.  And since this will feel so much more devolved from reality, we won't see much value to the interactions we do have.

Eventually, the technology will get better, and more users will develop a mature enough language that conversation and relationships will be valuable.  I hope it is then that being a douche in Virtual World will be seen as being a douche in the real world.