How to stop being a cynical jerk in vrchat.

Since many people appear to have trouble with this

1 | Break the cycle of apathy.

I will set the scene. YOU are just some guy. You have committed the crime of playing vrchat with some regularity. You spend time marinating in the grim assurance of your own degeneracy and that you will someday die unaccomplished and lonely. This is just a fact.

Your eyes, glancing over the community page sometime, glaze over and bounce off dozens of guides telling you to do all kinds of usual things. Cut yourself off from friends. Insult girls. Make fun of children.

Then another guide. Supposedly it would tell you how to stop being a cynical jerk. You don't think you're a cynical jerk. And, if you were, you don't think it would feel all that bad to be one. You already feel so bad already. That one label couldn't make a difference. Your eyes drift over to the other guides. You don't want to think about that.

Well, GREAT. Don't think about THAT, you utter GUDGEON, think about THIS INSTEAD!

• SHUT YOUR BIG MOUTH
  
  
• LIFT YOUR HEADSET OFF THOSE LOOKBALLS
  
  
• AND ACTUALLY READ THIS GUIDE ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

If you've clicked on this guide, congratulations! You have expressed interest in how to stop being a cynical jerk, or how to avoid becoming such if you are currently not. That's a very good thing; it means that you are, at the very least, interested in growing as a person.

This guide will not tell you how to become what its inverse implies, an optimistic chad. That tends to require more than the scope of a guide like this can cover. But I can tell you where to start.

2 | Empathize a little with children.

I truly do not understand why "don't be mean to little kids" is a controversial opinion in this community. Don't be mean to children. Well, no guff. I am the most intelligent human being on steam dot gov.

No, I can understand being mean to children. I just try to be above it. When you're an adult, your brain goes from tiny and eminently locker-shuttable to huge and fast. Conversations come easy. Cool water on a hot night and that nonsense.

Children don't got that. Until you turn 15 or so (the median age for adults being able to stand you), you are in a creek without a paddle. Your brain is mush, words come together slowly if at all, and even without meaning to you always manage to irritate everyone within a 20-foot radius. There is truly no comparison.

What if I told you that children and adults are interacting with each other wrong on this platform on a structural level?

Well, no guff either. One of vrchat's great failures is its inability (unwillingness?) to meaningfully separate children and adults into separate spaces. This is, even now, doing irreparable damage. I would go as far as to argue that children under 13 playing vrchat is an objective moral failure of the adults around them.

In the meantime, until Damocles' COPPA suit comes down upon us, the least you can do is treat them with a modicum of civility and grace. Try to remember being 11. If your brain were as goopy as theirs is now, you wouldn't want an adult you don't know to shıt talk or shout at you.

Now, children can be annoying and as a rule don't know what about what, but the tone of adults in the room around them can go a long way in dictating their behavior. Children are learning machines; they soak in the norms of the environment around them. A couple levelheaded, friendly adults in a room can make a huge difference in how poor behavior is received.

And if you truly cannot stand a child, just block them. Not engaging is better than actively being a heel.

If you yourself are a child reading this guide, kindly skip the 8th and 9th steps. They don't apply to you yet.

3 | If you hate what is happening, stop playing for a while.

If it sucks, hit da bricks.

You don't have to keep playing vrchat if you're not having a good time. No, seriously. If not playing vrchat seems like it would be more fun than playing it, you can quit playing for a while and see how it feels. Go and think about what it was specifically that annoyed you. See if you can't figure anything out that will help you based on your conclusion.

You can continue to not do this for as long as you want. Don't let your obsession with being the kind of person who does or does not play vrchat dictate your behavior. That's how you get Patrick Bateman, who I do not think is a very nice person.

If you do not know what to do with all this sudden free time from not playing vrchat, try reading Americana by Don DeLillo. Try and figure out what it's trying to say. Report back if you want. I'd be excited to hear what you think about it.

4 | Stop hanging out with people that encourage being a cynical jerk.

As stated above, if it sucks, you can in fact hit da bricks. If the people and groups you are currently hanging out with do any of the following:

• Regularly excluding you from conversation,
  
  
• Making you feel ashamed for something out of your control,
  
  
• Consistently getting in fights/unpredictably hostile,
  
  
• Talking about topics that always make you feel worse,
  
  
• Do not listen to you about your concerns,

You are allowed and encouraged to stop hanging out. You do not owe anything to friends who don't treat you like one.

5 | Go to bed.

This step is easy. At any point between 10pm and 6am, you can take your headset off, collapse into bed, and just lie there for however long you want. Don't worry about not being able to fall asleep; laying in bed with your eyes closed for a while does a half-decent job fending off fatigue the following day (mythbusters proved this if my word isn't enough).

If you want to get really spicy with this, open a window, change the lighting in your room, and put on some rain sounds. You can also use traffic or restaurant sounds if that's not your thing. I'm not a cop. I won't snitch.

6 | Recognize the inherent humanity of your fellow users.

Everyone you pass in vrchat is a real person. Think about that. They're as real as the ground you're standing on when you play. Somewhere, someone is moving their hands just like that. Have you become so numb to wonder, that you aren't struck by the fact that they're somehow in both places at once?

