Grieving in virtual worlds: emotional processes and generational differences in avatar-based memorials on VRChat
Mengxi Fu, Hanyu Xiao, Haoyi Ruan, Yuran Lin, Xiangyu Dong · 2025
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Description
People now hold funerals for game avatars, and grief for a lost avatar can feel real. Mengxi Fu and co-authors studied that grief in a 2025 paper on virtual worlds. Two avatar funerals were staged on VRChat, a social virtual reality platform. One was a solemn rite for a retired game knight, and the other was a playful sea burial for a pirate figure.
The team watched both events and spoke with sixteen users aged eighteen to sixty-five. Younger users tended to meet avatar loss with humor and playful stories. Older users leaned toward solemn rites and a sense of lasting identity. The study shows that age and culture shape how people mourn online, even when no real death has occurred.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Mengxi Fu, Hanyu Xiao, Haoyi Ruan, Yuran Lin, Xiangyu Dong |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 70 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |