Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Among the many moments in the 2020 Presidential that left us wondering, "Is this real life?", the topper must surely be the day when the Trump campaign announced a press conference at the Four Seasons… which turned out to be Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a yard improvement company literally located next to a crematorium and a dildo store.

And now, as was inevitable, there's a picture-perfect recreation of Four Seasons Total Landscaping in VRChat — go here for all your post-election virtual world comedy needs.

Created by "Coopertom" and uploaded earlier today, it's already been visited hundreds of times, he tells me. (And to judge by the video he posted, it pretty much looks like a full-tilt furry convention.) And while I first assumed it was just a 3D diorama using photos of the real life location, Tom tells me he mainly he created it from scratch:

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😭😭😭😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/HrsikjnK1P

— Aisha Saeed (@aishacs) November 7, 2020

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Love this Twitter thread from author Aisha Saeed on the day the press began calling the 2020 Presidential race. While many took to the streets to celebrate, her kids (like a lot of others) took to their favorite virtual world to celebrate. As it happens, the Joe Biden has an official island HQ in Animal Crossing, so that's where they went.  (There's also an official Biden-Harris HQ in Fortnite, though no word of impromptu celebrations there.) While it's too early to say if virtual world political headquarters will become more central to campaigns (as opposed to fun side gimmicks), my guess is the Minecraft/ROBLOX generation will embrace them as they reach voting age. 

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Click here to teleport to the 2020 Election Simulator in Second Life, which as the name suggests, is tracking the 2020 Presidential election in real time. And because there's a good chance that you're already online, obsessively checking Twitter or 538 for election results, why not at least do it with a talking squirrel or a supermodel?

I'm currently there now watching the results come in, waiting for Georgia, Arizona, or Pennsylvania to be officially called for Biden. Sitting with me is Chantal Harvey, who's been shooting streams of election results in various parts of the virtual world.

"I did a live stream, election night, in SL," she tells me. "It got quite fierce at some locations; the Biden location was trolled. The Trump location had quite interesting conversations."

I'm pretty sure it's about to get fierce again soon. Click to join the fun and celebration (hopefully) here, or watch an official SL video about the simulator below. 

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Great catch from Adeon — over two years after VRChat saw 20,000+ concurrent users, which many considered a Ugandan Knuckles (don't ask) meme/streamer-driven fluke, the virtual world just surpassed those usage numbers:

[W]ith more users joining VRChat from Quest and now Quest 2, the app reached a new record of 24,000 concurrent users over the Halloween weekend, CEO Graham Gaylor tells Road to VR. This eclipses the previous record of 20,000 concurrent users in early 2018 when the app went viral on Twitch… Earlier this year in April around 30% of VRChat users were using VR; in October the share of VR users was up to 43%. Among the 24,000 concurrent users specifically, Gaylor confirmed that an even larger share of users—52% or 12,500—were in VR.

If you check VRChat's Steam stats (embiggenate above), usage on Steam last weekend peaked a little over 19,000. So only as estimated 5,000 are coming in via Oculus Quest/Quest's version of VRChat. Adeon isn't surprised:

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