Here's an interesting thing: If the spread of equity and the wealth that has led to has resulted in the rising cost of real estate, then, that same spread has resulted in a greater visibility of the wealth disparity in the US as a whole.
I work in AR, and our CEO has a great observation correlating the early days of film with these early days of AR.
Basically, when they first came up with moving pictures, they didn't know what to do with them. They filmed basic motions in the world - animals walking, an arm swinging a hammer - as well as the existing entertainment (plays, from a fixed viewpoint). People would be really impressed the first time, but since the usage was, ultimately, "gimmicky", they didn't come back to it.
It took the invention of special effects; if I'm remembering correctly, merely the cutting and re-assembly of the film (editing), for people to begin to actually see what the medium was capable of and for it to start taking off.
This is definitely that moment for AR.
(Feels like there'll be more, but this is definitely one of them)
There's an interesting idea in "Accelerando" that supertech civilizations would value "novelty" the way we [once] valued gold and Bitcoin values rare prime numbers, and it's hard to imagine a better source of novelty than an alien civilization.
Now - that doesn't address the virtuality thing, but I've a friend with a compelling take on that: If we're assuming that any sufficiently advanced civilization would rather simulate us than visit us, then it's pretty reasonable they'd have more than one simulated universe. And it's pretty likely that the simulated universes would have super tech civs that start up their own simulations, causing a recursion, which in turn makes it more likely than not that we're in a simulated universe. And, if we're in a simulated universe, then we're already "in contact" with the host universe/civilization - otherwise, what's the point in the simulation in the first place?