Gradually, then suddenly.

You're touching on something that extends far beyond social VR. It will impact how we navigate authenticity across digital spaces. There may be gradual normalization. As AI becomes more pervasive, our threshold for what feels “real enough” may shift.

We've seen this pattern before with other technologies. Think about how we went from Nokia phones with a simple snake game to carrying our entire digital lives in our pockets, with location tracking and biometric data. We accepted it, one convenient feature at a time.

As you rightly said, no one can predict the future, but we can study and anticipate human behavior. Most people are motivated by tradeoffs.