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November 25, 2022 • 45 mins

Come into the SMNTY-verse as we uncover the upsides and downsides of VR, the women behind it, gender discrimination and harassment on the platform, and the future.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to stuff
one never told you Protectually I heart radio, And today
we are continuing our streak of looking into technologies and
women and non binary folks, and we're continuing it with

(00:28):
virtual reality are Yes or VR, which I know UM
might have some of you rolling your eyes, especially with
a lot of the news that's going around right now.
We're not specifically going to be talking about the metaverse
today that we should, UM, because they recently saw a
headline I believe they lost seven hundred billion dollars investing

(00:51):
into the metaverse and they fired a lot of their
staff to invest in this, which is something we're seeing
with Twitter, which is also something we're gonna come back
and talk about. So, yeah, that is the thing. We know,
it's a thing that we need to talk about. We're
gonna come back and talk about it. But today we're
more focusing on kind of the general landscape of women

(01:11):
and non binary folks in the VR world. And actually
this could have been like a multipart because there's a
really fascinating history of women innovating in this space. Uh
and and the history of that and how it came
to be what it is today is really cool, But
we're going to touch on some of that. We're not
going to focus on it though, And I do have

(01:31):
to say, doing this research, I feel like we're seeing
several threads emerge again and again when it comes to
how these platforms are not supporting women. Um, which is
not surprising, also not great. Obviously, I hope all the
problems we talked about with Reddit, with Twitch are not
limited to those platforms, and we're going to talk about

(01:52):
how they manifest in VR two. But part of why
we wanted to talk about this was we're quest of
a listener saying that in their experience b R wasn't
as sexist as other platforms. And this was over a
year ago at least, but I got really curious about it. Uh,
And so here we are. We are right. I remember

(02:14):
that because they suggest some great games that I never played,
that you played them? No, And actually I want to
talk about this for a second, because you and I
have I would say similar experiences with bruvolve this fallowing.
So if you're talking about yes only one time for me,
excuse how do you but it was a pretty big

(02:38):
ball of us. Yes, yes, so you you actually were
the one who introduced me to b R. I had
used it previously in like high school, a very bad graphic,
like those really old sets you would use, and it

(02:59):
was like a fighting game. And one of my friends
had it and I used it, and it was one
of those things where you could like barely tell what
was going on, had fun, but it was also such
a difficult You couldn't tell what was going on right,
so it was very difficult. And then you during the
pandemic kind of introduced me to it um in its

(03:22):
newer iteration where the graphics are much better, there's a
lot more games available, and I it was one of
those things where I waffled on it for a long time,
but eventually I bought my own kind of on a whim.
But I had been thinking about it. It was one
of those surprise purchases for you. It was because it
and then showed up, and then it showed up and
then it showed up. But I have been thinking like

(03:44):
it was one of those things where it was going
to inevitably happen, and I kept kind of being like no, no,
no no, and then eventually it was like, oh, yeah,
I'll get it, and then I totally forgot and then
it showed up. I was like, yeah, but related to
all of this, I have a lot of games I
want to play and I have not played. My apartment
is not the best for playing VR, to be honest,

(04:04):
it's not right the most spacious, and I don't generally
get nauseated, which we are going to talk about, but
I sometimes do. So it's kind of like a commitment
or I have to like move like my table all
the way. It sounds so like easily done, but it
is like I have to do this and I have
to do this play. Um, but yeah, what about you?

(04:27):
What about your experience with that? Well? Yeah, so honestly,
I was introduced and the VR set that is in
my house is my partners. Um. He loves the VR
set to the point that we still play with it.
He does it more than I do. Um. He even
talked another person who was actually a boomer, like we'll
talk and got him into it as well, like to

(04:49):
the point that he showed him an example, let him
play with it for a second, and then he immediately
bought it because it was everything he wanted. Like he
talked about how he wanted to be a pilot and
wanted to test flow. This was an amazing stimulation to it,
and it is. It's it's definitely upgraded since the time
that you were talking about. I know there's a lot
more of like VR bars popping up in the sensation

(05:10):
of this, and now more games that you can play
together online. Again, my partner uses it to play their
version video is I don't even know what it's called.
I'm not gonna lie, which is like a version of
Dungeons and Dragons, but VR brand, I don't know that,
a verse brand maybe I don't know. But he plays

(05:31):
with his siblings and they play Katon on it, and
it looks like they're right there talking to each other.
So it's really interesting to see like all of that. Yes,
the graphics have gotten better. I am one of those
and we'll talk about it in a bit. Who gets
very sick very quickly with these games because of the
generous the quick motion, the rapid eye movement that I

(05:53):
cannot keep up with. I also have really bad stigmatism,
so I have my contacts which if it's not set correctly,
everything's ghost blurry no matter what. And my contacts are
not wonderful and I can't play with my glasses because
it's too thick and big. I just have all kinds
of nerd problems. Um. But yeah, but I really did
enjoy the ones that I really liked. It was really nicely.

