Author: Ryan Schultz

Turning 62

WARNING: This is yet another one of my Ryan-Schultz-patented meandering editorial blog posts, written during the week I turn 62 years old. I promise you, I will soon return to regularly-scheduled programming about (as the tagline of my blog now states) “News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse, plus Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI’s Impact on the Metaverse.” (Hey, at least, this time, I didn’t write a whole goddamn paragraph for the blogpost title. 😜)

My birthday always falls in the very coldest of winter weather here in Winnipeg, and today has been the coldest day this season by far:

Screenshot

According to the Environment Canada website, with the windchill factored in, it feels like -48°C (that works out to -54°F for you metric-system-averse Americans). Even worse, it’s going to stay this cold for at least the next seven days, according to the forecast:

This is the time of year when we intrepid Winnipeggers, bundled up in layers covering every square centimetre of skin except for the eyes, stumble between our homes and our cars, and then rush from our cars to our workplaces, mumbling the following hallowed mantra: “noearthquakesnovolcanoesnoearthquakesnovolcanoesnoearthquakesnovolcanoes….“

But fear not! While I beaver away in my (thankfully heated) cubicle at the University of Manitoba Libraries, I am surrounded by the sights and sounds of gentle waves rippling along a sandy beach in Bora Bora, one of the Apple Vision Pro’s expertly-designed immersive Environments:

The clouds gently hover, and the palm trees sway, as I work away on my MacBook Pro, using the Virtual Display feature in my Apple Vision Pro headset. Simply by reaching up and turning the upper right knob on my AVP, I banish my drab workspace surroundings in wintry Winnipeg, and replace it with a tropical paradise!! (Drinks with umbrellas not included; they would frown upon that at work.)

I have already written at length about my continuing neck and shoulder pain, due to a couple of deteriorating joints in the cervical part of my spine, the first serious sign that my aging body is starting to wear out. However, having now had some everal months’ experience with this discomfort, I now know that the two biggest triggers of that pain are:

  • Sitting too long in front of a desktop computer or notebook computer, hunched over my keyboard; and
  • When I get stressed, my neck and shoulder muscles tend to tighten up, and soon my shoulders are aching.

So, I now spend between 4 and 6 hours per workday using the Mac Virtual Display on my trusty Apple Vision Pro headset with my MacBook Pro, because I have discovered that, instead of looking down at a small screen at arms-length, my neck gets less sore, and I can work for longer stretches, looking up and ahead at a large, clear, ultra-high-definition screen hovering in the space over my desk, which is designed to appear as if you were looking at it from about 1.8 metres/6 feet away from my eyes:

Focal distance in the context of VR headsets refers to the distance at which the lenses allow your eyes to focus comfortably. In the case of the Apple Vision Pro, the actual focal distance is set around six feet.

This means that, regardless of the virtual distance of an object in the digital space, your eyes will focus as if that object were six feet away.

Also, when I upgraded my AVP from the first edition (with the M2 graphics processing chip) to the refreshed model (which contains a top-of-the-line M5 chip), I noticed that the eyestrain I used to experience after about an hour and a half while wearing the unit has completely disappeared. Hooray! And the new dual-strap knit band fits much more comfortably on my big fat head. Aside from the occasional neck-wrenching mishap, the Apple Vision Pro is worth every single penny I have spent on it. And I will be first in line to purchase the next edition of this wonderful headset. As I said before, I am all in.

Thankfully, I have finally received the final report from the Ergonomics Office at my university, with a detailed shopping list of recommended equipment to purchase. Like many of my younger work colleagues, I will be getting an adjustable-height sit/stand desk, risers to place my MacBook Pro and my brand-new Dell Windows notebook at the proper eye height, new desktop monitor holders and keyboard trays, etc. I am also learning (with the help of my ergonomist and my physiotherapist), how to take regular breaks, to stretch, walk around the office, and do some neck, shoulder, chest, and upper-back strengthening exercises.

The good news is that, because of all these changes, I am now in less frequent pain than I was a few months ago. But it has come at a cost. You see, I need to save what I like to call my “good neck” hours for my paying job as an academic librarian, which means that I have has to cut back significantly on my extracurricular, after-hours activities that used to require me to spend similarly long stretches of time sitting in front of a desktop computer at home.

One of those activities that I have had to cut back on is, unsurprisingly, my beloved virtual world of Second Life. Trying to navigate my small army of avatars and alts through all the Advent calendars and Christmas gifts in December just about did me in last month, and I have decided that my body is telling me that I desperately need to rebalance my real life/Second Life ratio a little bit, and spend more time in (gasp!) the real world. 😜

Speaking of the real world, I have maintained my boycott of mainstream social media platforms, in order to continue to focus on my good mental and emotional health. And for the same reason, I am not really paying attention to the traditional news media right now, either; if I have zero personal control over it, I simply don’t want to know. Every so often, my eyes hover over a newspaper headline at the supermarket checkout line with the latest story about Trump and Greenland, I grimace and roll my eyes, and I promptly move on with my day, focusing on those things I do have some control over (like my job, my friends, my community, and my obsessive little hobbies like Second Life). I have found that, simply by avoiding toxic social media and if-it-bleeds-it-leads news media and the doomscrolling both trigger, I have never been in a better headspace overall, and I intend to continue this approach moving forward into what appears to be yet another year of batshit craziness, train wrecks, and dumpster fires.