And they're all thinking about different things. That egirl is thinking about the movie she watched earlier. That guy is thinking about a text his friend sent him. That weirdo in the michael jackson avatar is keeping a running tabulation of every kind of coffee he's ever drank and is in the middle of filling out a taste test for some family farm in Columbia.

Every user you interact with is a real person. Every user you interact with is a real face smiling or crying or cringing at whatever particle effect you have last flashbanged them with. Making someone laugh in this game should be the pinnacle of human connection; on language alone you have made someone happy for a few moments. Most do not see it this way; it is tough to imagine that there is a person there if all your life you've been trained to see a mask as an inanimate object.

7 | Think about what you say to other people.

You're in a conversation. Or, maybe you're trying to start one. Great. Now that you understand the humanity of your fellow users, you're excited to start trying to create connections with all these funky and delightful people.

But STOP! Before you shoot your conversational shot, consider the following:

• Is it True?
  
  
• Is it Helpful?
  
  
• Is it Insightful?
  
  
• Is it Necessary?
  
  
• Is it Kind?

If what you have to say does not fall into these categories, or has the potential to hurt someone's feelings in an unexpected new way, consider not saying it. Not saying things is really easy. If you are the kind of person who has trouble not saying things, consider using the mic off button on your controller.

8 | Go outside.

You are inside. At some point in your day, do not be that.

This is unhelpful. You already know you are a basement-dwelling stigmatic who does not go outside. "Go outside" is an insult. It is not instructions.

In the middle of the night, take your headset off. Do it when you are having fun with friends, or after a good conversation. It might be tempting to continue doing those things, and you don't have to do this every time, but when you remember to, take your headset off and leave your bedroom. Go through the empty house turning as few lights on as possible. Feel like a feral night animal in your living room for a while. Then go to your front door. Open it, peeking outside for a second first. Then open it fully, step across the threshold, and stand a couple feet outside your door.

Take three deep breaths.

You can stay out for as long as you want, or go inside right away. But try to do it often. If you get clever with this technique, you can catch some really nice sunrises and sunsets.

For advanced discussion of going outside, see this guide.

9 | Come to terms with your sexuality.

It's okay to be a degenerate pervert. No, really. I promise it is okay to be into sex shıt even if it is weird or gross. People have been into weird and gross stuff for a long time; it's a storied tradition. If you counterbalance sex shıt with real life shıt you can exist very happily. Plenty of rich people get away with it; why shouldn't you?

Being horny is not a crime.

Stop being afraid to be gay. It's alright to like men and men in drag/crossdress, and it's not a moral crime to think they are hot. You don't have to have sex with them. Most of them probably don't want to sleep with you anyway.

Also, it's okay to hang out with furries. You don't have to have sex with them either.

Last: stop being an ƨsshole to sex workers. People who sell their bodies are still people at the end of all of it. And a woman isn't made valuable for wanting to sleep with you personally. You're not that special.

10 | Quit thinking you're special.

Many vrchat users independently come to the conclusion that they are somehow uniquely bad, as though some part of them is fundamentally rotted and unlovable. They take this dire misunderstanding and let it color their interactions with other users.

I will let you in on a secret.

Many people throughout the eons have thought themselves fundamentally rotted and unlovable. The group of people who have thought this would fill vast stretches of continent.

And you would have many friends there.



Don't make exceptions as to why you, singularly, are unworthy of love. Don't make exceptions as to why you, singularly, are allowed to bully children. This is the secret to being a functional human, an optimistic chad: you have to abide by your own standards. You are Just Some Guy, but you are also just some guy. You don't deserve to put through the wringer even if it's your own fault, or you think you had it coming.

If you can't be actively nice to yourself, at least try not to be actively mean.

10.5 | Don't comment weird gotchas on steam guides.

Thanks, but we don't need to hear about how you are somehow beyond hope in your rabbit-suckery and will never be redeemed in the eyes of the common man. You're literally just some guy. Cool down a little.

Screencaps used w/ permission from axolotlmoder.

If you like this guide, consider checking out my other one.

[Unknown]

I will show this guide to my horrible friends ✨

[Maxel]

I have been on vrchat for over 1k hours now. For many it might be small numbers, but those numbers already spoke huge volume for me to understand how this game works. This guide really is straight on point and should just be taken serious by everyone. You have done a great job, author.

[⚞Berrie⛦Black⚟]

Only recently been active on VRC after 15. (I'm 18 now.) I kinda stayed away cuz of the cynicism of the community, and bein online as a girl is honestly tiring. This honestly helped quite a bit. Thx.

[HallowHugs]

Remember that hypocritical people tend to give good criticism, for people trying to turn this around on them, please recognise that means they probably know what they are talking about, also for those who are bothered by this. evaluate those feelings, they come from a place no?

[Lobotomy For PlayStation 2]

I came into this thinking it was gonna be a funny, one sentence shit post, but what this was a full on self help guide, with some funny elements, I think that people really should read this.

[The Argument]

this made me really angry btw!

[The Argument]

yo i think i live really close to you :)

[Sev097]

i never seen anything with such spitefully wholesome energy in my entire life.

[rebel6301]

was expecting a shitpost, honestly i have to agree with the person below me ngl

[Sierra451]

@mae Agreed. Honestly, I think something like this should be general reading to be done before interacting with any form of social media. If more people took this guide's advice, I genuinely think the world would be a better place