Producing intimacy in virtual reality

Abstract

This article offers an autoethnographic account of the author’s experiences with facilitating relational intimacy in the Oculus Meta Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) platform. In doing so, it provides accounts of the author conversing, playing games, and watching movies with her relational partner. It also details the author’s user practices for contending with such issues as limited social and physical fidelity, functional limitations of the VR device, infrastructural failure, and data privacy. The discussion is organized into three inter-related sections: (1) intimate-affective experiences in VR, (2) the materialities of VR intimacy, and (3) the politics of VR intimacy. The article applies a critical materialist perspective to interrogate how VR environments might contribute to the production of intimate-affective experiences for some users. It demonstrates how these intimate-affective experiences are produced in coordination with the materialities and attendant politics of VR. The article concludes by suggesting that the politics of platforms and infrastructures become the politics of digitally mediated intimacy.