(06:16):
The scenery is beautiful. There's coloring one that I love.
There's a fishing game that I'm like, I don't even
like fishing, but this is really fun. Um there is
I love beat Saber. I love that when I can
get into it, I can get into it. And y'all
have worked up a sweat with that game. I mentioned
a shooter game where it was like a piloting game
and it was fairly new, to the point that one
of our listeners knew one of the creators and gave

(06:38):
them a shout out. Was like, hey stuff mom. They
were told you just talking about your game, and I
was like, what, that's awesome. So I love seeing all
of that. Yeah, and I think I'm kind of really
weary because I want to know, and we're gonna talk
about I know, like how many developers are getting there?
Do who are in from the marginalized communities? Because this
is a new technology that can be really big. That's

(07:00):
kind of big. Maybe haven't gone about it the right way. Yeah,
it could be big, yeah, yeah, And it has a
lot of applications that I don't think people realize and
if you, if you haven't, I don't know, used a
VR set recently, Like like Samantha was saying, there's so

(07:21):
many different types of games and some of them are
so beautiful and relaxing and peaceful, Like there's a lot
to offer in this VR world. And I bought it,
I think the first summer of the pandemic. I I
bought it to the beach with my friends and I
would just catch them like hanging out and I don't know,

(07:43):
like coloring or just sitting in space or whatever it was,
and it was kind of something that helped them calm
or relax, which is not something I would have thought
of until I had seen it. I will say that
one of the things that I am kind of way
of and I've only done once or twice because my
partner he gets when he gets caught up, he gets

(08:05):
caught up. And like all immersive and one of the
big features is having like rooms where you can visit
different people and talk to different people, you can watch
movies together. They're like you there's a certain amount of room,
you can do a fireside chat, like all of these things.
You can create your own universe as in fact, like
he took me to one, which was super cool. This

(08:27):
creator made his own universe, and then like he has
special things where you could do a Patreon for him
to pay him. Outside of that, the entire setup was free.
So it's interesting to see all that. But as a
woman going in, it felt really odd. And the minute
they figure out you are what gender you are, or
they think they know what gender you are, it kind

(08:48):
of flips. The conversation flips, and uh, it's it seems
more predatory. There doesn't seem to be. I don't know,
because each each person can have their own room, the
person who have creates that room, moderates that room. So
I think it's too generalize for me to say that
it's unsafe for marginal's communities, but I can see how

(09:09):
quickly it what could be very unsafe for marginalized communities. Um,
it's interesting though. I think it's definitely something we have
to look into because who knows how what if this
becomes the new chat room with Twitter quickly dying, or
if this becomes the new social media in the future,
as we know, as the Justice have told us, everything

(09:29):
will be something to that level. Right, That's all I
have to get my market about communication now is virtual reality?
Oh god, no, no, no, no, well yeah, And any
listeners who are listening to this, I would say, Samantha
and I are kind of like VR light. We've done
it UM very light, very light though, and uh, I
haven't really had much experience with the social aspect of it.

(09:54):
So listeners, if you're listening and you're like, oh, I
have experiences or stories to tell you, please right in. Yes,
So we're gonna do a quick rundown of history and
some of the issues in the VR world right now.
Which yes, again we're not talking about metaverse, but they
are definitely pushing it as like a workplace. So who

(10:16):
knows what the history the future would be. UM. So, yes,
this is a very quick rundown um of the history
of VR. But most people trace that to nineteen sixty five,
which is earlier than I thought it would be. UM,
And most of the founders were men, and those would

(10:36):
be the founders that we know of anyway, because we
know a lot of people marginalized people get erased from
the story, but women have been involved in the industry
for decades. You can take Beth Marcus, the inventor and
founding CEO of Exos, and the person in part behind
the Dextrous Handmaster, which was a foundational and sophisticated input