Trump who? Greenland what?? Don’t care, not my circus, not my monkeys.

I find I don’t miss Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X/whatever the fuck Apartheid Clyde is calling it this week, at all, and I spend precious little time on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Substack (although I do check the latter from time to time, mostly for AI/GenAI news). The only social media spots I pop into now are selected subreddits on Reddit (like r/AppleVisionPro and r/VisionPro), Primfeed (think Twitter/X, but only by and about Second Life), and now Tumblr (for the wonderfully creative Heated Rivalry fan art, memes, and fan-edited music videos using clips from the TV show). Even a couple of Discord servers devoted to Heated Rivalry have popped up, where fans share fanfic recommendations! It lifts my spirit and makes me happy.

For the past four weeks, ever since my SL friend first told me about Heated Rivalry and suggested I watch the show, I have been riding a wave of feel-good hormones like serotonin and oxytocin from the Crave TV series about a hidden love affair between two professional-league hockey players (I wrote about it here). And I am not the only one feeling that heady rush after watching the show! Many commenters in posts on the r/HeatedRivalry subreddit talk about the impact the show has had on them, and many have watched the entire TV series multiple times. The best and most concise summary of this phenomenon (which one joker suggested we call “the Heated Rivalry Mass Psychosis Event” 😂) is that watching the show makes you feel as though you are falling in love. There are many Reddit and Tumble posts from people who, like me, feel that the show has given them an important insight on their lives and how they are living them.

The following Reddit post is one example I saved because I could relate to it so much:

One Heated Rivalry fan’s emotional response to the show. I could 100% relate to this person saying that they had cut themselves off from dating, romance, and intimacy, because watching the TV show made me realize the exact same thing about myself. I could share with you dozens of other examples from Tumblr and Reddit about how the show has impacted viewers. This show has genuinely struck a chord with many people in the LGBTQIA+ community (and probably in the straight world, too).

And—just as I had with the movie Brokeback Mountain, almost exactly 20 years ago—After watching the Heated Rivalry television series, I bought and read books 2 and 6 of Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid’s book series Game Changers (the original source material for season 1 and the already-greenlit season 2 of Heated Rivalry), and then dove head-first into the Heated Rivalry/Game Changers-inspired fan fiction posted to Archive of Our Own (AO3 for short). Here’s a link to AO3 of HR/GC fan fiction, sorted in descending order by kudos (fan likes). WARNING: please note that many of these fanfics have an adult content warning for explicit gay sex scenes! One of the ironic things I find about explicit gay fan fiction (also called slash fiction) is that it is primarily written by, and read by, an audience that is predominantly straight women (although, of course, it also has many fans among the LGBTQIA+ community).

Connor Storrie (left) plays Ilya Rozanov and Hudson Willaims plays Shane Hollander in the surprise hit Crave TV series Heated RIvalry (showing on HBO Max in the U.S.)

Yesterday, my hometown newspaper, the Free Press, devoted a full two-page spread about how Heated Rivalry has become a major pop-culture moment, with ripples spreading out far beyond the queer community and fan fiction writers. I had to laugh when I read a column (original; archived version if you hit a paywall) where three FP reporters were discussing their squeamishness about watching the gay sex scenes in Heated Rivalry. Straight people clutching their pearls over depictions of gay sex in mainstream media are just so funny to me.

I mean, c’mon, people. For God’s sake, if you’ve ever watched Bridgerton, there’s just as much (non-genital but ass-showing) nudity and (non-X-rated) sex happening there, and nobody needs to fetch their smelling salts for that! We do the exact same things in bed that you do, straight people (and no, on second thought, I am NOT gonna spell it out for you here). 😉 Please get OVER yourself.

Okay, end of rant…switching to other topics.

I have two things coming up that I wanted to share with you, my faithful blog readers. First, I have been honoured to be asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the 2026 Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, taking place in the virtual world of Second Life March 19-21, 2026. Of course, I said yes! I haven’t picked a topic or even a presentation title yet, but expect an announcement soon-ish.

Second, although it is not official official (and I really should wait until I get the official letter from university administration, which I was told should happen about the end of March), the University of Manitoba Libraries has approved my application to take a one-year Research and Study Leave (at full salary) to start later this year, where I am relieved of my regular academic librarian duties, and can work on a special project. Academic librarians at the University of Manitoba are members of the faculty union, and just like the the professors, we have the right (and the opportunity) to pursue research. Again, more details later. I’ve only mentioned this to a couple of people so far, but I think I can share that much detail at this time.

