Brief - The Hustle

VR comedy is growing with the metaverse

Written by Jacob Cohen | Apr 7, 2022 9:01:31 AM

Virtual reality is an odd thing. On one hand, headset sales were up 92% last year to 11.2m units, and Meta has more than 6x the job openings for Oculus than for Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp combined.

On the other hand, VR is a joke. Literally. A medium known as VR comedy — consisting of oddball interactions between people in the metaverse — is now trending, with ~30m views on TikTok.

The content is pretty ridiculous. One clip of a VR courtroom is about as orderly as you’d expect.

Who are these comedians?

One popular group, Hummy’s VR Comedy, has 457k TikTok followers and 14.6m YouTube views. Their most popular TikTok is a quirky conversation with a banana man in an elevator.

Another group, Merry VR Pranksters, describes itself as “3 guys who do voices/characters and mess with people in VR.” Some clips include:

  • An argument about getting a papercut in VR
  • A guy throwing virtual paper airplanes at people
  • A funny discussion with a Meta employee in VR

Our thoughts: The bits are funny — but they’re especially hilarious when you consider the interactions are between legless avatars controlled by real people, all of whom are speaking into a 1-pound hunk of plastic strapped to their heads.