(Why fix something when you can exploit and monetize it?) The metaverse is, depending on one’s view, a thrilling digital escape from our world or a candy-coated overlay on our existing, flawed one. The tech industry has been singularly successful at producing things that occupy our time and attention without solving fundamental problems. These kinds of microlabor, which have been one of the more depressingly innovative aspects of the internet economy, lend themselves all too well to the metaverse and its form of overheated digital capitalism. And if you can’t afford a nice piece of digital property, or the goggles with which to view it, surely there will be opportunities to earn one’s keep by performing virtual tasks, mining cryptocurrencies, surrendering personal data, watching ads, or minting NFTs. If the metaverse now has a distinctly early adopter feel, it may soon be “democratized” by offering inducements for less moneyed users to spend time and attention in these environments. One could imagine companies deciding to subsidize their own VR goggles and other devices-much in the way they have done with smart speakers like Google Home-in order to get consumers to step foot in their world. Tech and video game companies like Epic, Roblox, Disney, and, of course, Facebook are investing billions in these virtual worlds. Whether the metaverse is worthwhile is almost secondary to the fact that it’s coming, if not already here. For a work-from-home parent, for example, life in the metaverse may interfere with parenting and the many other duties they juggle. Putting on a VR headset to take part in a meeting also implies an almost bodily devotion to work in a time when many are preaching new forms of flexibility.
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(VR sickness has a gender divide, typically affecting women more than men.) There are other practicalities, including that not everyone wants to strap one of these devices onto their faces, and that many people lack the quiet space and computer power to have a full VR experience. There is the initial problem of the headsets-their cost, especially, and the discomfort some people feel wearing them, which can include dizziness or other motion sickness.
There are many reasons why all of this might simply collapse in a heap of overblown marketing and wasted R&D budgets. After all, it’s hard to turn away from a screen when it’s strapped to your face. (And think about the advertising and upselling opportunities if someone is spending most of their waking hours fully immersed in a virtual world!) But it is also largely digital hokum, another way for tech companies to colonize even more of our attention and shape the contours of our lives. Maybe it could be fun to attend a concert with millions of people, or to go to a theme park and then continue the experience at home. While virtual meetings may hold little charm, the metaverse, in its potentially all-encompassing nature, clearly offers some unusual possibilities. “It’s this pretty amazing experience where, you know, you feel like you’re really right there with your colleagues.” “It basically gives you the opportunity to, you know, sit around a table with people and work and brainstorm and whiteboard ideas,” said Zuckerberg, never one to refuse a platitude. Zuckerberg himself has been on a vigorous media tour, demonstrating the technology in virtual tête-à-têtes with people like CBS’s Gayle King. Called Horizon Workrooms -a successor to the morbidly named Infinite Office -it’s part of a growing suite of tools that will combine various screen experiences into one seamless digital world.
So far, Facebook’s flagship metaverse product is a virtual office space that works with the company’s Oculus goggles. At the same time, it’s important to understand where the metaverse propaganda fits into the company’s plans-not least its plans for all of us-and why billions will be spent to try to convince us to take it seriously. Every article about Facebook’s metaverse initiative-including this one, perhaps-is an article that doesn’t focus on the company’s deleterious impact on democracy and public life. Even as antitrust regulators circle, Facebook is attempting to sell itself as hugely ambitious and transformative, rather than a surveillance-capitalist juggernaut deserving of being broken up. But for Facebook, the metaverse also serves another crucial purpose: allowing the company to distract from its proliferating legal, regulatory, and reputational problems.