By Yinka Bokinni, Photo: Channel 4, The Guardian, April 25, 2022
Before I went into the metaverse, I’d read a few articles on it and people didn’t have the nicest things to say. But I wanted to see if that was true, or whether people were just trying to find negativity. I’m a heavy user of social media, so a 3D virtual space where you can interact with other people – where artists are doing concerts and fashion houses are doing shows? That’s exciting to me!
But within the first 10 minutes of putting on a VR headset and entering a chat room, I saw underage kids simulating oral sex on each other. I experienced sexual harassment, racism and rape jokes. At one point, I heard someone say “I like little girls from the age of nine to 12: that’s just my thing.”
I came across one user who was spewing the most disgusting language I’ve ever heard in my life, to the point where we couldn’t even broadcast what he was saying. I’m talking extreme racism – hate speech, listing the kinds of people he hated, the kinds of people he wanted to kill. It was just so violent. And it all happened in a room I was able to access despite using a profile that I’d listed as being 13 years old.
Comments (1)