EDITORIAL NOTE: No generative AI tools were used in the creation of this blogpost. However, I cannot guarantee that any clip art I used to illustrate this post, found through the image search feature on the Qwant search engine, was not fully or partially generated using generative AI.
One of the advantages about having a blog with your name in the title is that you can write a blogpost about literally anything, and it’s technically not off-topic! 😜 I have been sharing a lot of personal details about my life recently, and I wanted to talk about how I do have a tendency to go off-topic on this blog.
A classic example of this is when I correctly forecast, on January 25th, 2020, that we were going to face a global pandemic, which led to many of my blogposts after that point being about COVID-19. (The financial planner I had at my bank at that time, whom I shared my prediction with when discussing the financial impact of a pandemic, was convinced that I was psychic, but all I was doing was paying close attention to the news that was coming out of China about a mysterious new virus.) Many of my readers at that time were no doubt puzzled as to why I had so suddenly shifted focus, but obviously, everybody started paying attention by March 2020, as the world shut down. (I still cannot wrap my mind about the fact that over a million Americans died from COVID-19, some of them due to the misinformation, disinformation, and crazy conspiracy theories spread widely via social media.)
This is always be, first and foremost, a blog about the metaverse.
So, what I learned from that experience is that, while you can go off-topic from time to time, you probably shouldn’t go completely overboard, like I did during the pandemic. This will, at heart, remain a blog about my passionate hobby and my research interest: virtual worlds, social VR, and the metaverse. The only recent change I have made is to explicitly include, in my blog’s tagline, a mention of artificial intelligence and generative AI (GenAI):
News and Views on Social VR, Virtual Worlds, and the Metaverse, plus Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI’s Impact on the Metaverse
And, as my tagline states, I will try to keep my writing about AI focused on how this rapidly-evolving technology is now, and will in future, impact the metaverse. There are so many other people writing about AI during this new hype cycle, sparked in 2022 by the startling results being produced by a new crop of generative AI tools. And frankly, those other writers are doing such a good job, that the best I can do is refer you to them, and urge you to follow them! But I will share, as I did recently, my own experience in learning how to use GenAI tools effectively and efficiently.
Whether we like it or not, all of us are going to be interacting with AI in the future.
What I will start to do, is be transparent about how and when I do use GenAI tools in writing a particular blogpost. We are already awash in ChatGPT-generated slop passing for content on the internet, and frankly, I think I owe it to my blog readers to tell them when I use such tools in my writing. Therefore, from now on, you will see a purple box at the top of all my blogposts, which will be:
Either a statement, “EDITORIAL NOTE: No generative AI tools were used in the creation of this blogpost,” or
A statement “EDITORIAL NOTE: I used the following generative AI tools in creating this blogpost,” followed by a list of all such tools used, where I used them, and how I used them.
You can see an example at the very top of this post. Below is a screenshot of another example of what I’m talking about, from a recent post on my blog:
The last thing I wanted to say, is that this is (as I said up top) a personal blog, and I will, from time to time, talk about off-topic things, such as the TV show Heated Rivalry and how it made me feel. I realize in that blogpost I did try to add a bit about how the concept of “coming out” is different in the metaverse, in order to try and make the post fit the tagline of my blog. However, in reading it afterwards, I felt that I kind of shoehorned that part in, and not terribly successfully at that. So from now on, when I do go off-topic, I won’t twist myself into a pretzel to try to make it about the metaverse!! Like I said up top, it’s a blog with name in the title, so whatever pops into my mind when I sit down in front of the WordPress editor window, could become an off-topic blogpost.Fair warning!
For example, I just finished binge watching all three seasons of TV series Heartstopper, so you can definitely expect an off-topic blogpost about that sometime soon!! 🏳️🌈I get nowhere near the kind of traffic I got circa 2019-2022, but I still get enough traffic (and feedback) for me to keep writing my blog.
While I get nowhere near the traffic I did during the heady heydays of the 2019-2022 metaverse hype cycle, I still do get enough traffic to indicate that it’s worthwhile to keep blogging. I find I enjoy writing!
Thank you to those of you who post comments on my blogposts, and leave messages on my Contact Me page. However, I am very bad at getting back to people who leave messages via the Contact Me page, so I have a huge, huuuge backlog to dig through!!
