Here’s a lesson from the metaverse: Avatar attractiveness is a thing.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that my avatar caught the eye of another avatar at a virtual comedy show. Mine is pretty breathtaking—face like a Lego Minifigure, detachable hands and a legless torso that glides like a ghost.

Yet when the comedian avatar on the stage...

Here’s a lesson from the metaverse: Avatar attractiveness is a thing.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that my avatar caught the eye of another avatar at a virtual comedy show. Mine is pretty breathtaking—face like a Lego Minifigure, detachable hands and a legless torso that glides like a ghost.

Yet when the comedian avatar on the stage referred to me as the “pretty girl” up front, I was completely caught off guard. Not only that, real me was nervous to be the center of attention in a room with 40 or more other floating, legless digital people.

Then I remembered: I’m alone, in a hotel room, in an Oculus Quest 2 virtual-reality headset. Phew!

Such is life in the metaverse, where the digital world transforms the real one in ways that are fun, freaky and sometimes frightening.

The best way to get a glimpse of this metaverse thing? Strap a virtual-reality headset to your face.

Photo: Kenny Wassus/The Wall Street Journal

There’s no real consensus on its technical definition, but broadly, the metaverse is the next phase of the internet, where things jump out of our two-dimensional screens to occupy space in our three-dimensional world—or at least a parallel one.

In late October, Facebook changed its name to Meta to reflect its growth beyond its namesake social-media platform. Mark Zuckerberg previewed his vision of how we’ll work, hang out, work out, shop and more as legless avatars—in part using Quest 2 headsets from his company. A week later, Microsoft did something similar, showing how we’ll all float around a virtual PowerPoint presentation. Save us!

Those companies and others say it will take years and billions of dollars to build this digital universe. But there are apps and spaces in VR right now that give us a glimpse.

So I decided to pack two Quest 2 headsets and my bags. As you’ll see in my video, I checked into a Holiday Inn Express to live in the virtual world for 24 hours.

It was…eye-opening. When my eyes weren’t burning, that is. Here’s what I learned.

A meeting of avatars and video callers in Meta's Horizon Workrooms. Don't mind the virtual moose.

Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

Avatar meetings are great.

Look, it’s hard to take your editor seriously when his voice is coming from a legless Milhouse from “The Simpsons.” Still, after a few minutes sitting around a virtual conference table, we both realized it was better than a boring ol’ Zoom. It felt like he was really sitting across from me, making direct eye contact.

We met in Meta’s Horizon Workrooms, an app that provides a virtual conference room for meetings. You can invite contacts to your private space via the web. If they have a Quest 2, they join in the 3-D space as an avatar. If not, they join via video call and watch your avatar. Once set up, it can be great—but good luck setting it up!

I had avatar meetings throughout the day, including one in a similar app called Spatial. In Spatial, you upload your photo to the company’s website, and you’re then turned into a creepy, tweaky, robo-phantasmic version of yourself. You can also change the design of the 3-D space you’re in. I met Spatial’s CEO and co-founder, Anand Agarawala, by a virtual campfire and then in an NFT art gallery, with all sorts of digital works on the walls.

While the avatars in both apps were very different, they shared one common trait: No legs.

“It’s a technical challenge. We have headsets that are great for tracking your upper body,” Meaghan Fitzgerald, product marketing director of virtual reality at Meta, told me as a floating torso. “We are working on making it feel really authentic to be your whole self in VR, but we don’t want you to look down and be like, ‘My legs aren’t moving the way I wanted them to.’”

The many avatars of Joanna Stern: Spatial, AltspaceVR and Meta's Horizon Workrooms, from left to right, all require separate avatars.

Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

Avatar meetups aren’t great.

Meetings in the metaverse are nice, in part because you have control over whom you invite. It’s like the next evolution of a private Facebook Group or video call. What happens, though, with public groups any avatar can join? I found out when joining Microsoft-owned AltspaceVR.

The platform is used for virtual comedy shows, concerts, general chat rooms and more. When I popped into a virtual park, I was instantly able to hear lots of avatars talking around me. One woman I overheard said she’s a nurse in real life and saw someone die earlier that day. I met some nice people who said they’ve made good friends in the space.

