Maggie Grove

The Metaverse is the pet project of Facebook – newly rebranded as Meta – and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. They hail it as “the next evolution of social connection,” “the successor of the mobile internet.” They claim it will bring value and meaning to our lives by offering:

 

          a. Unique, deeper ways to connect with others – a “deep feeling of presence” like you're “right there with other

              people”

          b. New experiences “you couldn’t have in the physical world"

          c. New ways for creators and businesses to grow 

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That sounds like it would be pretty meaningful to us. It would enhance our sense of belonging by promoting connection with others; it would offer new purpose by presenting unchartered territories to explore together. But before we assess the Metaverse's actual ability to deliver on these promises, let's briefly consider its leaders and whether or not we trust this stated intent. 

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Let's start with Meta (AKA Facebook). It’s been established that Facebook has performed covert psychological tests on its users, facilitated campaigns for genocide and fascism, was fined $5 billion for user privacy violations, abused their own developers, refused to take basic precautions to prevent misinformation or manipulation from foreign governments, has been charged by their own employees of prioritizing profits over consumer safety… and the list goes on.

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And Mark Zuckerberg doesn't quite inspire confidence either. This whole Facebook thing literally started as a juiced-up Hot or Not. That’s it. Silicon Valley investors, salivating over the profit potential of social media, propelled Zuckerberg to success. But outside of this one idea he had 20 years ago, there doesn't seem to be much inspired (or reputable) about him. In the words of his former mentor, Silicon Valley heavyweight Roger McNamee, “given Zuck’s status as the founder of Facebook, the team rarely, if ever, challenged him on the way up and did not do so when bad times arrived.” A Facebook spokesperson separately corroborated: “People disagree with Mark all the time.” McNamee continues in his op-ed,

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“I got involved with the company more than a decade ago and have taken great pride and joy in the company’s success … until [now]. Now I am disappointed. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed…. It took me a very long time to accept that success had blinded Zuck to the consequences of his actions.” 

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Yikes.

 

But to be through in our investigation, let’s put our skepticism to the side for now. We've arrived at our central question:   

do we believe in the Metaverse, in its ability to deliver on its promises to bring value and meaning to our lives?

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First: the claim that the Metaverse will foster a deeper sense of connection and belonging. I have my skepticism. Social media has offered us more relationships, but not deeper – actually meaningful – ones. Today, Americans report having fewer close friends than ever. Experts say we’re experiencing a “loneliness epidemic,” where 61% of young adults report feeling “serious loneliness.” Because as the experts also say, “loneliness has to do with more connected intimate relationships that feel real and close, and screens don’t provide that.” And most of us believe online community spaces like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter actually do more harm to our mental health than good.

 

Meaningful relationships, ones that fulfill us and ward off loneliness, are hard to foster between dissociated anonymous avatars, with no accountability or shared history or commitments. You can’t live on relationships made at the Miller Lite Virtual Bar or a Meta-sponsored “afterparty” (ew). And why should we want to? Why would we do any of those things at a screen when we could do them in person, in a way that doesn’t “feel” immersive (as Zuck brags) but actually is immersive?

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Nor am I convinced of the purpose it will bring us, through its experiences that promise to “go beyond what we can imagine.’” So far, most ideas for the Metaverse sound pointless (and honestly just dumb). Brands from Nike and Adidas to Gucci and Louis Vuitton are ramping up to sell “virtual outfits” for users to dress their avatars in. Why would anyone spend money on virtual clothes over real clothes…? Meanwhile, McDonalds and Panera are rolling out “virtual restaurants” that sell “food items and beverages for use in virtual worlds.” Again, why would anyone spend money on virtual food over real food…? Then we have Metaverse NFTs, “virtual art” ranging from digital pictures of Coca Cola to Nike sneakers. I know I’m beating a dead horse but again: why? None of these things sound valuable. In the words of Brian Eno, a leading voice in the art world, “I mainly see hustlers looking for suckers.”

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To me, the common thread between these things is spending money on things that offer no real world value or meaning to us. I’m not convinced there’s anything in the Metaverse that would make my life better in a meaningful or lasting way and, at the risk of being presumptuous, I think that’s true for most of us. All it does is replicate existing, meaningful, real world things in a shitty, empty way. But I am certain that the Metaverse would make a lot of money for Big Business. As Inc. Magazine puts it (weirdly admiringly?) “for businesses, the metaverse [offers] another platform to reach customers and make sales. And you don't have to make up new products to be a part of it.”