So 2026 is going to be a very interesting year for me, on several fronts! Heated Rivalry has inspired me to make some significant choices and changes already (some of which you will hear about, and others you won’t). Wish me luck!

Metaverse News: vTime Shuts Down

Screenshot from a message posted on the vTime website, explaining the decision to shut the service down.

Once again, I am a little late on reporting this news, but last October, the vTime social VR app (which had renamed itself to vTime XR) suddenly shut down, with apparently no plans to resume service.

According to a post on their website:

For just shy of a decade, vTime XR has been a space where people from around the world could meet, chat, and share despite the distance between them. Since our launch in December 2015, over 1.4 million people from across the globe have connected through our app, the first cross-reality social network. You’ve met across continents, shared stories with strangers who became friends, found love, and even proposed in virtual reality. During the pandemic, you turned virtual worlds into lifelines of connection.

When the time came to say goodbye, we’d hoped we could give you plenty of notice, with time to relive your favourite memories, meet up with friends, and hold one last farewell party in the app.

Unfortunately, a vulnerability in Unity (the engine we used to build vTime XR) has been recently discovered, and it affects the current version of the app. As much as it upsets us to close vTime XR without notice, we’re unable to patch the vulnerability, and we can’t risk the safety of our community by keeping the app online. Importantly, there’s no evidence that this issue has been exploited or that it has had any impact on our users.

So, with heavy hearts, we’ll be taking vTime XR offline immediately. It’s especially difficult knowing that December 22nd would have marked our 10th anniversary, a milestone we would have loved to celebrate with you all.

We know many of you will want to hold on to memories you have stored in the app. Your account will still be accessible via a browser until April 10th, 2026, so you can download any pictures, messages or other data you’d like to keep. We’ll delete all user account data after this date. We also recommend that you delete the vTime XR app from your devices, as it will no longer function and could be affected by the vulnerability.

Surviving almost a decade in the volatile world of social VR is a rarity! But the sudden closing of metaverse platforms is, sadly, not that unusual. While I am not familiar with the security issue identified in VTime’s underlying Unity engine (used in many virtual world and social VR platforms), I am a little surprised that the Liverpool, U.K.-based team behind the project felt that they had no other choice but to shut it down without notice, without even allowing their users to meet up and throw a final farewell party like other metaverse platforms had done (e.g. Cloud Party, another rather obscure platform). Idle speculation here: perhaps a server bill was due that they realized they couldn’t afford to pay, which forced matters to a head? But we’ll never know for certain.

Then again, I don’t believe that vTime was a very popular platform to begin with. One of its limitations was that your avatar was rooted in place, sitting with a group of avatars who were similarly glued to their seats (at least, that’s how I remembered it when I did visit last, probably around 7 or 8 years ago). While you could change the scenery, and some environments were lovely, essentially it was a sit-and-chat app (something VRChat and many other metaverse platforms did much, much better).

The last time I wrote specifically about vTime on my blog was on Dec. 3rd, 2019, a little over six years ago (although I did mention vTime in a 2021 blogpost about recent academic research into nonverbal communication in social VR). And, in all my metaverse-hopping travels, I have rarely encountered anyone who mentioned that they used vTime, other perhaps to check it out of curiosity (as I had done). Compared to popular and beloved platforms like AltspaceVR (R.I.P.) and VRChat, vTime was a relic. I’m honestly surprised they lasted this long.

My guess is that the developer team decided that it simply wasn’t worth the money, time, and work involved to re-engineer a relatively obscure, little-used metaverse platform, and decided to pull the plug. Hey, no shame; it’s a decision I can respect. And, in the news item I quoted above, they do appear to hold out some hope for a new, fresh beginning:

Thank you for being part of this incredible journey. For every conversation, every laugh, and every friendship forged in our destinations, we are forever grateful. Though we’re saying goodbye to this chapter in vTime’s history, we can’t wait to show you what’s coming next.

You can read all my blogposts about vTime here.

P.S. I’d dearly love to know who proposed marriage in vTime, as mentioned in the news item I quoted above—I bet they have an interesting tale to tell.

With thanks to my metaverse friend Carlos Austin for the heads-up.

Heated Rivalry is Brokeback Mountain All Over Again (and How Coming Out Applies to Virtual Worlds, Social VR, and Other Forms of the Metaverse)

Have you read? Crash Landing (and Showing Off My Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov Second Life Avatars)

WARNING: This, my final post for 2025, is a long, meandering, and sometimes painfully personal blogpost. Consider yourself forewarned! 😉

Have you read this 2017 blogpost? Sex and Gender Issues in Virtual Worlds: “The male/female dichotomy was viewed as binary and the technology (literally) codified that concept.”

