The metaverse is already a very weird place. We didn't need it to have an unsettling anime cat-person police department to make it any weirder.

But apparently we got it anyway:

The [Loli Police Department] is a fake law-enforcement agency that prowls the various worlds of the VRChat platform, which has an average of 20,000 concurrent users at any given time...

There now are nearly 11,000 members on the the LPD Discord. The group, which gets its name from "lolis" — the young-looking anime girl avatars members use — is the most prominent police roleplay group in VRChat. The tightly run community allows members to experience a fantasy version of police life and prides itself on being a source of chaotic good in the strange world of virtual reality.

Ahh, it's a "police roleplay group" that officers a "fantasy version of police life." Glad that's cleared up.

Honestly, as unsettling as the whole sexy-animal-anime-cat-avatar thing is, I was sort of intrigued at first about the idea of a bunch of virtual cops cracking skulls in virtual reality. I mean, surely that would make the boring, waste-of-time metaverse slightly more interesting, right?

Alas:

Karet, a 29-year-old game developer and LPD captain from Texas, says that the hard work of volunteers allows users to roleplay police activities in a realistic environment. "We have some of our own worlds — like the hospital for our medical division, where we can pretend someone is getting treatment, or the jail where we put criminals," says Karet, who designed the LPD station and jail.

One of Karet's favorite things to do is mess with users at random. "Lots of people in VRChat like to sit in front of mirrors," he says. "I will go up to the mirror and do a ‘mirror inspection.' Then I say it's an illegal mirror and start looking for someone to blame and arrest. They just don't know how to handle that," he laughs.

Oof.

I'm not trying to be mean here but this whole thing sounds really quite depressing and lame.

So basically...kinda like the rest of the metaverse. It's just the truth, folks.

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