Name: Tupper, he/him
What I Do in VRChat: I work here!
… but also, I spend a LOT of time:
- going to music events on the weekends
- flying jets and helicopters
- exploring new Community Labs worlds
Why and How I Joined VRChat:
In July 2017, I looked over at the HTC Vive sitting on top of my desk, mostly unused, since I’d picked it up a year before. I decided to use Steam’s search and looked for free games to try out, hoping I’d find something to do.
I found VRChat, installed it, and loaded in. I got thrown directly into a Hub instance (the ONLY instance at that moment) to find all 10 of the concurrent users online in the world, stacking cubes on each other.
Someone told me that you could make your own custom avatars by uploading literally any model you can find. I recalled that, oh, right, that MMD thing I played around with had a huge library of anime models that I could use, and went to go figure out how to port them in.
A few weeks later, I had published a YouTube video tutorial on the process I’d figured out. It spread like wildfire, and the previously decently-not-all-that-anime VRChat was gone, replaced with MMDs EVERYWHERE.
The furries came later. Thank goodness. I’ve heard multiple say that if you’ve got furries and anime in your community, you’re SET.
Later on, VRChat got bowled over by going from 200 to 20,000 CCUs in the course of a month. In January 2018, VRChat hired me as an email support agent. 6 months later, I moved to Community Management, and a few years ago, Graham (virtually) handed me a bit of paper that said “you’re head of community now”.
I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing, but I’m lucky enough to have an amazing team and community that’s shown me whats important along the way. I literally learn new things and unlearn old things daily.
So… yeah, I guess that’s why I’m here? and how?? idk
Favorite VRChat Memory:
There’s a lot. Too many to name… but at this moment I recall my first real music event at VRChat: Christmas morning, 2020, at 5AM, a friend told me to go to this thing called GHOST CLUB.
I managed to sneak in, and found myself in the middle of a wild audio-visual experience I’d never seen before. The room was packed full of people, none of whom were speaking, and everyone was just watching the visuals and listening to the music.
A week later, I went to Shelter, and I think I’ve only missed two Shelters since then.
unfortunately ghost club happens at a terrible time for the Americas TZs so I don’t get to go back very often when they do happen…
Favorite World:
I can’t play favorites!
… but lately I’ve been spending a LOT of time in Zweikaku’s F-14 world, learning how to fly the helicopters.
Picture of my usual avatar:
I’ve got three main ones I use. First, my “work” version that I usually only wear for events where I’m present as a VRChat team member first:
then, a “club” version that I wear to music events:
and finally, a more casual Runa with a modern rig – i really like robot avatars, especially those with non-standard legs, so this is a very comfortable avatar for me. shoutouts to torinyan and nradiowave, Runa is probably my favorite base avatar 
Why I came to these forums:
what part of “i work here” do you not understand
joking aside, I like forums a lot! Discord and live chat is great but there’s nothing like a forum for establishing longer form discussion. No, that doesn’t mean walls of text, that means lots of conversation, over time, where people share and build knowledge.
I want to empower the community in every way possible to help VRChat get better, because people want to help us. So, the forum is one way! Next up, the wiki. fingers crossed!
