"Can I say you're my girlfriend on Facebook?"

When I was a kid and I'd visit my grandma in Chicago I remember her taking me to some pier mall thingy by the lake, forget what it was called but it was like a souped up entertainment mall that had mini golf. They also had this VR thing called Battletech, which was a mech war. I would always get really hyped up to play, and then it would feel like this huge buildup, but then it was just kind of an awkward and hard to control video game, although I would be convinced that I was into it and want to do it again anyway.

Navy Pier

this is interesting because i'm convinced that rich man zuck is literally just doubling down on infantilizing himself and his company as the way forward

this is interesting because i'm convinced that rich man zuck is literally just doubling down on infantilizing himself and his company as the way forward

Remember, the video in Infinite Jest that was so fascinating people would stare at it without eating or sleeping until they died was a blurry, infant's-eye view of a woman with big tits leaning down and cooing maternally at the viewer. If someone programs something like that into Meta-vision, or whatever it's called, when it launches, goodbye civilization.

the video rendering of the space "meetup" has really been sticking in my mind. It's kind of a fascinating artifact of Zuck's disconnect from most people, even moreso than his "just smoking these MEATS" videos. It reminds me of something from a really bad children's cartoon, and his whole affectless way of engaging in how "FUN" he seems to think other people will think it is. And I can't help but think that this is partly a situation of he has permanent control and no one can tell him "hey, this isn't actually appealing, most people don't want to replace going out with being floating robot at a space poker game that is constantly interrupted by dog videos, and also you shouldn't be in this video, because you are unappealing"

Haha, yeah, he's like Woody Allen playing the love interest in Woody Allen films.

He's like a super rich dude without kids showing up to a kid's birthday party with the worst or most mismatched toys and games ever.

"I bought him a Segway!"

"Mark, he's only three."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure he'll grow into it. Oh, I also got him half a cow, all organic, from a farm I own. He and his friends are going to eat well this summer, that's for sure! Anyway, gotta go, sorry I landed the helicopter on your garden."

was a blurry, infant's-eye view of a woman with big tits leaning down and cooing maternally at the viewer.

knowing DFW, it was probably buried in a twenty paragraph footnote

something from a really bad children's cartoon

I echoed this upthread - his Metaverse resembles some Nickelodeon show that was cancelled in 2003

Maybe all this is just too soothe Mark's inner child - a trustworthy robot buddy, and REAL friends that aren't on the payroll to build a fort with

Reminds me a lot of Sony's failed "PlayStation Home"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Home

infantilization is one of the primary motivations for people who are basically reactionary ime

not motivations but .. ways of being i guess

Was gonna say, if there was ever a time to indulge the general public's inner infant, that time is now

obviously i'm just spitballing but i remember the promise of the internet in the 90s was like .. virtual worlds that would replace social reality with a kind of utopia. anyone who believes that into adulthood.. it's like a different version of people who basically believe that disneyland is real life, that fantasy that they need to be real in order to successfully escape everything else, responsibility etc.

this is in some ways like an impossibly dumb remake of citizen kane

No one who actually wears glasses all the time wants a bunch of AR shit on their lenses. Sounds like another thing that will make me constantly think I need to clean them.

How sick would it be to wear world-occluding goggles and trip over my cat over and over?!

I'd visit my grandma in Chicago I remember her taking me to some pier mall thingy by the lake, forget what it was called

Lake Michigan, probs.

Haw.

Yet another angle on why this may all be really dumb (via Slate Money): it's not clear that we will actually have sufficient internet speed and bandwidth in most places to run this all the time.

where? in the world generally? something like a quarter of the world’s population has never used a mobile phone.

in the global_north full fibre is available in more and more places and it is essentially a solution without a problem: nobody needs 900Mbs up and down. there is no compelling application for those speeds - yet

i agree with ppl who say that things like the metaverse will probably start to exist but they’ll be created by people who are not facebook, it’ll be like, invite-only discord VR chats run by bronies

And once again we see William Gibson’s famous quote - “the future’s already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” - come to life.

