Facebook/Meta’s VR will fail.
Every 7 years some douche-bag trustfund idiot funds a VR startup and it fails for reasons I’ll detail below. Why does it happen every 7 years? Because it takes 3 years to start, crash, and burn. The additional four years is how long it takes to find the next douche-bag trustfund idiot who is ignorant of history.
Today’s douche-bag trustfund idiot is Zuckerberg.
The history of VR in 3 phases:
Phase 1: Failing because the technology isn’t ready
The original attempts at commercial VR failed because the technology wasn’t ready. The graphics were terrible, motion sensing was too expensive, users got headaches, etc.
Phase 2: VR is a game thing
Eventually the technology got good enough for games. Congrats! You’re making money but only as long as people can stay interested in swordfights.
Phase 3: Failure Player One
The new holy grail of VR is a world that people live in.
SecondLife flopped. Yes, you can still log in but you’ll find a ghost town.
Facebook Horizon Worlds is the new attempt. It arrives just as the pandemic is easing and people want to do anything other than stay at home, tethered to a computer. Good plan.
Facebook is repeating all the mistakes of Secondlife because… its been 4 years and people that fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. The first corporate event in HW had all the pummeled with penises problem without the penises.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against penises.
The problem isn’t that Facebook built a broken metaverse filled with unimaginative games. That can be fixed.
The problem is that it is unsafe for youth, unsafe for women, and unsafe for the environment. Oh, and it’s full of misinformation and hate speech.
Women and youth are more than half the population. A product that isn’t safe for them isn’t going to be a success.
They’re basing the in-world economy on blockchain technologies with no benefit over credit cards plus a huge huge CO2 problem. When that pyramid scheme fails it’s not going to be fun to watch.
What if it is a success?
Have you seen Ready Player One? That’s success. A horrible world … but it’s ok because inside the game we’re all cosplaying.
Sigh.
So what’s the next step? Wait 7 years.