Top picture: Heath Ledger as Ennis Del Mar and Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist in the movie Brokeback Mountain. Bottom picture: Hudson Williams as Shane Hollander and Connor Storrie as Ilya Rozanov in the TV series Heated Rivalry (based on the novel of the same name, from the Game Changer series of novels written by Rachel Reid)

According to Google, the movie Brokeback Mountain was released in Canadian theatres on December 23rd, 2005, almost exactly 20 years ago from today, as I write this blogpost:

I did not go into the movie theatre to see Brokeback Mountain until 2006, accompanied by a couple of gay friends. At the time, I was aged 42, and still somewhat new to being an out, gay man—at least, compared to those who came out in their teens and twenties. I went in cracking jokes, but by the end of that movie, I was sobbing in my theatre seat. Brokeback Mountain touched me, moved me, and spoke to me in a way few other movies ever have. (I later bought it in DVD, but I still cannot bear to rewatch it, even twenty years later. At times, I felt as though I was suffocating while watching Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar navigate a clandestine gay relationship in rural Wyoming over the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s.)

You see, I grew up following the dictates and expectations of my family and my church, and I married a woman I knew from my Lutheran church youth group when I was 24 and still a virgin. We lived through a disastrous two-year marriage in Toronto, until we separated. I came home to Winnipeg, landed a job with the University of Manitoba, and continued to suppress my sexuality by throwing myself into my work, until I experienced my first serious job burnout, and landed up in psych ward for treatment of clinical depression.

Afterward, with the help of regular talk therapy with a psychiatrist, I finally faced the truth that I was gay, coming out to myself first, and then coming out to my friends and family in my early thirties. I had had what so many people in my age group experienced—a truly wrenching coming out experience, where I felt that something was wrong with me, that I had something shameful to hide. Watching Brokeback Mountain brought all that back to me, to work through again, perhaps on a deeper level the second time. Great art has that ability to awaken feelings inside of you that you never knew you had. (Brokeback Mountain should have won best picture at the 2006 Oscars, instead of Crash, and you absolutely cannot convince me otherwise.)

Fan Fiction: stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet (called also fanfic).

Slash Fiction: is a genre of fan fiction that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships between fictional characters of the same sex (also known as slashfic).

Brokeback Mountain ignited an absolute firestorm of fan fiction and, of course, the characters of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar were tailor-made for slash fiction writers and readers (ironically, many of whom were straight white women). The slashfic varied in quality from transcendent to abysmal, but the most popular stories (often posted to Livejournal, and running to dozens of chapters, even full-length novels at times) had thousands of passionate readers leaving comments, sparking long discussions.

During 2006 and 2007, before I had ever heard of a virtual world called Second Life, I dove deeply into the Brokeback Mountain fanfic community. While I was tempted to write my own slashfic, I knew that I could not compete against so many amazing, beautiful stories I had read on Livejournal—stories that brought me to both chills and tears at times. Instead, armed with plentiful screen captures of movie stills, and a rudimentary knowledge of PhotoShop, I turned my hand to creating tribute images (sometimes serious, sometimes funny). Below is one example; you can read this 2019 blogpost to see the rest.

Yes, I was obsessed. So, shortly after I first discovered Second Life (in a story I recount here), I found a service in SL that generated a classic system (i.e. non-mesh) avatar skin based on a single selfie, a full front-facing head shot. You can probably guess what happened next, right?…

Yep. I fed the best photos of actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger that I could find on the internet into this SL service to create Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar avatars for role-play purposes! The results were pretty poor compared to modern, fully-mesh Second Life avatars, but more than sufficient for my purposes. Eventually, I decided to delete my Jack and Ennis avatars, once the fanfic fever had passed, and I had taken sufficient amusing pictures, and engaged in some Brokeback Mountain role play with other Second Life users (one memorable highlight was encountering a French-speaking group of Brokeback fans who threw Jack and Ennis the wedding they never could have in the movie!). I am sure that I still have the pictures from that crazy event tucked away somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to dig through all my hard drives to find them and post them here. Just use your imagination; I sure did. 😉

I have often written before on this blog about how Second Life (and other metaverse platforms) tend to be havens for LGBTQIA+ people, particularly for those who have not completely come out of the closet as queer people, for personal safety or for other reasons. This is especially true in an era where trans people’s rights are being attacked in particular. Here are links to a few blog posts I have written in the past:

One of the interesting aspects of Second Life (and indeed, most virtual worlds, even games like Fortnite) is that your world (or game) persona can be completely divorced from who you are in real life. You play under a name that is different from your own, and often you choose a look for your avatar that is utterly different from how you look in real life. In Second Life, most players maintain a strict separation between SL (Second Life) and RL (real life), where the people you play with online never get to know aspects of who you are in reality: where you live, what you look like, what you do for a living, etc.

