From PVirtWiki

P/Virt

Recently a group of students developed a machine that generates a field of pure autocausality, allowing a small subset of humanity to access an alternate reality that can be molded by pure will and imagination. Offically called "Philosophical/Virtual Reality," it was quickly shortened to "The P/Virse," and those who can access it call themselves P/Virts.

Philosophical/Virtual Reality is a delicate thing, however. If a non-sensitive person so much as observes an autocausality field directly, it collapses and any P/Virts within return to normative reality. This and the dubious legal status of P/Virt machines have created a P/Virt underground. P/Virts gather in warehouses and caves and live a strange and vibrant life where imagination shapes reality and they can appear to be whoever they want. Some just visit, while others spend as much time as they can there, and consider the P/Virt reality more real than the real world.

Because the P/Virt reality is subject to imagination and whim, it's built by consensus. Should the abandoned warehouse be filled with wild grasses and exotic, placid animals, or should it be lined with red cushions and decorated with gold pillars? Questions like this are decided by a largely unconscious process of consensus where those with stronger feelings or more vivid imaginations have more sway. As a result, P/Virt reality is continuously shifting as the attention and desires of those in it shift. At the same time, the ethics and morals of this new community also shift as the P/Virts learn more about their new world.