Metaverse, A Fake Monetized Reality
Promoting Fakeness
It can be disappointing, watching one of the world’s richest men, owner of a most influential company, pressing a vision of the future so frivolous and devoid of meaning as a bold agenda of civilizational significance. Mr. Zuckerberg can barely see what his tech does from rosy Menlo Park, let alone his Hawaii estate. Look at this girl, unplugged from Reality, dancing to no music in a crowd with no stake in her performance, tethered to some fictitious “stage-situation” induced by the social technologies advocated by Mr. Zuckerberg:
It's cringy because whatever she’s pretending to do is not what's really happening. It's technology-induced pretension, interaction with things that are not present – Call it augmented, call it virtual, it’s pretension all the same. Fake situations, orchestrated to generate online audience engagement.
An Unworthy Fantasy
Mr. Zuckerberg's metaverse fantasy is a misinformed vision of the future led by profit seeking. The problem is that there’s a good chance this future will come about because the technology inducing people into such activities will be unleashed, disconnection will happen, at the mercy of the metaverse and Mr. Zuckerberg himself. He has called it, he has recruited the full muscle of his empire to take us there, 60,000 employees in global footprint enabled by billions in treasure.
The metaverse is technology purpose-built to connect us with the faraway and fictitious at the expense of actual Reality, at the expense of what is really happening next to you. The metaverse swallows your presence at the expense of the people and space around you, people and space that sorely need you. It would be hard to believe a hundred years ago, that people would decide to live predominantly on the web, leaving behind the real world in pursuit of an online sense of community and worthiness, the search of which has in effect only delivered the situation now enveloping us, the situation we escape at the slightest opportunity through digital means.
Zuckerberg‘s metaverse concept makes logical progress in this direction: The replacement of Reality by a new one – however subtly – one that is fake, engagement-optimized, copyrighted, patented, monetized, but of course with “privacy and safety features” built-in from day one, as Mr. Zuckerberg wisely touted during his keynote.
Looking for meaning where there is none.
Finding Meaning
It takes time to accept it. The real dream of worthiness is waking up everyday, in a familiar place, next to your kin, happening together in peace and proximity, finding meaning in the day, knowing the next day will be just the same, a meaningful exercise of cooperation and coexistence in repetition.
If you find yourself relying on screens and VR goggles to connect with the most meaningful, that's sign you may be treading far. Seeking disconnection from your immediate situation is a sign that you feel meaning is elsewhere, a call to come back home. Beware of fakeness, beware of technologically-induced recontextualization of your experience, beware of fake reality, because time spent there is time not spent in this one.
Reflection of Teleology and Purpose
We’re doing this so that…
We're building the Metaverse so that [] happens.
We're building the Metaverse so that [] happens, given that [].
Are there compelling ways to fill in the blanks?
✎ Connection to