By now you have probably seen the video of Mark Zuckerberg excitedly telling us about the metaverse. Wes Fenlon is certain that it is all bullshit!
If you also know deep in your heart that the metaverse is a big fat steaming load of billionaire nerd pabulum, I hope reading these words provides you with a wave of vindicating comfort. You're not crazy. I know it can feel like that when the people peddling these things seem so convinced that they're the future, like they know something you don't. Don't fall for it. Watching people spend $69 million in fake money to buy a JPEG should make you feel like you're living in an age of unparalleled nonsense.
Why don't the tech billionaires chasing after sci-fi metaverses get that these fictional virtual realities seem great on the page but would be hell to actually live in 12 hours a day? I truly do not know, but I think it may have something to do with their refusal to admit that they are the baddies.
They keep floating these visions of a utopian metaverse that's all about people talking to one another in a virtual utopia, even as they sit atop massive companies that use piles of money to reshape the internet as they see fit.
...the metaverse will be a place where advertisement and authenticity are even harder to tell apart. It's a commercial dream, not a creative one.
If Facebook—sorry, Meta—is one of the key drivers of the metaverse, then of course it will have some new spin on the ad-laden news feed. It'll just be a natural extension of the gig economy, some poor soul being paid .00000000001 bitcoin an hour to virtually dress up like a carnival barker and shout about the latest horrible news out of Syria on some virtual street corner. And if Epic somehow created Sweeney's utopian metaverse, it would still be built to promote Epic's own interests and profit above all else. There's no way for any massive tech company to build the metaverse without becoming the villains.
Tech companies are going to keep pushing the metaverse, and eventually we'll all have to deal with it. But in the meantime, don't feel like you've lost your mind when every pitch for it feels absolutely meaningless.
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