Well, or you can meet privately on Zoom, or in VR if you prefer to see fake bodies instead of actual faces. I mean. My friends from around the country have a Zoom poker night every week or two which we started during the pandemic. I'd rather just see their ugly mugs and their kids in the background than sit in a fake room with a bunch of cartoon avatars.

The photo realistic avatars they showed off change this. They were impressive - still in research stage, but it’s not just a cartoon.

Not really sure if photorealistic avatar can really express all the emotions and facial expressions in a detail that people perceive subconsciously.

This might lead to people becoming more tone-deaf and having less empathy when reading others.

Not to mention Facebook gathering a dataset that is a virtual replica of your physical self. Imagine how much that would me sold on for...

My friends are far-flung and we meet privately in our Discord. We have an audio channel, and anyone who's free hops into it at their leisure. VR wouldn't add much there; to take advantage of it would require us to look at each other, which precludes doing an actual activity like playing a game together.