A quick note to my regular readers: this blog post will be pinned to the top of my blog for the next few weeks. You can go to the main page of my blog and scroll down to see my most recent blog posts. Thanks!
Hello, I’m Ryan Schultz, and you’re probably here because of that article that Patty Marx wrote for the December 9th, 2019 issue of New Yorker magazine, titled Taking Virtual Reality for a Test Drive*, where she mentions me and takes a quote from my blog:
… I decided to try a social VR platform. These digital 3-D stomping grounds allow groups of people, represented by avatars, to gather in real time for concerts, sporting events, dance parties, writing workshops, or meetings, or just to hang out. Ryan Schultz, a reference librarian at the University of Manitoba and a VR blogger, credits them with lifting his depression. Describing himself in the realm outside his Oculus, he wrote, “To be honest, I kinda suck at this whole reality business.” Now he straddles both cosmos, a recent high point being an evening in which he joined five hundred avatars in a marathon game of drag-queen bingo.
*If you are reading the paper edition of New Yorker magazine, Patty Marx’s article is titled The Realer Real, and it starts on page 22.
Since July 31st, 2017, I have been writing a blog about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse (you can find my definitions of those and other terms here). I specialize in writing about a particular niche of virtual reality, called social VR: open-ended social experiences in virtual reality that you can share with other users who are on desktop or in VR (as opposed to games, although social VR can also include games).
If you’re new here, there are five different ways to explore my blog:
- My comprehensive list of social VR platforms and virtual worlds is where you can find everything I’ve written about all the platforms I’ve visited, listed alphabetically. There’s also a recently-updated comparison chart of what I consider to be the “Top 16” social VR platforms on the market, which you might find of interest.
- Just under the main menu on the left-hand-side of my blog (if you are on desktop), or under the “sandwich menu” in the upper right-hand-corner (if you are on mobile), is a search box you can use to search all of my over 1,500 blogposts.
- If you scroll down and look in the left-hand-side menu of my blog, there is a list of categories which you can use to explore what I have written.
One such category that has proven to be very popular among my readers is my Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies section. You do not need to spend any money to have a fabulous-looking avatar in SL! If you’re looking for one handy summary of my best advice for finding freebies in Second Life, here it is.
And yes, you might be surprised to learn that Second Life, at 16 years of age, is still going strong, is still profitable for Linden Lab, and has approximately 600,000 regular monthly users.
- If you scroll down even further, there is a tag cloud of the tags I have assigned to my blogposts. Find a tag that interests you and a single click takes you a list of all the posts I’ve written using that tag!
- Or, if you like, here’s my Top 15 most popular blogposts of all time.
In addition to my blog, I am the host of a fledgling YouTube show called the Metaverse Newscast, where I interview the personalities behind social VR, virtual worlds and the metaverse, on the various platforms.
I invite you to join the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, the world’s first cross-worlds discussion forum! Over 300 people from around the world, representing many different social VR platforms and virtual worlds, meet daily to chat, discuss, debate, and argue about the ever-evolving metaverse and companies building it.
And effective Nov. 20th, 2019, I am the embedded reporter for the new virtual world Sinespace, writing about the people, news and events on that platform! Sinespace supports both desktop and VR users.
If you want to advertise on my blog, here are my current rates. If you have any business matters you wish to discuss with me, or if you just have a comment, please feel free to drop me a line using my Contact page.
Thank you for stopping by! Oh, and I also have a Patreon, which helps me cover my WordPress hosting costs for the RyanSchultz.com blog. Thank you to my patrons! Whether or not you are a financial patron, thank you for your continued support! It means the world to me.