(10:57):
device for VR. So I recommend looking up all of
this stuff. It's really cool. It wasn't necessarily designed for VR,
at least in the way we're talking about it, which
is kind of primarily a gaming system, but very very
neat um data suit, a full body suit used to
capture motion, was designed by an Alaska Harville. Jan Nick

(11:19):
Roland did substantial research on how the human visual system
interacts with VR. So that's another instance where maybe you
wouldn't think of that when you're thinking of all of
the pieces it took to make VR, but of course
that makes sense, like you would need an understanding of
how the human eye works and the visual system works.
Timiko Thiel, Sear Davies, Nicole Stinger, they all had parts

(11:43):
to play in this. I found a really good list
of women involved in the dr movement. Unfortunately, it was
hard to find like more than like they did this
thing the end of story. But um, but I think
they could all make really interesting episodes. And these are
just a hand of names and we will have more
names later, especially people currently UM working in the field.

(12:07):
But the point is women have provided huge developments in
the technology and content of YR, not to mention creating
works to bring awareness to important social issues. So, like
we said, a lot of people you might think of,
like I don't know, shooting games when it comes to VR,
but there's so many other things that can be done
in that space that have been done, and some that
we have talked about before, which we're going to discuss

(12:29):
in a minute. Many have expressed the importance of having
women leading in this field. Um they're more aware of
women's safety concerns or could have raised their hand about
the design of the headset, which we're going to talk
about in a minute. Interestingly, at seventeen survey out of
the US found that sixty of leadership positions in VR

(12:49):
we're held by women, though those numbers can get Q
quite low and other countries and counting in other factors.
So it was one of those things like depending on
how you define it and what you include, that number
can change drassicly. One woman we have to talk about
in this industry is Nonni Da la Pinia, sometimes called

(13:10):
the Godmother of VR, who founded Imblematic, a virtual, augmented
and mixed reality company early on day. La Pinia recognized
the potential of VR for all sorts of applications, and
she was really vocal about we need to get um
women and other marginalized folks on the ground of this,
because that's what we've talked about with podcasting. When there's
like a newer technology or platform being developed, then ideally

(13:35):
we have a room to correct past issues we see
on other platforms. So this is one of those where
they're like, this is a newer thing, can we please
learn from all these other issues on these other you
can talk about history or things to come, like, hey,
this is a good time to learn from the past.
I do wonder what I see titles like godmother mother

(13:58):
of Like what how did it change? Wait? Was who
have made these titles? And why is it godmother? Like
did you not have a hand in it? Was it?
Just like I encourage you go for anyway, it's just
a random moment when random thought. So while technology has
advanced and become more affordable, especially from about twenty onward, uh,
and they're used for all kinds of things outside of gaming,

(14:21):
like work and education and virtual travel. Only one in
five Americans have given a VR set a try, and
it is there's a lot of like it seems so
odd when you originally think about the VR sets and
then you're like, yeah, it's silly, it's just hockey. You're
looking at a cartoon closer up, and then you realize, oh, no,
they've really done some things. And as every addition is released,

(14:43):
because we're I think what the version five of the
metaverse vs. VR set, it gets increasingly intricate. It is
quite a nerving almost. But even with those numbers, the
numbers for women are lower. In the UK and in
the US only women had used to be are compared
to about men um and I wonder why. I wonder

(15:06):
if it's just they're not asking women. Women are like, no,
I'm good. It could be it could be a little
bit of a little bit of me. We are going
to break some of that down. I do think there's
a lot of leftover for for older folks like you
would me, who do remember those really? Hey, I'm including me,

(15:27):
who do you remember those kind of crappy like mall
VR sets or whatever. I think there's a lot of leftover, Like, no,
I don't like that. I don't want that kind of
reminds me of the little slides. Yeah, almost along those levels,
like that's what we thought of. Not really, but you
know that that's that oh so close and so beautiful scenery.
But it's just little steels. Things are changing. But yes, yes, yes, yes,

(16:06):
uh and yeah. There's also a lack of diversity in
what gets funded in the VR sector, though there have
been some really notable films made by Wind of Color
that utilized VR, including when we talked about Called Crow
the Legend by Sarah Eaglehart that was really beautiful. Um,
and they're they're actually quite a handful of them that
are are very very good. And while there are some

(16:30):
great women protagonists characters in the games themselves and br
that's still an area that needs a lot of improvement.
As of VR was expected to be a one hundred
and fifty billion dollar industry, and some of our fellow
podcast have had shows in the VR world, which is

