If Mark Zuckerberg Means What He Says About “The Metaverse” We’re In Far Worse Shape Than We Thought
What if God was one of us?
— Joan Osbourne, One Of Us
They “trust me.” Dumb fucks.
— Mark Zuckerberg’s first recorded communication about Facebook
Facebook, or Meta, or whatever Mark Zuckerberg is electing to call it this week, is now allegedly a “Metaverse company.”
What does that mean, exactly?
And what do Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook mean by “the Metaverse” in the first place?
The official Meta launch video, unfortunately, did not really tell us. There’s no concrete definition within it — the closest Zuckerberg gets is stating “the best way to understand the Metaverse is to experience it yourself.” (Some real echoes here of ‘you have to see the Matrix for yourself.’) This is immediately followed by some spectacularly unconvincing video of Mark making small-chat with uncanny-valley, dead-eyed CGI avatars of his friends, playing bridge except, y’see, in the middle of a Starship Enterprise screensaver; it looks, for all the world, like a Second Life ad, only more boring. This is not a very good answer to “What is the Metaverse?”
