Virtuality shapes life worlds in multifaceted, contradictory, and sometimes surprising ways. The Early Career Forum of the Collaborative Research Center "Virtual Life Worlds" at Ruhr University Bochum lexically traces the complexity of the virtual, addresses its diverse and controversial experiences, and offers substantive and methodological approaches to the topic through pointed conceptual work. Terms like "virtualization" suggest extensive social and cultural change, but it becomes evident that virtual life worlds can only be understood in context - intertwined with and detached from digital technologies.