(16:51):
something smith that I am struggling to wrap our heads around.
But they have done it so true, we don't quite
understand it. Hey, we don't know what that would look like,
as well as the fact that our parent company may
have been a part of the big buye of that
billion dollar investment. There's a lot of things things, so
we're trying to hear out. But you know, as I

(17:13):
was talking about earlier in UM, in these little chat rooms,
I like I said, I am wondering about the harassment.
And unfortunately, while there are many positives about the VR,
it is not without the same problems as we've discussed
in previous tech episodes UM, and the same things we
see offline too, Yes, obviously right now, and one of

(17:34):
them is harassment, which, as I had a question, which
disproportionately impacts women and people of color. Yes, so a
lot of you probably heard this story. It made a
lot of headlines UM. Recently, a woman Beta tester reported
being groped while interacting in a metaverse platform UM. Meta

(17:55):
concluded that she should have used the quote safe zone
security features. So this is like the personal boundary, UM.
If you've played v R, it's kind of this circle
that you can see UM. It's about four ft or
one point two meters according to Meta, and if an
avatar tries to enter it the boundary should stop them.

(18:18):
This is not a new or isolated incident, though. In
a woman shared her story of how another VR user
groped her breast and crotch, ignoring her when she told
them to stop, and chasing her around. Um. She wrote
an open letter about it, and here's a quote from that.
A users disembodied helmet, faced me dead on. His floating
hand approached my body and he started to virtually rub

(18:40):
my chest. Stop. I cried. This goaded him on, and
even when I turned away from him, he chased me around,
making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he
even shoved his hand towards my virtual crotch and again
rubbing there. I was being virtually groped in a snowy
fortress with my brother in law and husband watching. Yeah,

(19:01):
it's pretty upsetting. Open letter read the whole thing. I
will say, even though they're supposed to be age limits,
you know you really can't stop that in the amount
of young kids that are on here is alarming. UM.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely believe this could be
an adult doing this, but I know, like a lot

(19:21):
of this is like, uh, both of those incidences or
issues in the conversations and about like, hey, this is
teaching some things that are really really off putting. And
then even though this is not reality, the fact that
this is happening in a setting that's supposed to be
even safer because you're supposed to have safeguards and able

(19:41):
to block people, that's really concerning, right. And it's one
of those things, um, which I think we're going to
talk about it in a minute, but where you might
not know that the safeguard feature was not it's not
automatically activated, or it wasn't at time. I think it
is now, so you would have to know I have

(20:03):
to go in where to find that right on? Um,
which you might you just you know, I'm going into VR.
I might not be thinking, oh, somebody might grope me
in VR, and I need to go find this setting
and turn it on. Right, I will say, uh, I

(20:23):
was watching again my partner in VR, and and there's
a setting that you can cast that onto TVs or
your phone or whatever and whatnot. Um, And he was
a hot dog. He's trying to show me how these
little worlds work and what it looks like. And other
people can come in, especially if it's open. And this
one kid just followed him, and it was a kid
because you could hear him scream like he has had

(20:44):
his podio on, and he would scream, this is kind
of funny. Hey hot dog, hot dog, come here, hot dog,
let me let me see. Lane would chase Joe aroun
until Joe knew that like a way to block him,
so he blocked him. But I would have not never
known that. I was like, what what is happening? Why
is he not leaving you alone? Because Joe would just
mind his own business to walk through this world and

(21:06):
this kid was following him around for a good I
think ten minutes, and Joe really thought he had lost
the several times, and the kid would just pop up like,
hey hot dog. Again, it's not funny, but at that moment,
Joe being a hot dog as his avatar was quite funny,
right right. Well, And that's kind of the thing, is

(21:27):
what you're talking about, is like that moment of panic,
Like that was a pretty annoying but benign experience ultimately,
but it's not that a lot of times, and and
many women have reported just not feeling safe or comfortable.
Just kind of what you were talking about Samantha, like
you could feel how this could turn and be a
space of harassment very quickly. When when you're in this

(21:49):
VR space, there's a lot of creepy staring. People have
reported UM interactions like taking pictures without your consent, running
up to talk to you give you the sensation that
they're talking in your ear. Because of how the headset works,
it sounds like they're right in your right next to you.
Is a nerving and one woman described an experience where

(22:12):
male avatar surrounded her and subjected her to an onslought
of sexual innuendow, and she compared the experience to sexual assault. UM.
Others have said the tech advances can make these assaults
and harassments feel like they're they're I don't hesitate to
say really happening, because they are really happening, but like
happening to your physical body. Another woman recounted logging on

(22:36):
into the metaverse and within a minute experiencing harassment and
being virtually gang raped, and her words quote, three to
four male avatars with male voices essentially but virtually gang
raped my avatar and took photos. As I tried to
get away, they yelled, don't pretend you didn't love it,
and go rub yourself off to the photo. Um. And

(22:59):
this person said that it happens so quickly she didn't
have time to enact the safe zone feature. So many
women who came forward with these experiences were essentially victim
blamed and told it's just a virtual body, which it's
not far off to what people are being told in
the physical world. Um, it's a game, get over it.