"...and also you shouldn't be in this video, because you are unappealing"

They could've paid a few mil and have John Legend or Pete Davidson or whoever we'd actually want to hang out with guide us through the metaverse.

https://vfxblogsite.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/96489-andysnoke.jpg

"Let me tell you about ... the metaverse."

The Oculus VR head gear seems like an extremely clunky attempt to replicate the Star Trek holo-deck. The Metaverse, as envisioned by Zuckerberg, seems like he's trying to figure out how to make the Star Trek holo-deck sound like a place where the Enterprise crew would hold exciting business meetings.

Didn't every episode featuring the holo-deck result in it glitching out so horribly that the Enterprise was in danger of being obliterated?

why they kept that thing plugged in is beyond me

A lot of shit went down in the X-Men holographic danger room, too, iirc.

Red Dwarf's Better Than Life sessions were no picnic either.

They could've paid a few mil and have John Legend or Pete Davidson or whoever we'd actually want to hang out with guide us through the metaverse.

― ... (Eazy), Tuesday, November 2, 2021 8:10 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This raises a good question about which celebs would actually want to attach themselves to Facebook at this point. John Legend did a Super Bowl ad for Google a few years ago, but he's also politically engaged enough to recognize that shilling for Facebook in 2021 might not be the savviest move.

Ricky Schroeder?

Kevin Sorbo

Alas, banned from Facebook.

Paul Rudd

struggling to think of any professional actor who would be less likable than the zuck tbh

They could have gone all the way with Meta and used Jessie Eisenberg.

I know it’s being presented as some “you can be or do anything” with unlimited possibilities type of environment, but having avatars not tethered to reality, in any professional or public setting whatsoever seems like an incredibly fraught proposition. I mean, there will have to be rules. And then more rules when those first rules aren’t comprehensive. Protocols. And then of course there probably will be something like in game purchases. So fun.

It may create some new efficiencies for interacting, but I find it hard to believe one bit of any pitch that promises we will somehow have a better time than we do irl.

cba reading up on what this new thing is about but when I open the app now there is a “dating” tab & when I click on the tab it just gives me the infinite buffering circle, which feels about right tbf

Zuck deep down realizes that facebook was/is just a friendster/myspace ripoff, they bought Instagram as a fully-formed thing - now he wants some visionary thing to call his own. It's an ego thing

anyone interested in this subject should watch this, from like five years ago. very difficult to believe that the metaverse wen won’t resemble this in some ways, perhaps most ways

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

that's some straight up PKD nightmare right there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUsWBCH8Ch8

interview with the zuck. i'm not going to pretend i've read/listened to it all.

https://stratechery.com/2021/an-interview-with-mark-zuckerberg-about-the-metaverse/

when I was growing up and my parents kind of told me, “Okay, go do your homework and then you can play with your friends.” I actually think in retrospect, those friendships were probably more important than the homework

careful dude you might strain yourself thinking these deep thoughts.

When I was a kid and I'd visit my grandma in Chicago I remember her taking me to some pier mall thingy by the lake, forget what it was called but it was like a souped up entertainment mall that had mini golf. They also had this VR thing called Battletech, which was a mech war. I would always get really hyped up to play, and then it would feel like this huge buildup, but then it was just kind of an awkward and hard to control

I remember the first iteration of this called Virtual World. So. much. money spent on the place...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzbcEYa1U4M

but then...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVybQ2hU0PQ

just in case you needed another reason to delete your facebook...

FB paying one of the largest Republican consulting firms in the U.S. to orchestrate a campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok, including opposition-research tactics, smear campaigns, sending fake letters to newspapers pretending to be "concerned parents" tying TikTok to dangerous teen trends that actually started on Facebook, targeting of new outlets trying to get headlines like “From dances to danger: how TikTok has become the most harmful social media space for kids", and other similarly ethical tactics you'd expect from a firm that's one of the biggest recipients of GOP campaign spending (over $237m in 2020), the biggest payments coming from national GOP congressional committees and a pro-Trump super-PAC.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory

is Meta going to have to change their name again when this gets out? (I mean, it IS out but there's not much of a buzz about it)

"You have a new friend suggestion: Suzanne Moore"

Oh FFS.

I also had that and nuked it on sight.

Whozzat?

Terf journo.