comicon metaverse

in my little world there was a bit of talk today about the new fad of not going to things. I don't mean as a form of protest or an artistic statement but simply because you don't have too anymore. the most pop example of this I found today being Kevin Smith and Maddy Gaiman at comicon 2007 who for some time avoided the crowds by following the near if not live coverage of the events going on in their hotel downstairs. the coverage one can find of such events is directly proportional to the draw of the event minus the time that has passed since 30 minutes or so after the event occurred. I've witnessed the behavior first hand before but until today always thought of it primarily as simply a useful geeky superfan status trip. Now i'm looking at it more as something that will become inevitably and obviously mainstreamed. in my opinion more and more of us will pay to go somewhere realtime virtually as opposed to actually going there after all who wants to travel across the country and fight crowds in excess of 350000 in order to see someone speak when you can simply click. the one missing element is being able to add to the event which according to MIT is probably not that far off. my question is how long will it be before it's rude to walk thru someones avatar?