(23:21):
It wasn't actually sexual abuse, but experts have reiterated sexual
harassment in the VR world is sexual harassment. In the
words of Catherine Cross, a PhD student researcher of online
harassment at the University of Washington, she said, at the
end of the day, the nature of virtual reality spaces
and such that if it is designed to trick the
user into thinking they're physically in a certain space, that

(23:43):
they're every bodily action is occurring in a three D environment.
It's part of the reason why emotional reactions can be
stronger in that space and why we are triggers the
same internal nervous system and psychological responses. Which, yeah, that
makes a lot of sense. And this is really because
also there's so many things to this, because we know

(24:05):
as people have permission to create their own worlds, that
they can also create their own rules. So this is
really unnerving about who would the ability, who knows how
to code, who knows about VR, who knows it better
than those who created it, which happens a lot, what
they can do, and the violence they can incite on
that that is so scary. Yeah, and going back to

(24:26):
that other woman's point, she was in there less than
a minute before she experienced this harassment. If if it's
your first time and you're just like, oh, let me
go check this out, and there are these players, these
male avatars that just do that to just wait and
they know what to do, Like that's terrific because you
wouldn't have a chance to even orient yourself or figure

(24:47):
things out. And Samantha were kind of joking about it
at the beginning, but we did both fall when we
were playing, because that's what we're talking about, Like, you,
the sensation is really the sensation feels very real, and
when you get like even a little disoriented, it can
be like almost panic inducing, like oh my gosh, what

(25:10):
is happening? So I totally believe, like right, all these
accounts we're hearing from women that it feels so awful
and dangerous and very very real. And I'm not going
to talk about too much, but the fact that these
rooms can be created, there are a lot of traps
I don't know what how else to say, where they're

(25:30):
trying to entice a certain group of people to come
into their room. And if it takes a split second
to make someone uncomfortable or to abuse somebody, that's all
they really need. And a lot of them have to
have permission. You might be in a waiting list and
all of these and again, you know, especially for younger
kids and younger people who just want to explore and
they're like, oh, that's an interest that I have. Let's

(25:51):
go see what this is about. And again I've hit
some that I'm like, they're just talking about this, and
they'll like, I wanted these spectator I do this and
take out to I just want to see and move on.
But they notice you won't get it coming in. They're like, hey,
so and so, and I'm like, oh god, they see me,
they don't see me, and I have a book. I
gotta I gotta go. But that's that's the conversation, is

(26:12):
that there's so much leeway to this. There's so many
freedoms to this. There are so many unrestricted ways that
this can go wrong UM that it can be scary,
but also there's so many amazing things to this that
could be almost therapeutic, allowed to be used correctly and
monitored to a certain degree. So it's such a big,

(26:33):
wide open space, and with VR so new, as the
technology is really just skyrocketed the last five years. Yeah,
And I feel like that's something we've said and all
of these technology episodes we've done recently, is there's like
these beautiful things to it. There are these beautiful aspects
to it. There's this community building and ways to connect
with people. I found a lot of articles about which

(26:56):
I think we talked about with um twitch and read
it maybe, but I've had a lot of articles from
trans people who are like, this is one of the
few times I felt like I could, you know, kind
of be myself and come out and and make this
avatar feel like how I feel inside UM And so
there they are all these amazing things of it, and

(27:16):
I I just hate that it's so many of the
kind of things we see in our daily lives have
transitioned into this platform because it's you know, it's all
go into a room and in the real world that's
not the word, like the outside the offline world UM,
and I don't feel safe, like you know what I mean,

(27:38):
Like it doesn't stop existing right in VR. And to
be fair, I think we come from a generation when
UM chat rooms were new, so we were there. I
was just I was there at the beginning and they
weren't all great. Some of them were UM and the
online abuse and grooming and all of that that happened

