Zuckerberg has blown 77 billion – enough money to revitalize entire countries – on an idea so overwhelmingly, obviously stupid that I have never once heard anyone, from the Thanksgiving avuncular table to the most wretched depths of social media, say they liked it or even tried it. He was so sure that it would revolutionize the world that he renamed his extremely famous company after it. And now he's on to the next thing that he's so very, very sure about.
The world needs direction from sober people who aim to improve the human condition, not the whims of a handful of billionaire princelings who absolutely, positively cannot be dissuaded from failing at unprecedented scale while chasing their own vainglory off the edge of a cliff.
someone on discord was unaware that there even *was* a released version of the facebook metaverse that you *could* try, which about sums that up 😂
@0x00string @0xabad1dea I suppose this is a true statement as long as one of the active users is Mark Zuckerberg
@mmcknett @0xabad1dea he's not! he's making ai are you still talking about vr?! catch up with the latest way to keep jensen huang from being sued by nvidia shareholders for lying
@0xabad1dea Well, that makes two of us – I thought it never left technical demo stage.
@0xabad1dea
I read a post recently that outlined a likely reason: Facebook needs to stay a growth company unless they want to lose most of their value. It's the same reason NFTs moved into AI and why AI is simultaneously a god that will change everything and a poor word guesser.
Once a company transitions from "growth" to "stable" they lose the ability to print stock that will be accepted like money and their valuation tanks fast. That's why they keep making up bullshit that will never do anything -- to keep from maturing.
@0xabad1dea My guess is that he saw Ready Player One and became obsessed with becoming James Halliday.
He kind of personifies "lottery winner who thinks he's smart".
@0xabad1dea people like him are never going to use their wealth for good, so burning it on these madcap schemes is probably as good as it gets. Maybe next is metaverse AI, but… (wait for it) but the datacenters are in outer SPACE!!
@0xtero @0xabad1dea huh. That would help with the heat exhaust, but needs good shielding for the memory and stuff. Something something grey goo scenario, something something they should just get therapy.
@0xabad1dea I'm still convinced that the rename had more todo with distancing from Facebook's negative reputation and abusing exposure of an established word in tech/gaming context 😤
@RnDanger wait, that last sentence sounds like people who never got enough emotional support to stop reacting like teenagers. @0xabad1dea
@0xabad1dea I always considered this to be like the renamings of Blackwater, to hide that it's the company responsible for Facebook. As they still have money, this seems successful.
Otherwise it's especially funny when hearing about furries enjoying VR where they aren't humans doing office work.
@lukyan I think that's very mastodon reasoning – the average person does not associate the word "Facebook" with anything worse than annoying relatives and low-level scammers.
When a someone (zuke) hits the jackpot once (facebook) with some unheard of idea they relentlessly pursued, more often than not, they immediately start trying to replicate the process.
Oh, i already did this when there was no Mastodon.
Never had a facebook account or Instagram or WhatsApp or all the other crap, although back then everybody tried to convince me to get one.
Told them if they want to reach me they can use Signal, send me an SMS, email or just ......... call me (SHOCKER!).
Oh, have a Telegram account, use it to get series and movies one can't get here, mostly Indian, Japanese and Korean stuff.
Just because Zuckerberg himself prefers to escape to a fantasy world, he assumes everyone else does too.
Just because Elon Musk himself wants to escape to a world where anyone can say & do something mean without consequences, he assumes everyone else does too.
Just because Larry Ellison himself dreams of a petrostate fascist Orwellian wonderland, he assumes everyone else does too.
Just because Charles Koch himself dreams of a frying planet, he assumes everyone else does too.
If you have a couple billion dollars it gets impossible to lose your money
You can be the biggest moron ever and throw billions into the trash - you will still always have more than the year before
See Elmo and his shitter stunt.
It's literally impossible to bancrupt those idiots.
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Until you mentioned it, I'd forgotten about it. I suppose somewhere in the back of my brain I knew Metaverse was still a product. But I figured it was largely abandonware.
@0xabad1dea the world needs means to "depose" these kind of madmen (legal means. We already have guns. That's a bad solution. It works, but that's not the world you want to live in).
Direction from sober people does nothing as long as the madmen can own over 50% of the companies they're running and just dismiss the folks they don't like.
@TheRealPomax @0xabad1dea They IPOed with this ridiculous dual-class capital structure and everyone piled in any way.
@llogiq @0xabad1dea @pluralistic
That's probably where i read it 🙃
Edit: it was! https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop-that-bubble/
@lerxst @johntimaeus @0xabad1dea
Oh man, the graphics are worse than games from 20 years ago.
Ready Player One called and wants its idea back.
@0xabad1dea It is very telling that the longest segment in the metaverse announcement video by quite a margin was on the economics of the metaverse, promising that it would be a place of commerce where you could buy new clothing for your avatar and exclusive NFTs.
@0xabad1dea that's because (EXACTLY like #elonmusk, first wishing to relocate to Mars, now going all-in on humanoid #robots) he hates humans so much he can't stand to be around real ones, and only wants to see himself.
Ditto for Altman and all the #AI fanatics.
I elaborated on this concept here:
https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/the-only-thing-that-ai-tech-bros
@mfioretti_en @0xabad1dea See also: Transport. A lot of tech bro transit proposals are built around 'pods' of some sort because these ultra-rich 'entrepreneurs' feel afraid and disgusted at the idea of sharing an enclosed bus or train with strangers. The notion of being trapped in a box with the disease-carrying criminal vermin of the commoner class is just not something they can imagine anyone accepting. So they come up with idiocy like the Vegas loop, where every passenger gets their own car.
We need a solarpunk future. We need degrowth. We need to be truly net-zero and circular. We need enough for everyone, whether in the US or Uganda. We need more Main Street businesses, not VC-backed "AI" startups. We need universal healthcare and child care and more third places.
Communism failed but so did capitalism. And both led to authoritarianism, just with different leaders.
@neel @0xabad1dea Those in positions of power always seek to maintain the status quo, because that is the system which put them in power.
The changes you seek may only be possible if they are built upon the ashes of what came before.
@0xabad1dea
My favourite part was the legs. They decided people in the Metaverse didn't need legs.
@negative12dollarbill @0xabad1dea The floating torsos did look very creepy. If legs are too much of a technical problem, that's fine, but I would imagine any psychologist or horror writer would have pointed out the visceral reaction to dismemberment. Just Les Mondes Engloutis the legs or something.
@0xabad1dea I agree with @pluralistic 's theory that growth stocks will do anything to remain valued as growth stocks. So in metaverse's case, the thing actually succeeding was a secondary objective compared to spinning a narrative of continued potential infinite future growth. That's why the story is so easily and readily replaced by a new one about AI or crypto or whatever the current fad might be.