Interview with K0ya: Part 1

Part of the "VR is Alive" Spotlight Series, Season Two

Content Warning: Racism, Strong Language, and some Adult Themes

ArmaniXR: For this interview I am fortunate to chat with K0ya about her vast experience as a Black social VR community leader with her friend Lovely…

K0ya sits down in a cave portion of a world with ArmaniXR to discuss Black social VR.

ArmaniXR: First I just want to let you introduce yourself including your pronouns and what you want the audience to know about you.

Well, I'm K0ya. I'm a woman. You know what I'm saying? I'm here representing my Discord community, issaServer. This is a beautiful Black community that exists right here in this VRChat platform that we're in.

Can you explain your name and your avatar selection?

So I don't know this girl, but her name's Weeby. I'm gonna keep it a bean. I really try to find...I try to use more Black Avatar creators and Black Avatars or Avatars that have really nice Black skin complexions. And I like Weeby's. She creates for the Black community, but she herself is not Black. Now there are Black creators who are Black themselves like Banshee, Hayweee, and Poppy. I haven't met Poppy in VRChat yet, but when I first got on VRChat three years ago, she was the only creator that had Black Avatars. And that's where literally a Black girl told me, and I told all the Black girls after me until we started seeing more. But Weeby made this one, and I like her builds. They have nice bodies. They're kind of thick, a little muscular… and all of her shades of Black skin, I like her shades. But you know, that's just what I had on.

It's cute. But I do fuck with my Black creators heavy. I got Black Avis (avatars). I just ain't gonna be switching them on. But this is who I'm feeling, namsayin’? Li’l rock star, namsayin’? Li’l chocolate, chocolate drop. Li’l undertit. (Laughs) Yeah. This is where I'm at with it. I like her skin tones. With some creators, before…you couldn't find no Black avatars. And then when they started making Black skin tones, they were like dry, clay-ish, kind of ashy looking. And not too many people can get the texture right where your skin, the Black skin doesn't look dry and ashy. She put some baby oil on me or sum’n. Some of that little Diamond Bomb by Fenty or sum’n. I don't know, I'm shining. I like it. This is newer though. I got hella stuff. I'm definitely newer to Weeby, not gonna lie.

Can you tell me about your introduction to and earliest memory of social VR?

It's really crazy because my introduction to VR was from my brother. Like to gaming, period. I was never a gamer. I didn't start playing games until I was... I mean, I'm in my thirties now, but I didn't start until I was 30, 31. And my brother, he had been a virtual gamer. He had a headset and stuff. I didn't know what this was. He ended up buying me an Oculus. He bought me a Quest 2. He bought me, my mom, my sister, and my grandma one. And we never played it. It was just sitting there in the box for a long time, for months. The only time we would get on it is if my brother asked us to get on it and play a game with him. Which of course, he wanted us to experience it. But he's the gamer. So if he didn't ask me to get on it, I wasn't getting on it. You know, he had to tell me how to use it. So one day, you know, I guess he was just tired of it just sitting there. And he was like, well, I think you should try VRChat. I think you'll like it. And you know, weeks went by and I didn't. Then I was like, oh okay. I listened to him, but I was never a gamer. I'll do it when I got some time.

Then one day I just got on it and got on VRChat and I was hooked. I was like, I don't know what the hell he introduced me to, but I'm here. I'm definitely here. That's really how I got into it. Like, for real. I had an Oculus for a hot minute before I ever used it, but I didn't play video games. It was definitely my brother. And he literally does not get on VRChat at all. It's crazy. I guess he came and explored, checked it out for a little bit and then felt like it was more of my thing. He just never came back. So that's how I was introduced to VRChat. I was just in here by myself for real because he didn't take me. He just told me to try it by myself and I did.

He was on Echo Arena heavy. That was his game. Echo Arena and Beat Saber. Yeah. I think they got rid of Echo Arena. That's the game we would play I did get on, it was Echo and Beat Saber. Have good memories of Echo. That shit was hard. And I was tired as hell after every game we played. I was like, damn. I do miss it though. It was fun.

Coming out with that trolling shit and that “N—er!” shit? Yeah. You're getting blocked. You're getting checked and blocked. Off rip.

K0ya strikes a confident, secure pose chatting about checking and blocking trolls.