(27:59):
makes me wary of chat rooms in general. And take
this amplipopia because you are talking in speech UM and
then it's odd anyway. But like I'm very wherey like
as a millennial elder millennial, I'll just put it that way,
which I hate that term, but it makes me wary

(28:19):
and wonder how bad this is going to go, which
is sad because it should be new and fresh, but
nothing really is. Yeah, I mean that's the unfortunate thing.
I feel like where my my history professor used to say,
we're slinky where it's like a it's cyclical, but we
are moving ahead one cycle, but it's still cyclical. So

(28:41):
it's like I do think we are making progress, but
we're seeing the same issues over and over again. Right. Yeah.
Something else we've talked about is there are hardly any
avatars in the VR spaces. Um. So if you if
you've never played, there's kind of like these general rooms
of Samantha's been talking about mine. Mine looks like kind

(29:03):
of the lodge but with stars everywhere. A lot of
the avatars in those spaces are not uh women, are
mostly men or maybe non gender. But yeah, trans people
have written about how VR and VR avatars can be
this really powerful way to present their true selves, um
safely and perhaps for the first time. But it is
a problem when people don't feel comfortable using women gendered

(29:27):
avatars or if it is also just that uneven in population.
And I've spoken before about like as early as I
think twelve, I was like, I cannot have a woman avatar.
I'll get her asked too much. Yea, that sounds like
some kind of aspirational quote. Be hot dog, hot dog,

(29:49):
just the hot dog. Um. There has been a lot
of effort to provide a wide range of avatar options,
but still work to be done in that arena as well.
Women who work in the field have that that VR
is difficult to moderate because it requires moderators to watch
how avatars moved, for instance, like it basically it would
require a moderator to be there all the time. One

(30:12):
solution proposed involves a universal hand or arm signal to
tell the moderators something is wrong, but that has its
own limitations. But that was something. There's a letter you
can find. Actually, I think it's in response to that
open letter that we read a quote from earlier where
the mail developer of the game said, like, I wish

(30:35):
I had taken this more seriously, and I think we
could have taken we could have changed the course of
v R. But that was one of the things they
instituted after that happened, was that you had this kind
of hand gesture you would make to kind of tell
the moderators like something is wrong here and and a
review from the Digital Games Research Association about this whole

(30:58):
incident included this quote. Many online responses to this incident
were dismissive of bail mirrors um experience, and at times
abusive and misogynistic. Readers from all perspectives grappled with understanding
this act given the virtual and playful context that occurred
in Yeah, a lot of dismissing, right, which is concerning

(31:20):
because there's a lot of warning signs to be said
that happens offline, that happens in the spaces. So I
feel like to dismiss and say it's just a joke
is really dangerous to begin with that rhetoric in general. Um. Yeah,
And after researchers combed through eleven point five hours of chat,
they found over one instances that could be violations and

(31:41):
that on average, one of these took place every seven minutes,
which is on par with Twitter. Yeah, I mean that's
that's concerning too, every seven minutes of violation. And we've
we've discussed a million times, like a lot of these
platforms don't have the best if you're if it's a
violation and something's really gone right. The idea of VR dating,

(32:10):
which I want to return to, got more traction during
the pandemic, and VR dating apps have also tackled with
how to handle their the safety concerns of their users.
Most of these uh of these concerns around women. On
the other on the other side of it, some have
suggested VR dates as a safety measure themselves as a
way to safely have a first date and look for

(32:32):
any red flags. It's been used as a tool for
long distance relationships as well, so that's something I would
love to come back and look into that more in depth.
I would also love to come back to this. There
are women working in VR porn, and I found like
a bunch of articles about them, and I would love
to come back and and dig into that more deeply. Yeah,
I have a lot of questions and then I'm going

(32:54):
to leave it be'. I'm assuming the VR porn would
be a lot like only fans maybe except a little
or direct as well, where it was not just chat
or requests. Right. Well, the Star Wars holiday special predicted
this in n Oh my goodness, you're fired. You're fired. Hey,

(33:15):
I need to know. So are these again? We're gonna
come back to it, but if anybody is actually done,
because I need to understand the apps and the success
because it sounds genius also scary, So I need I
need to hear about this. Yes, yes, oh my gosh,

(33:36):
please let us know. Um, but now this is something
we're going to talk. I wasn't expecting this, but it
made total sense when I read it. Um, so I
was like googling women in VR, and one of the
top things that came up that I wasn't expecting was cybersickness.
Something called cybersickness. Yes, yes, yes I I. When I
read it, I was like, Oh, Samantha's gonna want to

