The Family Tree

==Explanation==
The VRChat Family Tree is an old non-canon construct spawned from early VRChat's tightly knit community and found family dynamics. This concept rapidly exploded into a convoluted disaster following the popularity of Light RP until it had become a bloated nightmare. At it's peak, the tree consisted of roughly 500 individuals and weird chains of relation lead to almost everyone being related to everyone else. This raised awkward questions about many relations, with individuals sometimes being sisters and aunts to the same person, etc. Because of this the tree was quite literally axed, and is left as an old meme from the early days of VRChat's popularity boom.
===The Root===
The VRChat Family Tree unofficially started back in 2017 in the days before the first VRChat Boom caused by the Ugandan Knuckles meme. During this time, found family dynamics began forming in the much smaller and more tightly knit community. This borrowed some from common internet tropes such as "The Mom Friend" etc. As VRChat evolved and Light RP became more frequent, due to the influence of Team Five, Nagzz21, and later StealthRG, the tree grew greatly and quickly became convoluted.
This tree began expanding dramatically when, in Roleplay, Nagzz21 confirmed himself and Ryan were related by blood. Soon after Andis introduced their spouse, Magic Kappa, to the Joey Bagels group. This connection looped other groups such as Team Five and the VRChat Minutemen into the mix.
===Chaos ===
This connection lead to the nightmarish Bloat. Magic was adopted by three separate people, Kiwo, LeyLey, and Tess. Tess was involved in Chipz (Legacy)'s harem at the time, and in later lore this was retconned to her being his Vampiric Sire. Multiple Harems overlapped from here, eventually including Ikrium and his 15 adopted children.
At this point, the tree became an unmanageable total loss. It was so expansive and interconnected that it became easier to simply make a list of individuals NOT a part of the tree.
===Broken Trunk===
Eventually Oathmeal, who was at the time in lore also related to Lanfear, adopted LilBagel. This caused the tree to loop back in on itself as LilBagel was Joey Bagel's parent, and Joey was dating Lanfear. On top of this, MysticalCyan became a heavily 'familied' character and ended up related to just about everyone, causing several branches of the tree to overlap even worse. This all caused the tree to be purged from record and abandoned, however smaller more contained family trees became the norm as Light RP shifted into Medium RP with Chipz' Season 4 and the Crossover.
Before the tree was chopped down, Magic Kappa attempted to map it out in it's entirety in the Presentation Room. This act of pure insanity and total disregard for his own mental wellbeing highlighted just how hellish the tree had become. By the end of this effort 347 names were written in the room, taking up over half of the map space, and Magic claimed to have become more brain damaged.
==The Aftermath ==
Following the hell that was the Family Tree, VRChat Roleplay broke off into several separate settings as more structured roleplay became popular. These series tended to be more focused in scope and had less overlapping family relations in the cast because of this, with every character having their own non-player family or at worst a couple siblings. Even in the less structured Metaverse families became more manageable and crossed over much less frequently. The Dark Times, it seems, have passed...
==Trivia==
*At several points, far-fetched connections between different characters were formed. This included Chipz being Woops step-father, as well as just about everyone being cousins. Some even managed to chain relations connecting themselves to VRPill. It was a bit like Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
*Wiki Editor Lamango attempted to keep the tree in order for a long time, before eventually going mad. Even after the first pruning, the tree was a mess. Sanity was only restored when the tree was axed for good finally.
*Roflgator at one point claimed to be related to KimplE, but she believed he was just pulling the race card as they are both robots.
Category:Information
Category:VRChat Culture