Metaverse, Mars, Meditation Retreats: Billionaires Want To Escape The World They Ruined

[appalachiablue]

- The Guardian, Oct. 29, 2021. Sam Wolfson. 'Zuckerberg wants us to all turn our attention to a land of make-believe to distract from his PR disaster while Bezos and Musk are obsessed with leaving the planet.'

On Thursday Facebook announced a groundbreaking and innovative new distraction from their PR disaster. As journalists continue to pore over thousands of leaked documents that show the company is fully aware that it is degrading democratic societies, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is changing its name to Meta, has a new logo that looks like a Na’vi bending over, and is going to pivot from spreading vaccine disinformation to creating a super-lame version of Second Life.

Zuckerberg promised that in the future we would all work, play and “organise surprise birthday parties” as avatars in Facebook’s virtual-reality “Metaverse”. His examples of how this might work had all the cultural awareness of a Kendall Roy social media strategy.

In one sequence, Zuckerberg arrives on a spaceship – “This place is amazing! It was made by a creator I met in LA!” – before opening up his contacts list, scrolling past 2007’s hottest rapper T-Pain and arriving at a friend who dials in some “3D-street art” from the streets of New York to the spaceship platform. “This is stunning! I love the movement,” say Zuckerberg’s virtual cronies, as they stare at something that looks like a piece of clip art someone might have used on a letterhead for a small-town law firm. Then just as it’s disappearing from view, Zuckerberg purchases it, apparently as an NFT, so it can stay in virtual space forever.

Zuckerberg’s virtual world of play pretend is a way of escaping the destruction he’s wrought on the real one. Facebook has played a major role in fomenting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, drumming up lynch mobs in India and Sri Lanka, amplifying white nationalism in the US and providing the anti-vaccine movement with a massive megaphone during a global pandemic. Rather than address this ruination, Zuckerberg wants us to all turn our attention to a land of make-believe where he’s friends with rappers and you can watch Instagram stories on a pirate ship. He joins a cadre of 21st-century robber barons who, having successfully colonized huge swaths of Earth 1.0, are looking to escape to other spheres of reality...

-Read More,
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/29/metaverse-zuckerberg-mars-billionaires-escape-world

- Everything Facebook revealed about the Metaverse in 11 minutes. At Facebook Connect, Mark Zuckerberg revealed a new company name, Meta, plus new VR and AR technologies the company is developing for the future.

[Pinback]

1. "Oh, it has losers."

[appalachiablue]

4. Ha! Thanks.

[markie]

2. K&R

for the title...

[Buckeye_Democrat]

3. Will my augmented reality (AR) world...

... have clean air and water?

Oh, goodie!

EDIT:
Meanwhile, companies like Niantic (Pokemon Go) encourages their game players to share their GPS coordinates and turn on their mobile phone cameras, to unwittingly help their computers create a 3D map of the world.

Niantic's company vision has always been some AR nightmare. A nightmare to me, anyway.

Pokémon Go wants to make 3D scans of the whole world for ‘planet-scale augmented reality experiences’. Is that good?
https://theconversation.com/pokemon-go-wants-to-make-3d-scans-of-the-whole-world-for-planet-scale-augmented-reality-experiences-is-that-good-140636

[Skittles]

6. I see a future where NOTHING is private

and most people are just fucking FINE with it

[Earth-shine]

7. Meta has my vote for company most likely to bring about Skynet.

Don't say, It can't happen here.

[stuffmatters]

8. Does anyone else find his new co name meta funny?

Until Zuck appropriated the word, it's always meant something that's about itself. So it's like he named his company "paying homage to myself/Facebook."