(33:58):
hear about this. Um. So side sickness is the study
of motion sickness UM when it comes to technology and
how that and so this whole idea that I found
was basically asking the question like, do women experience more
cybersickness when playing VR? If so, why, and if so,

(34:20):
does that mean that it's essentially discrimination against women? So
here is a great but brief explanation of motion sickness
from Nevada Today. Motion sickness, of which VR sickness is
a subset, is generally caused by a conflict between visual
and vestibular systems, which normally are in sync with each other.
For example, car sickness is caused when people feeling the

(34:42):
car accelerate vestibular cues, but they aren't looking outside the
window and they don't see the corresponding visual cues, causing conflict.
VR sickness is the other way around. When navigating in VR,
optical cues like objects passing through the user's periphery provide
the user with the ilusion that they are moving, but
as users sit or stand still, there are no vestibular cues,

(35:05):
causing a visual vestibular conflict okay. An informal poll found
that over twenty two of women reported experiencing motion sickness
when using a VR headset, compared to only about seven
percent of men, and a part of the problem has
to do with interpupulary distance, or the distance between people's eyes.

(35:27):
A lot of ear headsets don't allow users to adjust
this distance, and researchers think that they were primarily designed
after men's facial structures, not women's. The default I P
d um or distance between people's eyes as it's called,
is larger than the average population on these headsets. UM

(35:47):
Hormonal differences might be at play as well. Women typically
have a smaller inner ear, which means they're more sensitive
to vestibular activity, which means more motion sickness. UM people
do develop VR legs, as they're called basically what it
sounds like, you get used to it, but women develop
them at a lower rate, though that could be due

(36:09):
to a variety of factors. But essentially, yeah, these headsets
were designed around men. Doesn't match the kind of average
in society. I am justified. I'm vilified, okay, um, yeah,
because I definitely I can't do it for long periods
of time and it makes me very, very sick. But
here's a quote from a venture beat. A user's experience

(36:32):
levels with flat screen gaming can predict VR sickness. A
skill called mental rotation and the capability to work with
and explore three D space in your head can't have
an impact on how susceptible a user is to VR sickness.
According to a report from Satista, men play more games
from genres such as three D action games and first

(36:54):
person shooters, which are both types of flat screen games
that improve mental rotation. Genres that don't contribute, like puzzle
games and family far stimulators, are the ones that women
play more often than others, like first person shooter games.
As me, I do play those puzzle games. Uh. This
difference between female gamers and male gamers could explain why

(37:16):
women still get sick more often. Oddly enough, I do
get motion sickness in watching other people play first person
shooter games or action games as well. That's why I
was like this quote. I feel like it's like this

(37:54):
is also something I found interesting. So the headset isn't
the only design factor that those women were not in
mind when these headsets and games were created. Women who
played the VR version of Resident Evil four, which I
desperately want to play, reported that the chest the chest
level required on some moves essentially equated to a boob punch.

(38:16):
So basically, I think what they were saying is like,
you have to make this motion where you almost kind
of hit your chest um to get into your item inventory,
which you're gonna want to do very quickly in a
game like Resionval four where zombies are coming to kill you, right,
but they don't. They didn't take into account boobs, Like
boobs might get in your way, and so you have

(38:36):
to like do more and actually hit yourself to get
this function to work. Some men have larger chests as well,
so that can be good for them either. Yeah, well
I don't think. I don't think you're actually supposed to
hit your chest. It's a basically you don't have boobs
because you have to move in so much. Yeah, no, exactly,
they exactly, But I think that's the kind of they

(38:59):
won't even think about that, like, oh, surely, flat chested,
traditional man, this won't be a problem. Other games have
similar issues where the grabbing of an item motion did
not take into account body types other than yes, kind
of this basic you know, traditional man, we'll say um.
A technical product manager at Oculus named Charmagne Hung reported

(39:22):
early problems. Um. So, she was setting it out and
she was like, oh, my hands are too small to
reach grips on the controllers, mascara got no lenses, her
hair was too smooth for the straps um and she
was told essentially, that's probably just a youth thing. That's
probably just a youth thing. Uh. So she asked for

(39:42):
women volunteers to try in the headset, collected data, showed
it to the male higher ups, and they changed their minds.
They're like, oh, okay, yeah see, but it took her.
That's why it's so important that we have people at
the early stages, because they were like, ah, it's probably
just you. It's fine, you're not shaped human. You can't pay.

