Punchlines Unbound: Comedy Practices in Social Virtual Reality

2026-02-17

AI Summary

This study investigates how stand-up comedians achieve effective performer-audience interaction in virtual reality environments devoid of traditional social cues. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and in-situ observations within VRChat (N=23), the research examines how performers creatively adapt to the constraints of limited nonverbal expression, while also analyzing how contextualized audience emotive feedback, technical limitations—such as audio latency—and community governance mechanisms shape comedic performances. The findings reveal a distinctive interactional culture unique to virtual comedy, highlighting the need for system designs that enhance expressive feedback and mitigate harassment. This work advances a new paradigm for performative interaction in social VR, emphasizing the interplay between technological affordances, user behavior, and community norms.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Social Cognition And Interaction
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Social VR platforms serve as an emergent venue for live performance, enabling co-presence and real-time interaction among distributed performers and audiences within shared virtual environments. Live performances, such as comedy, rely on subtle social cues between performers and audiences, which are missing in VR. However, it remains unclear how comedians utilize avatar-mediated cues in social VR. We conducted semi-structured interviews and observations with 23 virtual comedians on VRChat. Results revealed that virtual comedians transformed their limited nonverbal expressiveness into performative opportunities through intentional control and exaggeration. Additionally, a distinctive culture emerged around context-appropriate emoji reactions from audiences, while challenges such as audio latency and moderation against trolling were highlighted. Our findings advance understanding of how performers creatively adapt to expressive constraints in avatar-mediated settings. We further demonstrate how challenges in performer-audience interaction and moderation provide design insights for systems enhancing feedback visibility and sustain community norms without restricting creative expression.

Problem

• social virtual reality
• comedy performance
• nonverbal cues
• performer-audience interaction
• avatar-mediated communication

Innovation

• social virtual reality
• avatar-mediated performance
• nonverbal expressiveness
• emoji reactions
• performer-audience interaction