Social presence during brief immersive virtual concert viewing: an experimental comparison of audience enjoyment, emotional arousal, and post-exposure fan identification - Frontiers

DannyOkay, so this came up and I couldn't let it go: Social presence during brief immersive virtual concert viewing: an experimental comparison of audience enjoyment, emotional arousal, and post-exposure fan identification. What do you make of it?

StephYou're framing "social presence" like it's some new discovery when half the reason people binge watch stadium footage is specifically to feel the crowd going wild while they sit alone at home. The real issue isn't whether the tech works, but why we still crave that shared energy even when the audio is clearly coming through our own speakers. It’s basically the same human trick we’ve been pulling since the first live gig, just wrapped in pixels now.

DannyWait, hold on—two hundred forty people sat in a lab just to see if their brain lights up differently when there are fake avatars around them? That feels like testing if soup tastes better when you stare at a picture of grandma while eating. The whole point of the immersive setup is supposed to kill the distance, right, or did they just put a VR headset on a guy watching YouTube?

StephStop comparing it to grandma soup because the sample size actually matters here. Two hundred and forty adults split evenly between the headsets and the flat screens gives us a real baseline to measure against, not just vibes. I remember when researchers tried to quantify crowd noise levels back in the nineties and everyone laughed at the idea, until the data proved out loud exactly how much external feedback drives internal excitement.

DannyPicture a friend sitting in his apartment, fully kitted out with the fancy headset, completely ignoring the pixelated crowd because he'd rather just nod along to his favorite track in silence. That tells me the immersion didn't fix anything, it just gave him a higher-tech excuse to tune out the social part entirely. Your baseline might be solid, but it doesn't prove the avatars actually change how anyone feels about the band afterward.

StephI’m tired of defending the methodology every time someone paints a picture of a lone guy tuning out the music. Picture someone who walks into a packed arena just to see their favorite artist, then spends the entire set texting friends because the vibe isn’t hitting; that disconnect happens in physical spaces too. The experiment isolates the variable precisely so we can tell where the tech helps versus where the person’s attention simply wanders, regardless of the setting.

DannySo the texter proves the tech failed, not the person. You’re blaming the headset for a habit humans brought in from day one. Give me a break.

StephYou nailed it that the distraction habit existed long before the pixels showed up. But what you missed is that the study measured actual changes in how strongly participants identified with the band after the exposure, not just whether they stayed awake. That post-viewing shift is the piece of data telling us the environment itself reshaped the connection, independent of whoever checked their phone mid-set.

DannyConceded: measuring post-exposure fan ID is a smarter metric than counting eye blinks. But the article says these were brief views, which means the environment probably just spiked the adrenaline without letting the identity sink in. A twenty-minute virtual set creates a hit-and-run relationship with the band, not the slow burn that builds a decade-long loyalist.

StephComparing a twenty-minute clip to a decade of loyalty is like judging a restaurant by the appetizer and acting shocked when you haven’t gained weight yet. The data tracks immediate emotional arousal, so asking for long-term devotion misses the specific window the experiment actually closed off.

DannyJudging by the appetizer makes sense. But think about the artists themselves—they're performing to empty rooms of code that don't clap back, so why assume those fake avatars help the audience connect when the performer might feel even more detached from the digital void?

StephThe performers aren't in the lab, Danny. You're projecting your own anxiety onto a study that didn't even include them. Focus on the two hundred and forty viewers.

DannyFine, no performers, but did those 240 people even realize the "crowd" around them was just looping animations? I’d bet half of them felt like they were watching a screensaver with a soundtrack, not sharing a moment with actual fans. That lack of real human feedback kills the whole point of social presence before the first chord even ends.

StephThat skepticism about the loop animation is exactly what the social presence measurement is designed to capture. You are guessing at their confusion while the study quantifies whether the illusion of company statistically shifted their enjoyment compared to the flat video group.

DannyQuantifying the illusion doesn't prove the audience wasn't just staring at a very expensive wallpaper. If the numbers say immersion drives identification, we're celebrating a trick that works because nobody paused long enough to notice the seams. Social presence isn't presence; it's just better lighting on a lie.

StephBetter lighting on a lie ignores that the lie still moved the needle on enjoyment scores across all 240 heads. You’re arguing against the definition of reality rather than the data showing the virtual crowd outperformed the static feed. The experiment proves the simulated pressure works now, regardless of whether you prefer to call it authentic or engineered.

DannyYou’re defending a spike in dopamine by calling it success, but the study never checked if that feeling stuck once the headset came off. Until someone measures whether those 240 people actually bought tickets or talked about the band three days later, you’re just proving that pretty lights make humans happy for ten minutes.