The Metaverse is a Luxury — A Dumb One at that

It is just as ridiculous as large scale space travel or colonizing new planets.

Too many people talk too much (nonsense) about the metaverse. For those who do not know, the metaverse is the Meta (formerly Facebook) desired creation — a virtual world. That’s literally it. A virtual world with a virtual home and virtual food and virtual life, that has no role in your real world and real life and getting food onto your table. It is one where you’d have to use expensive gear to feel “immersed” in an experience. Now this is dangerous. Not because a virtual vacay or virtual meet-ups and hangouts are bad, rather because of how it is marketed.

Photo by Paulius Dragunas on Unsplash; I would much rather we preserve lush green forests for our children and the other rather than essentially playing a giant game to see such treasures.

By the rich, for the rich.

The metaverse will not be easily accessible to the common man in this century, or probably anytime soon for it to be relevant. Would it be cheap ten thousand years from now provided the tragedy still exists? Maybe, maybe not.

In case you have not noticed, rich people live entirely different lives, and are in entirely different worlds. Is there a market for the metaverse? Yes. Is there any use for the metaverse? Limited use of actual value, but yes, I do not deny that the metaverse can have some use. Is the metaverse a luxury? Yes, and it will be for the next century if it can even bring itself to existence.

The metaverse requires equipment like AR headsets to say the least. To say the most and likely to utilize it to the fullest (like say going on a virtual hike through some dandelion jungle floating in the sky over the Italian Ocean), you may need an all-directional treadmill or other expensive equipment. Money does not fall from the sky. Inflation still exists in the real world. The average person is not rich (with respect to the people who can afford to use the metaverse regularly and in their own homes at least).

Photo by Minh Pham on Unsplash; I would rather not have this be the everyday person’s future. We have limited exercise in today’s world.

The metaverse is a luxury product being marketed as a soon-to-be-daily-necessity. The best it can get is that there could be huge metaverse arcades, where people would pay ridiculously higher amounts than they would at normal gaming arcades, to use the metaverse for a set period of time.

Can we talk about internet penetration for a minute? I am not talking about virtual rape, although that has already happened on the metaverse. I am talking about internet connectivity and quality. Leaving Europe and North America aside, the internet speeds and accessibility of the internet is not so high in other parts of the world. Even though the Oculus costs around 400 USD (it is not as expensive as other luxuries), many in the USA cannot afford a 400 dollar emergency expense. Most of the world has less average wealth than the average American, so the same more or less applies worldwide. The metaverse is not going to be available in every household. It should not be available like that, or so I advise.

Photo by Horology Hands on Unsplash; while the image shows just a few expensive items, let us remember that luxuries are not ever supposed to be priorities. Most people cannot afford these luxuries.

The Metaverse growing is BAD for the environment

You know, products made by the rich and for the rich have a track record or either being environmentally destructive or being so expensive only the rich could use such ‘eco-friendly’ creations. The metaverse may be a virtual world but the emissions are and will be very real. Our track record of fighting climate change and the many problems it encompasses shows that we cannot afford large-scale carbon emissions on an industry that does not do much real help for people living in the physical world. It only hurts the real world.

Photo by Matthias Heyde on Unsplash; Cloud servers and necessary services to provide the metaverse would cause extremely large scale emissions as they need a humongous amount of energy to operate. Even if people do not travel when they say work from the metaverse, they do cause and promote even more carbon emissions. Now imagine the concept of metaverse arcades. Vehicle emission plus metaverse emission equals even more unhelpful, unnecessary, perfectly avoidable emissions.

We don’t have time for a sad, rich boy’s Christmas wishes

Zucky is notorious for being a one-man show that bosses about Facebook, is rude to his employees and is at the heart of every major Facebook scandal because he is the only one with such dangerous levels of decision making power. He answers to no one and Facebook as a company has a track record of denying allegations which have much truth to them. That is likely one reason Facebook has gained so much bad reputation that it legally changed its name to Meta.

Do we really have the time in this messed up yet hopeful modern world, the time to waste on some overgrown, rich brats fantasy toys? A world where anyone can do anything with no code and no order and no privacy and no significant benefit?
The most benefit the metaverse can do is allow rich people to hang out virtually during a pandemic, or allow you to relive scenes from the past.

It does make some dreams come true in a sense, and you could catch yourself some pocket monsters like you always dreamed of as a kid, but some dreams are better left as dreams. Not all dreams are meant to be materialized.

Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash; Facebook is marketing you its next product and it is abusing its power as the most influential social media company. You are not obligated to buy their product.

Please consider this before you spend too much time consuming content about the metaverse

If you wish to seek an expensive escape from your life and run away from any possible problems for at least a bit, the metaverse may seem very tempting to you. It is designed to be hyper-addictive, or it will be. That is how Facebook works. That is how it makes its billions.

If you want to live your life and be genuinely healthy and genuinely happy and not have more digital struggles, addictions and related anxiety and worries, please do not bother yourself with the metaverse. Too many people make too much of it, including some very rich and powerful people. It is not ‘THE future’, it may at best be ‘A possibly problematic PART of the future’.

We already deal with some bad social media addiction and gaming addiction and lack of exercise and declining physical health. We already have much mental stress in our day to day lives. There are wars being fought among people, waste problems that need to be addressed, food shortages that cannot me met with digital cupcakes, and new generations that do not need more risks and threats to their childhood, health and future than they already have.

Photo by Grzegorz Walczak on Unsplash; we’re already glued to screens, must we really dig ourselves deeper in the sand? It is a slippery slope if we go any further.

Take a bold move, ignore or actively avoid the metaverse and its marketing if you so desire. I do not deny that it can have some use but the use does not outweigh its negative impact.

Honestly, I am disappointed by the metaverse. Everyone hyped it up so much that I thought it could have some good awesomeness about it, and as awesome as becoming Red or Cynthia may be, it really is not awesome as a whole. Not in the least. I got tired of reading articles, even though most of them praised the metaverse. The metaverse is just poorly planned and thought out. Facebook knows it is a horrible idea, but it can be monetized so they will try to execute it anyway, and squeeze every last drop of money that they can get out of their customers. The idea of the metaverse is unfortunately one of Zucky’s favorites, maybe because so much of the world hates and criticizes him so bluntly and sometimes harshly. It sounds like an escape hatch would be very appealing to him, and he’s rich enough that even if it were too expensive for 99.99% of the world population, he could get it anyway.

Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash; that is Meta’s logo by the way (the one on the right). You may now recognize this and do the needful.

I guess you could call the metaverse a bad idea, and sadly enough so many people have made oversight errors or just really, really obviously bad judgement. Yet, thousands support the concept of the metaverse. It is sad. Thank you for reading, and feel free to engage in healthy discussion on the topic. I for one simply shared my opinion and understanding, and acknowledge the existence of different opinions. These opinions you can of course have, and I can hear them out at the very best, but I need not take them to heart in the least. Thank you.