“The Beyoncé of Virtual Reality”: VICE Interviews VRChat Video Maker Syrmor

VICE interviewed Syrmor (a.k.a. Canadian VRChat video maker and livestreamer Sherazee Syrmor) in a recent episode of VICE News Tonight:

If you’ve never heard of Syrmor before or viewed his work, this video is an excellent introduction to who he is and how he got into the habit of interviewing various people he encounters on the social VR platform VRChat.

Syrmor actually earns a living from advertising on his popular YouTube videos (he currently has 647,000 subscribers to his channel) and from his Patreon supporters (here’s a link to his Patreon page). He is also an active livestreamer on Twitch. He was even the focal point of a real-life meetup of his fans in Toronto, dubbed Syrcon 2019, which people attended from around the world!

The interviewer and he share a joke in this VICE News video that he has become “the Beyoncé of Virtual Reality”, because he is now so well known for his video interviews that he can’t venture out in public without getting accosted by his fans! Syrmor tells the interviewer that he receives thousands of emails from people who want to be interviewed for the videos in his series.

If you are interested in reading more about Syrmor and his work, there is an excellent March 27th, 2019 article on the Kotaku website, which I would encourage you to go over and read in full. Here’s an excerpt:

Syrmor notes the most memorable experiences he’s ever had in VRChat and the subject of one of his most recent videos. The subject explained that he was a kid suffering from epidermolysis bullosa, or “the butterfly condition,” a lifelong genetic disorder that makes your skin as “fragile as a butterfly’s wings.” (In some cases, it can even lead to amputations.) Everything, from crawling on your hands and knees to taking a bath, can be very, very painful. He told Syrmor a story about daily battles with the disorder through the guise of a sprightly Piglet avatar.

“What really got me is that he talked about his dad very highly, because his dad is his caretaker. I said something like, ‘Your dad sounds like a cool guy,’ and he actually got his dad on the microphone,” says Syrmor. “Having this very burly, 40-year-old male voice coming through Piglet in virtual reality, talking about his son’s disease, and what life was like for him, was just not something I ever expected to encounter in video games.”

Thanks to Wagner James Au of the blog New World Notes for the heads up!

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