So “coming out” has multiple meanings in the metaverse. It’s not just about embracing your sexuality and whom you’re attracted to, and whom you fall in love with; it can also be about sharing aspects of your real life with people who only know you virtually, as avatars. Many lasting friendships and relationships have had their unlikely but powerful start in Second Life (or some other virtual world or game), as players slowly get to know each other, first only via words between avatars, then perhaps actually meeting up in person. In fact, there is a whole 12-video YouTube series by Draxtor Despres titled Love Made in Second Life, where Drax profiles couples who first met each other in Second Life, and went on to have real-life relationships!

In fact, I first “met” Drax (Bernhard Drax in real life, who lives in Germany) when he and I were both part of the social VR platform Sansar, and participated in his regular Sunday morning explorations of various worlds built there, along with many other people. But although we have had many conversations, and each know who we are in real life, we’ve never met in person, face-to-face. Sansar was just one of those places where it was not unusual for players to “come out” to each other, and reveal the real person behind the avatar, unlike Second Life, where it is still relatively uncommon.

In fact, I very carefully kept SL and RL separate for most of the first, early years when I played, only gradually beginning to associate certain avatars (like my main one, Vanity Fair), with the real-life Ryan Schultz after starting to write about Second Life on this blog. Is it a risk? Well, yes, of course; coming out always involves some element of risk. But by a certain point, I decided that it didn’t make sense for me, as a metaverse blogger writing under my own name, to disassociate myself from many of the avatars I used to explore (and report on) those same virtual worlds and social VR platforms. In some cases, on some platforms (e.g. Sansar), I even took the same avatar name, Ryan Schultz, if it was available.

And so it was, that my Second Life freebie fashionista friend and partner in crime, whom I only know by their avatar name, Dreamer Pixelmaid, messaged me via Discord and asked me if I had watched Heated Rivalry yet. I had not. (Tonight I am finishing my second rewatch. I am hooked.) Dreamer is one of those people where I actually know little about their real life—and I am okay with that! Dreamer and I keep running into each other at Pride events in Second Life (so I assume they are a aprt of the LGBTQIA+ community as well), so I was not too surprised when they reached out to me about Heated Rivalry.

It turns out that Dreamer and I not only have a shared interest in ferreting out fabulous Second Life freebies and bargains (something we both happen to be very good at!); we also shared an interest in same-sex romance fan fiction! Soon we were exchanging links to YouTube videos, Tumblr posts, and podcast links, all to do with the outsized reaction which a small Canadian TV show about a gay romance in the professional hockey world (actually, not one but two such romances) was causing, both among the gays and the straights. Dreamer shared the following powerful fan-created music video with me, with a new-to-me song that I have been listening to on repeat:

By the way, the song used in this fan-edited video is a remix/cover song made with the assistance of AI, and it is so good that it actually gives me brain/body chills! This is a first for me: an AI-assisted song that I actually like to listen to, over and over again! Because this cover will be hard to find, here’s the link to the original posted to YouTube by the remixer, YZRmusic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I43A6HHF8Vw). Even if you don’t watch the video, go and listen to this cover version, it is AMAZING!!

I cannot help but compare and contrast what is happening now with Heated Rivalry with what happened with Brokeback Mountain 20 years ago. Both were stories about a secret same-sex relationship developing over time in an unlikely and unfriendly place: 1960s Wyoming for BM and contemporary professional hockey for HR.

But what is different is this: the ripples from Brokeback Mountain were isolated to the queer and slash/fanfic communities, and the movie became the punchline to a joke in the rest of the world, and in much of the mainstream media at the time. But I don’t see that happening with Heated Rivalry; if anything, it seems to be getting some attention from the straight community, as well as the LGBTQIA+ folk and the fanfic/slashfic writers. Even straight hockey podcasters are watching the series and commenting on it.* The ripples seem to be stronger, and they are going out further.

Another difference is that Brokeback Mountain ultimately ended in heartbreak, whereas Heated Rivalry ends on a much more hopeful note (SPOILER ALERT: even though the two hockey players are still in the closet, at least they are no longer lying to themselves and each other, they have a plan for the future where they can be together, and they have the full support of one player’s parents).

The show, in fact, has been so successful that a second season has already been greenlit by Crave/CTV, based on a second, already-written follow-up novel about the further relationship between these two hockey players. So yay, we are getting more Canadian-funded ice hockey yaoi! 🎉🏳️‍🌈🏒

As usual, it’s taken me a long time to get to the point, so here it is.

When you come down to it, virtual worlds, social VR, and other forms of the metaverse are all about identity and relationships: who you are on the inside, how you present yourself on the outside, and how you reconcile any tension between the two; whom you choose to be friends with and why, whom you choose to love, and why you love them; and how you navigate the network of relationships around you, both virtual and real. Revealing any of these things to another person (either virtual avatar or flesh-and-blood human being powering that avatar), is a form of coming out, where you might risk rejection—but also, risk gaining a deeper connection, possibly lifelong. Life’s too short. Take that chance.