EDITORIAL NOTE: In writing this blogpost, I have only used generative AI one time (to help me remember the actual names of Steam VR Home and Meta Horizon Home, typing in a description of what these environments do into Anthropic’s Claude AI to obtain the actual names). In other words, I used Claude as a sort of dictionary where you describe what it is you’re looking for, and ask for its proper name. Works like a charm!
I do not rely on using GenAI tools to write or edit my blog posts, unless otherwise specified in a note such as this, at the top of the post. And yes, I have been regularly using an em dash in my writing long, long before ChatGPT came along! 😉
I was surprised to discover, finger-swiping and pinching my way through the Apple Vision Pro subreddits I follow using the Pioneer for Reddit app (while in the Apple Vision Pro, of course!), that the Apple Vision Pro was already celebrating the two-year anniversary of its release in the United States. We Canadians and citizens of about a dozen other countries were only able to get our hot little hands on AVPs later, of course (I had a particularly tortured road until I finally was able to use mine, as explained here, including several frustrating and time-consuming incidents trying to communicate with both Apple’s and UPS’s AI-powered chatbots in efforts to speak with an actual live human being). But, as usual, I digress.
I have been thinking a lot lately about why I am so enamoured with my Apple Vision Pro, and how it compares to the many previous Windows PCVR and standalone VR/AR headsets I have used since January 2017 (Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest 1/2/3, Valve Index, Vive Pro 2). Also, I have been thinking a lot about how I have been using those different headsets, and again, why my use of the AVP has been such a radical departure from previous virtual reality gear. So this blogpost is my attempt to summarize all those thoughts, and get them down on—hmmm, well, not paper, exactly, but pixels?—to share them with you, my faithful blog readers. (By the way, I very much appreciate those of you who do actually take the time to read my ramblings!)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Arthur C. Clarke
First, the technology of the Apple Vision Pro makes the device feel magic, and I still feel that sense of awe and appreciation while wearing it every day. Shortly after my first week of use, in a message I first excitedly shared with my friends on Second Life, first quoted here on my blog, I stated:
The Apple Vision Pro makes every single VR headset I have used to date feel like one of those red plastic View-Masters I used to play with as a kid in the 1960s. The “screen door” effect so evident in earlier VR headsets (where you can see individual pixels, making everything slightly blurry) is COMPLETELY, UTTERLY gone.
The Apple Vision Pro’s display resolution is 50 times more dense than the iPhone, and such a startling leap forward, that I often like to joke, it makes all the older VR/AR headsets I have ever worn feel like a cheap plastic View-Master toy!
After decades of working on Microsoft Windows computers, I used the Apple Vision Pro (and in particular, what I consider its killer feature, Mac Virtual Display) to switch almost completely to macOS and the Apple ecosystem. Let me walk you through a typical workday. I arrive at my cubicle in the librarian’s shared office space, turn on my MacBook Pro, and unpack and set up my Apple Vision Pro. I remove my prescription eyeglasses, put my AVP on, adjust the straps across the back and top of my head for a comfortable fit, and select my usual environment, Mount Hood, the tallest mountain in Oregon:
My preferred Apple Vision Pro Environment for work is Mount Hood, Oregon because I like to be surrounded by pine forest.
I can adjust how much my chosen Environment blends with my cubicle office space, by twisting the knob on the upper right of my AVP. Most times, I like to have it set up around 90-95%, so that I feel I am surrounded by forest, with the lake and Mount Hood to my back, but enough of the real world still pokes through so I can, for example, easily grab my insulated Winnipeg Folk Festival coffee mug (with an environmentally-friendly metal straw, so I can take a sip more easily while wearing my AVP!). When I use my Apple Magic keyboard, it automatically highlights itself as my hands hover over it, pulling itself out of the forested ground when I look down. Everything just works. It’s magic.
Usually, I have the Apple Music app pinned to my right side, and I select a playlist (usually instrumental new age music, but it can vary depending on my mood).
Sorry, any screen captures I take in my Apple Vision Pro always tend to be a bit lopsided! I need to learn how to angle my head correctly.