“During the pandemic, I did a few Zoom shows, and they were disastrous,” Kris Tinkle, a Las Vegas comedian whose show I caught, told me. “In Altspace, you can feel people laughing. You can feel and see people buckle over.” And, he says, it’s easier to interact with cartoon crowds.

Kris Tinkle, a Las Vegas comedian shown here in avatar form, performs in AltspaceVR.

Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

There are some built-in safety and privacy tools. You can click on someone’s avatar and quickly mute it. You can also block it, so that you no longer see or hear the person in the space. The app also has round-the-clock moderators, who roam some of the spaces and can be contacted by users. The comedy club has its own “bouncers” to police the venue for bad actors.

It seems inevitable: The same issues we encountered in social media’s well-trodden text, image and video venues will carry over to the 3-D world. Except there, people can remain anonymous while getting right up in your face. Can’t wait!

Solo stuff is fun.

There are loads of stuff to do on your own, including games and my new favorite: working out.

I’m now hooked on Supernatural. In a scenic space (the virtual Galapagos is beautiful this time a year), pop music plays, and an instructor coaches you along, as you use the controllers to swipe, punch and dodge different virtual obstacles. I totally lost track of time. But it’s pricey: $19 a month or $180 a year. Within, the company that built Supernatural, has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Meta.

In Supernatural, an instructor guides your workout, as you swing your controllers in the air, hitting different targets.

Photo: Kenny Wassus/The Wall Street Journal

I also spent more time than I should admit playing “Beat Saber,” a classic VR game, which by total coincidence also lets me smash things with my fists. Another “total coincidence”? Meta acquired the makers of this app too.

May I also suggest VR meditation? In the Guided Meditation app—not (yet?) owned by Meta—I enjoyed replacing my hotel room’s view of the Holland Tunnel with a view of British Columbia’s Azure Lake and listening to some breathing exercises.

Everything is fractured.

I made four different avatars for different apps over the course of 24 hours. I also cursed profusely, attempting to create different accounts using the virtual keyboard.

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That’s one way to understand the coming fight for the metaverse: Meta and Microsoft want to provide the underlying platforms, letting us log into one account, build one avatar, then float across all our games, workout apps, meetings and more.

Unsurprisingly, Meta and Microsoft, two companies sidelined in the mobile iOS-vs.-Android race, are looking to build the next iOS or Android. (Meanwhile, iOS maker Apple has been progressing in augmented reality for years, and analysts and industry watchers say it could be working on a VR headset as well. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.)

Then there is the hardware. VR helmets not long ago required room sensors and spacewalk-like tethers to some overheated super PC. The self-powered Quest 2 is, by comparison, a feat. But spend just an hour in it—let alone 24—and you’ll face app crashes, performance slowdowns and battery drain. After my endurance test, I took Advil to relieve the motion-induced headaches.

The future is far off.

Virtual reality—where I attempted to live for 24 hours—is an escape from the real world. Augmented reality brings digital objects into our real world, like holograms. But the AR glasses that are required for us to see those holograms naturally, instead of as obviously superimposed digital sprites, will likely require five to 10 years of hardware evolution.

A few weeks ago, Snap Chief Executive Evan Spiegel told me: “We are interested in augmented reality because it’s grounded in the world that we share. It does a better job of integrating computing into the world than the way we are using computing today.”

You can access your laptop via Horizon Workrooms, but good luck typing on the keyboard while wearing a headset.

Photo: Joanna Stern/The Wall Street Journal

In Horizon Workrooms, you can pair your real Windows or Mac laptop to the headset so that your computer desktop appears on your virtual screen. It was nice to be in a virtual meeting with my editor and take notes on my actual laptop. Except, I’m typing on a real keyboard I can’t see because of the VR headset. So I end up with a lot of dfdjf;lkjsdg.

I think that kind of sums it up. Blending the realverse and metaverse makes sense, but in the meantime we’re going to deal with a whole lot of dfdjf;lkjsdg problems!

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Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com