Twenty years ago, Brokeback Mountain reinforced in me the pain and despair of a closeted life and its soul-killing compromises. Tonight, New Year’s Eve, Heated Rivalry teaches me that it is never too late to find deep, meaningful friendships and yes, perhaps even romantic love! It was a message which I needed to hear. I am no longer willing to cut down my life to fit other people’s comfort levels. In fact, it wasn’t until I finished watching the series that I realized that I had even been doing so, and to what extent. (Again, great art makes you realize things about yourself.)

I am going to ask all of you reading these words, my final words to you in 2025, to sit down and watch all six episodes of Heated Rivalry, on whatever television station in your country carries it (Crave here in Canada; HBO Max in the USA, etc.). It’s even more important that you do it if you’re heterosexual, and don’t consider yourself part of the LGBTQIA+ community to which I proudly belong. In particular, episodes 5 and 6 might just be some of the best television ever made, in my opinion (and yes, I am heavily biased!)

If you’re straight, just think of it as a homework assignment. I want it to spark conversations with your friends and family about how the need for love and belonging is universal, regardless of the gender and sexual orientation of the lovers; what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in a still sometimes-unfriendly society; and what it means to navigate that coming-out process, both internal and external.

Have a happy new year! See you in 2026.

Sorry, but you’ll only get the joke if you’ve watched season one of the hit Crave/HBO Max television series Heated Rivalry (if you know, you know).

With many thanks to Dreamer Pixelmaid for introducing me to my new favourite TV show! One more fan-edited music video featuring scenes from Heated Rivalry:

UPDATE Jan. 9th, 2026: Here’s another beautiful fan-edited music video, featuring clips from Heated Rilvary‘s two same-sex romances set to a song from the musical Hamilton:

*UPDATE January 26th, 2026: Well, recent events have have had me reconsider the motivations of at least one of the straight hockey podcasters who had so thoroughly loved the show—at least, publicly. The podcast in question, Empty Netters (and no, I am no longer going to link to it; you can find it easily enough on YouTube if you search), had seen its viewership soar with its much-talked-about reviews of Heated Rivalry, and the hosts were held up as examples of hockey-bro allyship.

However, reporter Cyd Ziegler of the Outsports website broke the story on Jan. 22 that Dan Powers, one of the hosts of Empty Netters, was saying one thing in his podcast episodes, but another in his private texts:

Former hockey players and brothers Dan and Chris Powers have drawn widespread media and fan attention for their slavish praise of the show “Heated Rivalry” on their podcast “Empty Netters.” 

The podcasters have become the faces of straight men loving this show about gay hockey players falling in love. Just this week, Vulture kicked off its article about watching straight men watch “Heated Rivalry” featuring the Empty Netters. Rolling Stone followed suit.

Yet in a series of text messages — sent to multiple recipients and seen by Outsports — one of the podcast hosts, Dan Powers, was highly critical of the show while at the same time the podcast, and Dan personally, were publicly effusive in their praise.

“I think these losers who made this show are cowards,” Dan wrote of “Heated Rivalry” in one text message Outsports has seen, bemoaning the fact that the producers are “Canadian for crying out loud.” 

Then: “This is the trash they make because it panders, it’s provocative, and it checks inclusivity boxes.”

Amid the ensuing uproar, Empty Netters released a video response, to which Outsports referred to in a Jan. 26th article:

In his first public comments since an Outsports story revealed he sent highly critical private texts about the gay hockey TV show “Heated Rivalry” while lavishly praising it publicly, “Empty Netters” podcast co-host Dan Powers contended that he had not seen the show when he sent negative text messages calling the show “trash” and the creators “losers” and “cowards.” 

His response came in a video published by the “Empty Netters” late Thursday, Jan. 22.

“The timeline implied in this article is completely false and inaccurate, and it suggests that we were watching this show, sending messages like this while at the same time reviewing it,” Powers — a former hockey player who hosts the show with his brother Chris — said in the video…

…Outsports would not have published its original story if our reporting had been based on a single source. The language in the text messages shared by Outsports reflects only some of the messages Powers sent to others, and texts received by Outsports from other sources go beyond the Dec. 2 date Powers revealed, aligning with the timeline of their published videos.

Outsports has also communicated with other sources privy to comments Powers has made in conversations about the show, who claim they were made after the publication of some of their “Heated Rivalry” review videos, which reveal a very different view.

The seeming discrepancy in Powers’ public versus private views of the show is what spurred Outsports to pursue the story, especially given the context: Hockey has a long history of homophobia and heterosexist culture. These are among the reasons there has never been an out gay player in the NHL, active or retired, making it a lone outlier among the major North American men’s pro team sports…

…Outsports stands by its story.

