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Paper short abstract

This paper explores “sleeping in VR” as an emergent socio-cultural practice in social virtual reality. Drawing on VRChat ethnography, it shows how users collectively rework technical constraints to cultivate co-presence, intimacy, trust, and embodied connection through sleep.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how sleep becomes a socio-cultural practice within social virtual reality (SVR)—multi-user environments where participants inhabit avatars to interact through embodied co-presence. Drawing on digital ethnography within VRChat, a popular SVR platform, the paper develops a case study of “sleeping in VR” as an emergent practice that foregrounds the relational and contested nature of digital affordances.

Building on debates around affordances, the paper distinguishes between two interconnected senses: socio-cultural affordances, which emerge through shared norms, language, and practices, and technical affordances, which arise from material and design constraints. Sleeping in VR is neither natural nor self-evident in virtual environments, but instead emerges as a situated practice. Despite technical features that actively discourage sleep, such as headset discomfort, constant light exposure, and persistent connectivity, users actively rework these constraints, enduring physical discomfort to cultivate co-presence, intimacy, and a sense of safety.

Ethnographic accounts describe sleep through carefully staged and socially negotiated practices such as avatar mirroring, virtual cuddling, and the management of trust. These practices reveal how embodiment remains central in virtual worlds, even in the absence of touch. VR sleep becomes a counter to experiences of isolation, anxiety, or marginalisation offline.

This paper argues that affordances in VR are actively produced: users adapt technologies, endure discomfort, and reconfigure environments to make new practices possible. Ultimately, sleeping in VR demonstrates how users collectively transform technological disinvitations into meaningful, embodied practices, reframing sleep not as a purely biological act but as a socially and technically mediated one.