Punchlines Unbound: Comedy Practices in Social Virtual Reality
Social VR platforms serve as an emergent venue for live performance, enabling co-presence and real-time interaction among distributed performers and audiences within shared virtual environments. Live performances, such as comedy, rely on subtle social cues between performers and audiences, which are missing in VR. However, it remains unclear how comedians utilize avatar-mediated cues in social VR. We conducted semi-structured interviews and observations with 23 virtual comedians on VRChat. Results revealed that virtual comedians transformed their limited nonverbal expressiveness into performative opportunities through intentional control and exaggeration. Additionally, a distinctive culture emerged around context-appropriate emoji reactions from audiences, while challenges such as audio latency and moderation against trolling were highlighted. Our findings advance understanding of how performers creatively adapt to expressive constraints in avatar-mediated settings. We further demonstrate how challenges in performer-audience interaction and moderation provide design insights for systems enhancing feedback visibility and sustain community norms without restricting creative expression.