I'd argue you're actually seeing the emergence of a "new series A"/"first money in" investor category. Often angel investors who raise seed funds or small venture funds fit in this category. These include (but not limited to) Mike Maples/Floodgate, Aydin Senkut/Felicis, Hunter Walk/Homebrew, Aileen Lee/Cowboy, Michael Deering/Harrison, and several others. Also see Heavybit for a recent category-specific innovation. Also Union Square, Foundry, Upfront (Mark Suster) do a lot of this. I think there may be more high quality investors at the early Series A tier than ever before, but many of them are new.

Ha ha ha ha, of course not! This is venture capital, not freaking moral philosophy. If it's addictive, good, we'll make more money.

Erm, addictive nature of VR? What about the addictive nature of video games themselves? The Quora article there describes a kind of escapism; perhaps more immersive than video games already are, but tbh I don't think there will be that big of a difference in the end.

Asking innovators to exercise caution because they might exacerbate the hikikomori phenomenon is like asking defense attorneys to exercise caution because they might exacerbate the rates of criminal activity. In both cases, that's not what these people do. There are obvious ethical lines, but it's not like these guys are building viruses in a petri dish.

This has been a continuous refrain from neo-Luddites regarding information technology well before I started noticing it near 40 years ago.

Yes, VR is more immersive, depersonalizing, and derealizing ... but I don't think it will prove much worse than large-screen high-res video games, or even textual social media, are now. Those prone to the implied problems are already getting their "fix". Heck, TV sucks up near 40 hours each week from the majority - and that was reached with grainy 720x400 resolution media with few options for interaction. VR provides diminishing returns for information addiction.