In VRChat, was there a specific world? Or were you just into avatars? Or what got you into VRChat?

I kind of was just hopping around for real. Of course, I went to the Black Cat and met... I met a young guy. This is when I realized there were kids everywhere. Because at first, I didn't know. You hear voices and you don't know who's saying what, who's talking. But I met...he was mute. I remember him. He was my very, very first VRChat friend. But he just...he was like a little person. And I was in some cat avatar or something. I couldn't figure out how to get to my settings. I couldn't figure out how to get shit situated. So he would type his message so I can read what he was saying. It wasn't like the voice chat thing we have now or something else. But I was able to read what he was telling to me. He helped me set up my whole VR headset and how to pretty much use the settings in VRChat. My safety settings, all that. Not talking the whole time. When I finally did get it set up, he unmuted and he talked to me. And he was just like, I usually don't talk. But I'm comfortable talking to you. So he was my little buddy. He helped me out. But yeah, I met him in the Black Cat and then I just started exploring from there.

I will tell you where I did meet like literally all my friends back before they ruined it. Club B33. That's where my ass was at. Like the original Club B33 from three years ago when that shit was jumpin’. I hopped around from like these chess worlds, The Black Cat and shit like that. And it used to be the HomeBox where everybody was before 1’s Optimized Box. But B33, that's where I started hearing and seeing more Black people. ’Cause all these other spaces I was in when I first started jumping on VRChat and hopping in these worlds, I mean, they were all just White. And all you’d hear is: “N—ers! N—ers!” And I'm just like, bro, what the hell? It used to really piss me off at first because I didn't understand why. I didn't get it. People just don't walk around in the real world doing shit like that. I wasn't a gamer. I wasn't used to when people would say something like that and I would go off. Then people were like, well, you just got to get used to that, you know…it's a game. You got to get used to it.

I ain't got to get used to shit! Like what are y'all talking about? And now that I've been here, like I kind of see what they talk about, but it's still something I'm never going to get used to. I'm still going to check somebody. I don't give a fuck. I'm going to check you every time. Don't care. And you're going to get blocked. Coming out with that trolling shit and that “N—er!” shit? Yeah. You're getting blocked. You're getting checked and blocked. Off rip.

ArmaniXR: When you're gaming, were you able to make connections in VRChat from, Club B33 and go into different VR games?

I mean, I played some games. But I just met people talking for real. People just fuck with me, I guess. I really don't know. I would just be in a space checking out people. People would be in there playing music like hip hop, R&B, and rap stuff that I want to hear. So I'd gravitate to that person. If someone's in the mirror, nine times out of 10, they're a desktop user. So they're just sitting there in the music, in the mirror playing music. They could be getting high. I would get…I would get on here and that's where I started getting high. Let me not say I started getting high more because I've been getting high. But I’d social smoke in VR, because I knew people were going to be in there playing music and they're probably either going to be drinking or smoking. I had met smokers there. So we would just come in there. I'd made some friends. They'd be in B33 playing music and just mirror dwelling for real, smoking and drinking and just talking to each other.

Games were here and there, but I was more of a social person. We just be vibin’, just chillin’. At the time when I came on I was already older than a lot of people I had met in here, especially three years ago. I feel like I was the oldest person everywhere I damn near went. So I think people also gravitated towards that. Then they just knew, like they just knew I was Black. They would tell me…some people would just walk up to me and tell me that I sound like somebody that they needed to respect. And I was just like, what? What do you mean? You sound weird. I'm a little scared (laughing), but that's cool. I guess?

Then this one time—Lovely, I never told you about this—but this one time I was in B33…this shit was funny…I was just talking to somebody. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine and this dude came up to me and he was like, “I’ve never in my life heard somebody sound like they had a fat ass.” I was like, what? And he just walked off. I was like, what the fuck? (laughing) So yeah, I don't know. I gravitated towards the music and people gravitated towards me. I was where the vibes were. Wherever the tunes were, that's where I was.

