A lot of people find asynchronous and text-based communication to be unpleasant. This maybe isn’t the most common sentiment on a tech news discussion forum, but probably describes much of the population. I think the internet’s potential to help people socialize is really hobbled by the text form factor of social media, chat, and discussion forums. Video and voice calls are richer, but they aren’t good a good way to meet people.
I’ve found that VRChat makes for a more pleasant, natural, deeper experience than phone calls or video chat. For me, it really replicates the experience of hanging out with people in real life.
Part of it is that it has the thing where you stand next to the people you are talking to and you can move around and talk to someone else when the conversation ebbs and flows. You can go to smaller spaces where you know everyone, or bigger places with friends of friends.
This mitigates the problem with video or phone calls where you have to sort of mutually agree with the other party that you want to talk and when you are done talking. Instead, you can more naturally flow between different conversations. You can go to a crowd and meet new people, you can go on adventure with your close friend, or go hang out at your regular haunt.
There are a lot of problems with the service, though. One of the big ones is that the onboarding experience is shitty for new players. If you don’t already have friends who play, you’ll just end up with 14 year olds screaming obscenities at you in a public world.