The top-trending comments on the Empty Netters Jan. 22nd video speak for themselves (yes, I know, it’s too small to read in the image, so I also copied them in the quote below):

This just speaks to the core conflict of Heated Rivalry ironically enough that there is so much unconscious homophobia in daily conversations that make it seem like such an impossible task to come out. (1,700 upvotes)

Hey so, the problem was entirely the language you used and not at all the context or timeframe in which you said it. Hope this helps! (173 upvotes)

Who gives a shit about the timeline? You still said those things. (94 upvotes)

Sadly, we still have a long, long way to go to eradicate homophobia from hockey. I am saddened, but not surprised. At this point, we will never know whether these men actually did truly enjoy the show, or just cynically jumped on the bandwagon, taking advantage of the immense popularity of Heated Rivalry to increase their podcast viewership—and earn some more money from that jump in traffic.

I leave you with another new fan-edited music video, ironically using the original version of the rock cover song above, but it’s so well done that I wanted to share it anyways.

UPDATE Feb. 8th, 2026: One more wonderful fan-made Heated Rivalry music video, this one set to Ben Platt’s song Come Back (the creator writes “Come Back by Ben Platt is for the cottage in ways I could only attempt to convey.”):

UPDATE Feb. 13th, 2026: And another one! This is one I found on Tumblr, set to part of the song When He Sees Me from the musical Waitress:

UPDATE Feb. 14th, 2026: Aaaand another one! This fan edit video used the P!nk song True Love. and frankly, the lyrics to this song fit the Heated Rivalry storyline just so perfectly!

UPDATED JAN. 20th, 2026 WITH EXTRA COMMENTARY: Metaverse Bombshell: NETFLIX Acquires Ready Player Me—What Does This Mean for Metaverse Platforms Using Ready Player Me Avatars?

I somehow missed a major piece of news that dropped last Friday, which will definitely impact a lot of existing metaverse platforms (including big names like VRChat). On Dec. 19th, 2025, Sarah Perez wrote, in an article on the tech news website TechCrunch:

After shifting its gaming strategy to focus more on games played on the TV, Netflix announced it’s acquiring Ready Player Me, an avatar-creation platform based in Estonia. The streamer said Friday it plans to use the startup’s development tools and infrastructure to build avatars that will allow Netflix subscribers to carry their personas and fandom across different games.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ready Player Me had raised $72 million in venture backing from investors, including a16z, Endeavor, Konvoy Ventures, Plural, and various angels, including the co-founders of companies like Roblox, Twitch, and King Games.

Netflix told TechCrunch the startup’s team of around 20 people will be joining the company. Of the four founders Rainer Selvet, Haver Järveoja, Kaspar Tiri, and Timmu Tõke, only CTO Rainer Selvet is moving to Netflix. It doesn’t have an estimate of how long it will be until avatars launch. Nor does it detail which games or types of games will be first to get avatars.

Following the acquisition, Ready Player Me will be winding down its services on January 31, 2026, including its online avatar creation tool, PlayerZero.

Scott Hayden, in an article written for The Road to VR website, adds:

“Our vision has always been to enable avatars and identities to travel across many games and virtual worlds,” Ready Player Me CEO Timmu Tõke said. “We’ve been on an independent path to make that vision a reality for a long time. I’m now very excited for the Ready Player Me team to join Netflix to scale our tech and expertise to a global audience and contribute to the exciting vision Netflix has for gaming.”

Avatar creation using Ready Player Me in the metaverse platform Spatial

Additionally, Ready Player Me announced its taking avatar creation services offline starting January 31st, 2026.

And, indeed, when I head over to the Ready Player Me website, the banner across the top of my screen declares:

Thank you for the chance to build together with you. Our services will become unavailable starting January 31, 2026. Please reach out to devs@readyplayer.me for any questions.

I pity the poor person on the receiving end of all those emails, because there are countless metaverse platforms which have relied on Ready Player Me as their avatar creation component, rather than try to build their own avatar design system in-house. All of these platforms now have a little over a month to come up with a replacement for the services provided up until now by Ready Player Me, which is shutting down on January 31st, 2026!

Ready Player Me’s avatar creation tools, which have been used by many virtual worlds and social VR platforms, will be shutting down on January 30th, 2026.
Among the tools affected by the NETFLIX acquisition of Ready Player Me are the Avatar Creator SDK, and the newer PlayerZero SDK, which allowed for users to create and sell avatar modifications and updates.

Ready Player Me has been the go-to solution for both gaming and metaverse companies for outsourcing much of its avatar creation process. Among those companies is VRChat. Scott Hayden opines:

Netflix hasn’t intimated it’s getting into XR gaming yet, so it’s pretty safe to say the Ready Player Me acquisition and subsequent shutdown is more or less a blow to one specific group of people: namely, VRChat users.

VRChat beginners looking to make their own avatars over the years were almost always pointed to Ready Player Me, with the platform even allowing users to upload a personal photo and generate a cartoony persona that was easy to mix-and-match with a variety of parts.