But that's how I ended up meeting a lot of club owners. I was a Questie at first. In B33, when it was jumping, that's where I ended up meeting different club owners, different dancers or people in different scenes in VRChat. In club scenes or party scenes. There were a lot more PC-only worlds. And since I was a Questie, I couldn't go. And they would be like, ah, damn, like, I wish you could come to this world, but it's PC only. You got to get a PC. Whatever they were playing, whatever song, I would just be turning up dancing, partying wherever I could. I was doing more at the time than the full body people. And I really wasn't a dancer, I was just in that space with my little half-body ass going crazy. People wanted me to come to different parties and shit. And they would invite me, but I can only go to very few because they were always in a PC-only world. And I was like, fuck, I don't have a PC. Then my brother ended up handing me down his Alienware gaming laptop when I started playing the headset more and playing VRChat more.

When I figured out how to hook up my Quest to the gaming laptop, I was half body, but I was a PC-Questie. I never went back to Quest standalone. No shade to the Questie-besties. But once you touch that PC-life, you'll never go back. Why would you want to? Everything looks so much better. You can go to so many different worlds. I never went back to Quest-standalone. If my laptop wasn't working or something, it was because it was old Alienware. It was heavy. Shit was running hot, all types of shit. It was old, I was having issues. But if that PC didn't work, I was not getting on VRChat at all. No, I'm not going back to the Quest life. Well Quest-standalone, I'll say that. But yeah, that's how I started going to more parties, and of course, meeting more people. It was just so funny because when I was a Questie, I ended up meeting like different club owners that had like big clubs and they wanted me to come to their parties. That was, you know, that's just how I met people. They fuck with the vibe. I was like, aight.

K0ya in an avatar in front of luminescent plants.

What inspired you to lead your own social group in social VR?

The more I met people, the more I played, the longer I played, the more parties I went to, the more people wanted me to be part of their communities or help them with their communities because VRChat was dominated by a whole bunch of White people and they like EDM and House music and all that shit. I don't like that type of music. I don't party like the White folks. I wanted to…I was with my people. I found a lot of my Black folks. I met them all in B33. That's who I wanted to be with. I wanted to be with Black folks because I'm Black. I'm comfortable with my people. I started getting invited to parties, more spaces. A lot of people wanted to hang out with me. I had like a crowd that would come and want to do different stuff. So cool! We would go to different parties and shit. People wanted me to, you know, invite me and my friends to their parties. So we would go and I would help people start their own clubs and communities. I guess people felt like I had this pull when it came to a Black crowd or Black people or whatever. So they would want me to help them with their communities. They would build their clubs in the communities and I would come help them. Me and my friends would just come to different servers, different parties. That's what people want when they're building these servers and having these clubs. They want a crowd because they want the numbers to be there.

So I was doing that, you know. Then I don't know what happened. It's like people just started to get weird with me and switch up. I eventually became a party host. But how are you asking me to host your party or your club or whatever and you want to come with my friends, but at the same time you're trying to throw little sneaky shade? I'll be hosting and you won't put me on the flyer, but you want me to tell people. You want me to promote for you. Why would I do that? You asked me to come be the host, but you got this flyer that you won't even put me on. I don't work for you. You know what I mean? I'm not getting nothing out of this. I don't mind helping, but now it's getting to the point where you feel that I'm obligated to do things for you, to put your server in my bio or something like that. It's like people…I don't know. I don't even know how to explain it because it was so weird. It's like I just started getting shit on and got this weird hate from people. For no reason. And I was traveling from server to server, community to community. I was getting invited to the servers, traveling to those different servers and inviting people to those servers, building their servers up. But people that will call themselves my brothers or my best friends, I don't even know how to explain it. They just really turned on me for…for no reason. And my friends saw that. The shit that I went through, I had a crowd who watched everything, who saw everything. They're like, what the fuck is going on? Why are they acting like this?

Some of these White clubs wanted Black people to start coming to their parties, because they didn't have no Black people coming to their parties. But every time they saw me, they saw me with nothing but Black folks. So of course they're like, oh yeah, K0ya, I want to do this, this and that. I want to do…and I told them: Well, we don't come to your parties because y'all don't play the music we want to hear. I said, all y'all do is play rock music, EDM and house music and shit. I said, every party I've been to want to hear, that's all y'all play. We Black people, we don't want to hear that. I'm not speaking for all Black people, but for the ones that I mess with, we Hip-Hop, Rap, R&B…we want to hear what we listen to. And it wasn't being played anywhere here. It wasn't being played in this space.