I pop in my Apple AirPods, and then look at my MacBook Pro. A virtual Connect button hovers over the MacBook Pro’s screen, I tap my finger and thumb together to select it, et voilà! A large, adjustable ultra-high-definition screen appears over my desk, a sharp, crystal-clear wide screen where I can rearrange my macOS windows to my heart’s content: Outlook for email, Word for whatever report I am working on, my latest PowerPoint presentation, my Firefox web browser, etc.
I now spend between four and six hours of my workday in this productivity cocoon. If I need to get up (say, to reheat my coffee in the microwave), I unplug the AVP battery from its power cable, place the battery in my left front pocket, and walk around the office. I exit the Mount Hood environment, which remains in place like a virtual office partition. If, on my way to the microwave, I happen to look behind me, I can still see my huge Mac Virtual Display, and the Apple Music window hanging in midair at my workstation.
This setup gives me two things: focus and pain relief.
First, the ability to isolate myself (literally, throwing an immersive, three-dimensional virtual environment around myself) gives me the ability to focus on the task at hand, and I find it helps with my overall productivity. I can even get into a much-desired flow state. (Interestingly, the second-edition Apple Vision Pro with the higher-end M5 processing chip seems to have completely alleviated a problem I had with the original-model AVP, which was I would develop eyestrain after at about the two-hour mark while using it with the Mac Virtual Display feature. The new dual-loop Dual Knit headband is also an improvement over the original, single-band knit headband.)
Second, I have a couple of deteriorating joints in the cervical part of my spine, which unfortunately limits how much time I can spend sitting in front of a desktop computer monitor and keyboard. I have noticed that I can work for longer periods of time, with less neck and shoulder pain, when using the Mac Virtual Display feature on my Apple Vision Pro with my MacBook Pro, than I can in any other workstation setup (including just my MacBook Pro with an external monitor). I am truly grateful that the technology is now sufficiently advanced to help alleviate my pain!
As far as I am concerned, the Mac Virtual Display feature is THE killer app on the Apple Vision Pro. While I have been browsing the AVP subreddits and downloading and installing various apps, I find I use the Virtual Display far more than any other app or program (at least, right now). No other VR headset can give me what the AVP offers, or even come close. The thousands of dollars I have spent on the first and now second editions of the Apple Vision Pro over the past two years have been worth every. single. penny. I cannot imagine living and working without this device.
With all the Windows PCVR and standalone VR/AR headsets I have used, I had always been hopping between one app or another (usually a metaverse platform like Sansar or VRChat, because that is my personal hobby and my research interest). I spent very little time in places like Steam VR Home, or the Meta Horizon Home, where you can see your library of installed VR/AR applications and games, launch them, and switch between apps. But in the Apple Vision Pro, with the Mac Virtual Display feature, I find I am using the device more like a filter or environment through which I am doing actual work with pre-existing programs like Microsoft Office, as opposed to loading and running virtual-reality-native apps. You can see immediately how this is a big difference. I would never for a second even think of using my Meta Quest 3 headset to edit a document in Microsoft Word, or fire off an email, yet I do those sorts of things without a second thought in my Apple Vision Pro.
Which leads me to my next important point: why the relative lack of AVP-native apps and programs is not as serious a problem as it would appear at first glance. When you use the device as a filter, or an environment, as you do with the Mac Virtual Display feature, you are using it with the much richer library of apps and programs available on macOS. Add to that the thousands of iOS apps you can run in flat-screen mode on the AVP (e.g. Firefox, my go-to web browser), and you can see why I am not too terribly concerned about this issue.
But it would appear that many consumers are concerned at how (relatively) slowly new, native-AVP apps and programs are being added to the Apple App Store. In a post made four days ago to the r/VisionPro subreddit, someone asked:
So I finally pulled the trigger and bought an Apple Vision Pro, and honestly… wow. The hardware is insane. The display, hand tracking, eye tracking, immersion – it genuinely feels like a glimpse into the future. Watching films, browsing the web, even basic spatial apps feel miles ahead of anything else I’ve tried.
That said, I can’t shake one big concern: developer support is thin.
Right now it feels like there are hardly any apps that are actually built for Vision Pro. Yes, iPad apps technically work, but that’s not the same as native spatial experiences that really show off what this thing can do. After the initial “this is amazing” honeymoon phase, you start noticing how limited the ecosystem still is.