And while they weren’t always the most original avatars out there, it’s difficult to argue with the platform’s ease of use, as the web-based tool basically got you a (mostly) unique avatar that was not only cross-platform, but also already rigged for VRChat.

I’m not too worried on the impact to VRChat; as Scott goes on to write in his article, there are alternatives, albeit ones requiring a bit more technical know-how on the part of the user. VRChat also has a thriving third-party avatar creation and sale ecosystem, including a very popular series of Virtual Market avatar shopping events). VRChat will be fine. But it’s the smaller metaverse platforms like Spatial.io, which wholly rely on Ready Player Me’s services, that are now going to have to scramble to find and implement a replacement in very little time.

NETFLIX’s acquisition of Ready Player Me reminds me, at first glance, of when the fledgling metaverse platform Cloud Party (which I have written about on my blog before) was acquired by Yahoo! back in early 2014, over a decade ago. The entire small company (only 3-4 people) was “acquihired” by Yahoo!, and they shut down the Cloud party platform (with a truly memorable sendoff, as they shut down the servers, that made me emotional; this link is from a former Blogger.com blog I used to write about Cloud Party, which is still up!). The staff were absorbed into Yahoo! to work on Yahoo! projects, and God only knows what happened to them, or the projects they were hired to work on. (And, of course, Yahoo! is a shadow of its former self; does anybody still use it?)

It is very clear from this news that NETFLIX has big plans for its gaming service, and they “acquihired” the staff (and assets) of Ready Player Me, in order to use them for some future project. Their gain (for whatever project they are working on) is the loss of the hundreds of virtual worlds, games, and social VR/AR platforms which relied on Ready Player Me.

The fallout from all this is going to be fascinating to watch.

UPDATE Dec. 23rd, 2025: Another thing that came to mind after I posted this blogpost is this: metaverse-building companies who choose to outsource aspects of their services to other companies like Ready Player Me, have to be prepared for the possibility that that other company could be bought out, change the terms of their service, or even shut down. While it might be more time and money consuming to build something like an avatar system in-house, at least it’s under your control, and you don’t run the risk of having the rug pulled from under you.

Thank you to my metaverse friend Carlos Austin for the heads-up on this news.

UPDATE Jan. 20th, 2026: Today I came across an article on LinkedIn by Terry Proto for the group with the lengthy title, Reality Innovators Network for Spatial Computing, Metaverse, AI & XR – Virtual, Augmented Reality (whew, that’s a mouthful!):

8,000 developers. 6 weeks. One lesson. Netflix bought Ready Player Me, and January 31st is the deadline to replace avatar infrastructure for a lot of companies.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this. Altspace. 8th Wall. The pattern repeats.

The lesson? Interoperable ≠ open.

RPM worked everywhere. But it was still owned by one company. One acquisition later, and thousands of production systems are scrambling.

That’s the difference between building on convenience vs. building on ownership.

I just wrote a new article on why the spatial internet can’t be built on rented land. Have a look here: https://lnkd.in/etu3xpiF

(Note: I don’t know if you actually have to have a LinkedIn account to read this article.)

In the linked article from the above quote, Terry goes to give a very good summary of why relying on a third-party solution (even one that is interoperable), is still not as good as having open standards.

He writes:

Netflix acquired Ready Player Me on Dec 19 and 8,000 developers have until January 31st to rip out and replace their avatar infrastructure.

That’s six weeks.

Six weeks to rebuild identity systems that many teams integrated as foundational layers, not optional features. For some developers, RPM wasn’t just powering avatars. It was powering user accounts, social presence, cross-platform persistence, and the entire notion that their users could carry an identity across virtual worlds.

As Jose Antonio Tejedor Garcia of Virtway put it: “Trust built over years is breaking in weeks.”

As I write this, that six-week window has narrowed to (checks calendar) just twelve days. And, as Terry has stated, many of the 6,000 developers who used Ready Player Me, used it for a lot more than just avatar appearance. He goes on to add what I was trying to get at in my original blogpost, but does it much more concisely:

ack in June 2023, I wrote about “life after Altspace”, exploring which platforms could fill the void when Microsoft shut down one of the oldest social VR spaces. Altspace launched in 2015, got acquired by Microsoft in 2017 and closed in March 2023. The community scrambled to find new homes.

Sound familiar?

But back then, I was asking the wrong question. Finding alternative platforms doesn’t solve the underlying problem. It just kicks the can down the road until the next acquisition, the next pivot, the next “strategic realignment.”

The real question is: why do we keep building critical infrastructure on top of proprietary platforms?

I am not going to quote it all, but I do strongly recommend you read the entire article here (even if I very strongly disagree with any potential solution which requires blockchain, cryptocurrencies or NFTs, all of which by now are tainted beyond redemption by numerous scandals, scams, and rugpulls). And I will watch with keen interest as the deadline of January 31st, 2026 comes and goes.