So we started doing our own thing. Throwing our own parties, having our own stuff with the music that we want to hear. Then I met other DJs. Black DJs that play the music we want to hear. And then the White club owners would come to me saying: Hey, I want…I want the DJ that you have to come over here. I want this person to come over here and do this, this and that for me. And then they would kind of just push me out the picture. But it's like, you came to me in the first place….you wouldn’t know any of these people if it wasn't for me. But, you know, I kind of just let it happen.

I still support my people. I still was like, hey, this person wants you to do this, go ahead. They want you to do this, this, this and that. I just would, I would stop by for my friends, but I wouldn't promote that other shit. We're just going to support my friend. I'm not about to speak on the club or the owner, none of that. We're going to support my friend DJ-ing. I guess it was just weird, but I got tired of people shitting on me. I'm helping you! You're coming to me for help. I'm constantly helping like these different people, different groups. I’m constantly going to these different servers, building your numbers up, and bringing people here. And you're constantly shitting on me for no reason. It's weird. So I was like, fuck it. I'm no longer building up other people's communities. I'm no longer helping them and their shit. I'm tired of doing that. At the end of the day my friends tell me that they're here for me. A lot of them were telling me, why don't you just start your own server? I couldn't fathom that at the time because I didn't even know what Discord was when I came to VRChat. Someone asked me if I had a Discord and I was like, what the fuck is a Discord? I got clowned so bad. I figured out what it was and that's when I started joining different servers and all this other shit.

Eventually I got tired of people just acting weird towards me out of nowhere. For the most part, it was all men. I don't know if they just have an issue with women or Black women or what the case it was, but it was just weird how they was doing. Actually the last club I supported before I made my server was led by a woman, a woman of color I was working with, but she ended up getting jealous of me. She asked me to be an owner with her and to help her because we both had left this other guy's club that we were helping him with, but he acted an ass towards us. She was the one who built his server at the time. She was the one who built his world. She was doing a lot.

And then of course he was supposed to be my brother. He would stay telling everybody that we're brothers and sisters. So I'm spreading the word inside VRChat, we're coming to this server, coming to these events, and doing these events. And the way he did both of us was like….Yeah. Anyway, I got tired of getting disrespected, and shit on, and treated like shit. So I watched me a little eight minute video on YouTube, the university of YouTube. Watched me a little eight minute video on how to build a Discord. And I built my own server. Did my own shit. That's, that's really how it started. I just started my own shit that was catered to us. Kind of like FUBU. For us, by us. Mwah. (Laughing)

ArmaniXR: I started in the Black Altspacers community—I'll back up and say this too: I remember being in the same kind of White or non-Black spaces in AltspaceVR. My social VR journey kind of started in the same way. Eventually I started to see more Black people in Altspace. So I'm curious when the closure of Altspace happened and then a migration from Altspace to VRChat happened, how did the Black Altspacers community, from your perspective, join the Black VRChat community? What did you observe?

It was not a positive experience for me or my community. They came over here and I was excited because it was a group of older Black people coming to VRChat. That's what I've been looking for…who I've been wanting to come over here. I'm older, I have older friends, but there’s not a lot of just straight up older people that are Black on VRChat. So I was excited when they came over here. But the experience was not a good one. They're very…they're not willing to work with the Black community here in VRChat. They're very uppity. They're very stuck up and they only work with each other. They only support each other. They're not willing to work with the Black people here in VRChat. They're not willing to expand. They're not willing to learn different things, different ways or a different culture.

They're not nice people in my experience. I've come to their events. I've made very few friends. I've helped a few people like KippVR…a lot. I've met DJ Marcus and TySkyyTheDJ. Outside of them, that community…they're not willing to work or meet people outside of themselves. I don't understand how they can call themselves the Black Metaverse when they refuse to work with other Black people, or refuse to get to know other Black communities, or even come to anything with Black people who were already here and established in VRChat. So I don't have a positive experience whatsoever with the Black Metaverse, Black Altspacers or Black Horizon at all. I really don't have anything positive to say. And I hate that because I accepted them with open arms. I was overly excited that they were finally here that I tried for over nine months. I tried

I don't know why they're like that. I hate to say it, but that's just real. And even the people I've met, it's like they don't like me or something. I don't know if I'm too much of myself and too secure in who I am. Don't make no sense. That's just real. But I met BoogieXR from that space and BoogieXR is dope as hell. I took her to another space, this ain't about that.

Read Part 2 of my interview with K0ya here.