My worry is this: if Vision Pro doesn’t gain real traction, Apple could quietly scale it back or pivot, and developers will have even less incentive to build for it. That becomes a vicious circle — fewer users → fewer apps → even fewer users.
I really want this platform to succeed because the tech absolutely deserves it. But at the moment it feels like we’re relying on Apple’s long-term commitment and patience more than anything else.
Curious what other Vision Pro owners (or devs) think. Are we just early and impatient, or is the lack of native apps a genuine red flag?
This question sparked some developers and other users to weigh in, with some very insightful commentary, which I wanted to share here with you:
I think Apple knew this going in and that’s why this device is almost like a prototype in a way. They need it in consumers hands to know what it will turn into. They knew the price point wasn’t for general consumption, but the only way to mold this thing into a future device for the masses that has better battery, less weight, and more importantly, costs less, was to get it into the hands of people and watch it do its thing.
Hi,Vision Pro developer here. Long response incoming (TLDR at bottom). You and other users have responded with what I think is a correct analysis that there’s an economics issue in that people won’t buy the Vision Pro until there’s sufficient app support, while developers can’t afford to make a dedicated Vision Pro app until there’s a sufficient user base. I can maybe provide some more perspective on some other aspects of Vision Pro development.
I truly believe that spatial computing is the future of computing, but it won’t be with the current version of Vision Pro. Essentially, I see this iteration of Vision Pro as a (very) cool device for media consumption and a dev tool. In the future, Apple (or some other company, but my money is almost always on Apple) will likely release the product that breaks through with consumers, whether it be the upcoming glasses or some vastly improved Vision Pro, and then developers will begin work making the apps for that eventual product. My personal development projects on Vision Pro are done with the certainty that they will be made at a financial loss to myself, but in the hope that learning how to build streamlined apps and leverage the capabilities of the current device will allow me to be better positioned to be a developer for the breakthrough model. As a developer, this is the time to be experimenting with 3D user experience, to learn what works and what doesn’t as an interaction model for experiences as immersive as Vision Pro allows.
There are also problems with what Apple allows developers to do. In truth, there’s very little freedom to push the device to its limits and make something really imaginative and unique. Apple has set out strict privacy considerations (which are good broadly speaking, but might be overkill at this point) that lock developers into predefined paradigms that Apple approves of. Of course Apple’s own apps don’t have to obey these restrictions, which allows them to make apps that feel magical, like Experience Dinosaurs. Having attended the Vision Pro Developer conference for the past two years, I can tell you that there are significant frustrations among the developer community over the restrictions Apple has placed.
From where I’m sitting, I think the interest among developers for Vision Pro is reasonably high, but most can’t afford to build for it until there are some big changes in the market. I think in the near future there won’t be more than a smattering of new native apps, mostly made by the passionate developers who see the potential, but once Apple releases the product that clicks for consumers the dam will open up. This will probably result in a flood of apps for this current generation of Vision Pro, as I think Apple has nailed the software side of this, and just needs to work on building a physical frame that consumers want to put on their head.
TLDR: Be patient. At some point spatial computing will likely take off on a future Vision Pro-like model, and then the developers will come.
Developers aren’t going to invest heavily in the platform until there’s more users. Apple knows this. Apple is getting the OS and dev tools maturing while they work towards more consumer-friendly versions of their Vision line. They needed the hardware out and in user and developer’s hands to really start moving forward. Traction will come, I sincerely don’t think there’s anything to worry about there.
I agree wholeheartedly with the second commenter, the developer who stated that “people won’t buy the Vision Pro until there’s sufficient app support, while developers can’t afford to make a dedicated Vision Pro app until there’s a sufficient user base.” It’s a classic chicken or the egg problem, which is why what I said earlier is so important. The number of available apps and programs for the Apple Vision Pro doesn’t really matter at this point (at least, for me), because I am pretty much using it as an immersive environment through which I am running other programs. To date, the only native-AVP apps I have been running regularly have been the previously-mentioned Pioneer for Reddit app, InSpaze, and Explore POV! (I have, however, been avidly collecting dozens of free and inexpensive AVP apps based on recommendations posted to the r/AppleVisionPro and r/VisionPro subreddits! One day, probably when I am on my upcoming research and study leave, I will start to explore more AVP-native programs and apps. In fact, two days ago, Google finally released a version of its popular YouTube video-watching app for the Apple Vision Pro!)
