I imagine this would be great for disabled/chronically ill people who otherwise don't have the time/energy to reliably do this kind of stuff irl

(Or people that are otherwise unable to find people they relate with irl, for whatever reason)

No, its not the most banal, its the one that most obviously doesn't translate.

Of course its not the same as being in person. But it can be much closer than people realize.

As I said, eye-tracking will be built in, so there will be eye contact. The environment renderings and avatars will be realistic. You can already do really interesting interactions such as table tennis and tabletop RPG games such as Demeo.

This is like optimising porn over actually having sex. It’s ridiculous.

All the robots and goggles can’t hope to recreate the real thing.

And this is way harder to solve than dinner.

Bad example. Porn these days is a super-stimulus, and for many can be better than the real thing - little to no costs and effort required, has all the upsides, and none of the downsides.

I could honestly see it happening. Something like VRchat is never going to replicate IRL socialization, but it's close enough that it could fill a huge gap for a lot of people.

VR socialization might not be great, but like the BigMac is to food it might be just good enough for many.

Come on, social interactions will be like all of us at a masquerade party. What could be more personal?