(40:05):
And related to this, the headset was also not designed
for black people's hair. Unfortunately, could not this was behind
the paywall, so I couldn't read the whole article, but
a woman, a black woman, did a bunch of research
on this and is is or Halves already created a
prototype that works for black people there, yeah, because the

(40:27):
thing about monists of the settings, it has to fit
tight yeah, to your head, which, by the way, I
had difficulty the original oculus because my head is really
small compared to my partners, and so to adjust that
we had to add padding literally things that we're probably
We got like towels and folded it up and put

(40:47):
it underneath so I could fit it. Because they couldn't
adjust easily. You had to take it apart to adjust it.
So it definitely was not meant for people with and
I don't think I have a tiny head, right, so,
but it was smaller than his who has the big head?
You did? You sure did. I had trouble with that too,
And I definitely experienced the pulling of hair, which I

(41:11):
think that a lot of a lot of men with
shorter hair heavy. I don't know, maybe I'm just wearing
it wrong, but it's heavy and talk about like causing
aches and pains on your head. I'm like, I just
committed just putting it on. I have a lot of ailments.
Apparently that's what this episode is investigating. And yeah, there

(41:32):
have been overall issues around accessibility and disability. As we
said it could virtual reality could be a great tool
in that area as well, UM, but there are just
so many issues right now around that, around people being
able to use it or not being able to use it.
When we're talking about the future. There are some silver

(41:53):
linings here and people working to make VR better for
everybody in Maria Kralav founded Women in Full Reality, which
is a really great resource UM and networking advocacy organization
with the mission of quote increasing the visibility of women
in the virtual reality, of women in virtual reality, and
attracting more women to the field. And they have a

(42:14):
list of goals that include things like training, identifying factors,
keeping women from the field, and providing experts to the media.
So there's a lot um I really recommended if you're
interested in in any way. Jin Do Wong, who co
founded Shift or Capital s h UM two Forward Slashes
f T a organization pushing for future technologies to keep

(42:36):
inclusion in mind UM and and they've been really outspoken
about why this is important in VR and how we
can go about it. There's an organization called Equal Reality
and they use VR simulations to foster empathy and they
host diversity inclusion training sessions. That's something else we could
come back and do a whole episode on because there's
a lot of argument about that. I wanted to include

(42:59):
it because that's also, as we've said, there are so
many ways that VR could be this really beneficial and
good tool. But yeah, and there's a lot of stories
UM And I know we didn't really hit onto it,
but VR has been used for military training and UM,
and there's a lot of conversation that needs to be
had about weaponizing tech for power UM and why that

(43:24):
it was geared towards men to begin with, and the
kind of still is UM and taking it into it.
Hey we can make money, let's go UM. But there's
a lot of dark history behind VR that like we
obviously wouldn't get into, but that needs to be considered
as to the future of it. And I was also
thinking we need to do a future episode on drones

(43:46):
because the way it has taken off and then who
is involved in what is what is being used for today?
But I find it interesting that that is its history
and trying to find out how is it shifting, is
it shifting, is it actually becoming more equal lies? And
what truly is the purpose? Yeah? Yeah, and I do think,

(44:07):
like again, going back to that short documentary watched the
crow Like Crow the Legend that was so good and
it was so beautiful and it was such a like
wonderful way to utilize VR. I think there are all
these applications that are fantastic that we could do, but
there is this dark side that we also have to
talk about and keep in mind. And I think that's

(44:28):
again that's been the thread through all of these technology episodes.
So yeah, really really really would love to hear from
listeners about your experience and v are um, either someone
who's played it or a creator. That'd be fantastic. Uh.
And yeah, we are working on a listener mail episodes,
so please if you want us to read something, uh,

(44:51):
please send it soon because it's going to come out
in the next month or so. So and to those
who have been uh sending messages through Twitter as long
as it's going and um Instagram, especially by your experiences
in things like Twitch and Redded, thank you keep sitting
there because it's fascinating to read. We are reading them. Yes,
it really, really really is and we've learned a lot,
so I'm so excited to share all those. Yes, you

(45:15):
can send those to our email, which is stefinitely your
mom Stuff at ihart meia dot com. You can find
us on Twitter, Mom Stuff Podcast or on Instagram as
Stuff One Never Told You. Thanks as always to our
super producer Christina. Thank you, Christina, and thanks to you
for listening. Stuff I Never Told You, production of by
Heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio, you
can check out the heart Radio app, Apple podcast wherever
you listen to your favorite shows

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