As I said up top, Mac Virtual Display is the killer feature I use most often.And that is what makes my use of the Apple Vision Pro so dramatically and drastically different from previous VR/AR headsets. It’s a productivity tool first, and with my continuing neck and shoulder pain, it’s also been a pain management tool second, an unexpected but not unwelcome way to get through an eight-hour workday with as little discomfort as possible. I am eternally grateful that the technology has actually evolved enough, just in time, to help me still be productive despite my pain! And for those two reasons alone, it is worth every single penny I have spent on this device. As I said before, I am all in.
The upgraded Apple Vision Pro has been a Godsend, and worth every penny I have spent!
I first read the news on LinkedIn this morning: MeetinVR, a social VR platform I last wrote about on my blog back in 2022, has announced that it is shutting down its services as of April 30th, 2026:
The technology landscape is characterized by constant change. As we look ahead, we recognize significant shifts occurring in the enterprise sector:
Industry Focus Shift:Key platform providers are strategically re-aligning their enterprise VR initiatives.
Market Maturity:The core VR market is evolving, allowing new forms of spatial computing to emerge.
The Rise of AI-Enabled Glasses:We are seeing an acceleration in the development and focus on AI-enabled glasses and next-generation augmented- and virtual reality, signaling the next generation for workplace collaboration.
In light of these industry dynamics, and to finish strong, we have made the strategic decision to conclude MeetinVR services.
MeetinVR services will officially cease on Thursday, April 30, 2026.
Now, there is enough technojargon in this press release to make me grit my teeth (and we are far, FAR away from “the rise of AI-enabled glasses,” in my opinion). And the “industry focus shift” gobbledygook of “key platform providers are strategically realigning their enterprise VR initiatives” can brutally be summarized as metaverse companies are folding because there’s still not a market for business users.
Let’s face some brutal facts in the harsh and unforgiving light of the inevitable crash of the artificially-heightened expectations of the recent metaverse hype cycle (of which I, being the writer of a popular blog on just that very topic, was actually around for during the beginning, middle, and end.) Still with me? Good.
Facebook (which had gone to all the trouble and expense of rebranding as Meta during this ridiculous hype cycle) has dropped literally hundreds of millions of dollars into acquiring Oculus and trying to build a business metaverse platform, and failed to even to entice its own employees into using it (let alone anybody else). Linden Lab (the makers of Second Life), a much smaller company than Meta, poured millions of dollars into building a shiny new social VR platform called Sansar, which never took off, and now languishes in a near-moribund state, supported only by a passionate cadre of volunteers determined to keep it alive. (Now, Sansar was designed for consumer as opposed to business use, but I’m quite sure the original development team would have been happy to see it take off for corporate use, too. Aside from a few music festivals, that never happened, though.)
And frankly, given the perilous political and economic times in which we now live, people have far greater concerns on their minds than whether they can meet up as avatars to conduct business in a flat-screen virtual world or on a social VR/AR platform accessible via a headset. The learning curve/cost of entry is still too high, compared to alternatives like Microsoft Teams, Cicso WebEx, and Zoom.
The current tsunami of generative AI tools like ChatGPT threatens to lead to massive layoffs among lower- and middle-management white-collar jobs (something that’s not being talked about enough, in my opinion). And if metaverse platforms weren’t able to sell themselves during a pandemic, when everybody was forced to sit at home, they certainly won’t be able to sell themselves now, when businesses are cutting costs, trying to stave off insolvency in some cases, and people are worried about keeping food on the table and a roof over their heads.
I predict that we are going to see a “metaverse winter,” much like the previous “AI winters,” when the initial promise and hype of the technology hits what the Gartner Group politely calls “the trough of disillusionment.” And I predict we are going to see a lot more shutdown announcements like this throughout 2026.
All the PR spin in the world (“to finish strong”? Really? Really??!?) cannot hide the fact that the metaverse business is in a period of retrenchment, possibly a long one. And no, generative AI is not suddenly going to be some sort of magic wand that can make everything all better again. That’s just laughable.
It’s time to go back to the drawing board, for a rethink (that, I can agree with in this press release). And, despite my sarcasm, I do wish the team behind MeetinVR every success in whatever they decide to do next.
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!
