The Midnight Bar World is filled with some interesting characters

When I initially heard of the world where you could mix virtual drinks based off of the VA-11 Hall-A Visual Novel, I was pretty interested as I actually enjoyed that game, but after a few weeks of checking out the hottest group public instances, I've just found it to be bogged down by "professional VRChat players".

And by "professional VRChat players", I mean the people who take VRChat (virtual bartending, bouncing, and the like in this instance) way too seriously, as if it was an actual job. I have been kicked a handful of times from these worlds for a myriad of reasons, but here are some of my favorites:

- After passing out and returning back to the bar, I made an offhand joke that my virtual drink was laced with virtual tranq and that's why I passed out in a back alley. The dude making the virtual drinks seemed to get a kick out of it, but immediately after I found myself kicked.

-I found myself in the hidden mirror area right next to the spawn area and came face-to-face with the owner of the group instance surrounded by 3 run-of-the-mill egirls (none of which were his supposed girlfriend that he had his bio). I think I got about 4 words in before the egirls lampooned me for what I could also assume to be interrupting some sort of infidelity before getting promptly kicked.

-I had pulled one of the bartenders off to the side and asked him a couple of questions about what he was doing, the kinds of people who came here, and the like. When I asked "Do you think take this a tad too seriously?", one of the other bartenders came up to me and kicked me.

I always wondered why these groups would go through the laborious effort of heavily "moderating" these public instances when they'd probably find more success just keeping it only in the group. Most of these group instances are incredibly cliquey anyways, so it wasn't like me or any other schmuck could make good conversation with the "regulars" as they sort of kept to themselves.

The more I thought about it, the more I think that the whole uptight group VRChat thing isn't for the "bar patrons" but for the staff of these groups who sort of throw their weight around and get pissy when someone doesn't perfectly align with what they've got going on. Actually, now that I say it out loud, the best way I can liken it to are club world groups who are just wound a little too tight and don't know how to ease up. Probably the same cut of people.