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That is the most depressing sentence I’ve ever read. You don’t have to create anything with value or meaning – nothing new – you just need to, as Inc. continues, “[have] a savvy strategy to enter and make money.” Corporations have dollar-signs in their eyes; take the fashion industry for example. Per NPR, “the fashion industry thinks it may have found its next pot of gold” in virtual outfits. That’s unsurprising when you hear that Morgan Stanley values the virtual fashion market at $55 billion by 2030.

 

So it seems the Metaverse does fulfill its promise to help businesses grow. But unfortunately, it only seems to do so at society’s expense. Big Business gets more profit streams while we get an assortment of useless new junk like virtual McDonald’s merch. And while Meta claims that the ‘Verse will help grow small businesses, that promise rings hollow too. There’s nothing that would make it easier for a small-time creator/business to move up the ranks of the Metaverse than on Instagram or Etsy or YouTube. Sadly, like every other digital space before it, it will always be dominated by the figures and corporations with the most money and clout.

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But hey, maybe it’s still worth doing?

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Hahahaha.​

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Best case scenario, the Metaverse is useless; worst case scenario, it’s actively dangerous – both to us as individuals and as a society. For starters, it would put even more power in the hands of social media companies like Meta. Moving our lives further online gives them more money, more data, more influence. Which doesn’t sound like the best idea when you consider that 3-in-4 Americans already believe social media companies have too much power while two-thirds say they have a negative effect on our country.

 

Equally disturbing, it would almost certainly continue to fuel America’s already-raging economic inequality. Right now corporate profits are at an all-time high and employee wages at an all-time low, while the upper class own 20% more of America’s wealth than they did a half-century ago. The more money everyday Americans give to corporations, the less money for us. Less for us to spend on housing, education, or household essentials, which are already unaffordable for most Americans. Less ability for us to move through society, while paving the way for our business elites.

 

But saddest of all, it would just take us further away from real meaning.

 

I don’t want to live in a world where the next big thing, the invention of our generation, amounts to "shopping for virtual clothes to wear for a virtual dinner.” Where stuff is confused with value, where distraction is confused with meaning, where superficial relationships are confused with substantial ones. Where anything can have meaning if a powerful corporation with enough money to blow on PR says it does. Because even if we don’t realize it actively, it’s hollowing us out. On a human, physiological level, there are things that fill us and things that don’t. The Metaverse is the latter.

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Series Conclusion

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The Metaverse is just a giant mall moved online. NFTs are just a way of commodifying (and marking up) previously unlimited digital resources, making them less accessible to people. Bitcoin is just an elaborate pyramid scheme. None of these things are connecting us, fulfilling us, or enriching our lives. And the more we buy into them, the more dangerous they become. Every person who enters the Metaverse is legitimizing it. Every person who buys an NFT or Bitcoin is legitimizing it. If we keep gobbling up the slop our leaders are feeding us, they're just going to continue making more. They're going to continue investing our society's resources in meaningless things that cost us a lot – both financially and as human beings. And that only serve the egos of vain leaders seeking praise and validation, no matter how unwarranted.

 

To borrow from Huxley again, today’s Digital Revolution has been characterized by “the development of a vast communications industry concerned neither with the true or false, but with the unreal, the totally irrelevant… preying on man’s infinite appetite for distractions.” Big Tech is turning us into a society "preoccupied with the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the bumblepuppy, where the truth is drowned in a sea of irrelevance." ​ It's tempting – even exciting – to buy into the narrative that new is better.

 

It's tempting to move our lives online, where the hard realities of real life can be forgotten, if only for a moment. It's tempting to believe that our leaders have our best interests at heart, and that we can trust in the projects they're investing our resources in. But it's critical that we not succumb to these temptations. Because if we come to accept and adopt meaningless things as the foundation of our society, as the innovations of our generation, we're building a house with a very shaky structure. We're just building another Bridge to Nowhere. And I don't think that's a journey we want to go on. Because it'll lead us – as people and a society – straight off a cliff.