The Metaverse is a spiritually hollow venture.
Rather than creating a new digital world a la the oddball fandom of Second Life or forging new connections like the internet’s early adapters, the Metaverse seems to be entirely a way of creating new depositories for endless capital. Instead of creating a more egalitarian online world, the latest cyberspace innovation is built on a core of finding new ways to bilk money out of an ever-more-precarious public.
The demonstrations that we’ve seen of the Metaverse have all highlighted the way the space will work with Web3, a hyper-monetized version of the web that exists to move fake currency around the pseudo-pockets of speculators. When Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg wanted to show off the capabilities of the platform, he gave us floating bodies going to work. It would be deeply depressing if it wasn’t guaranteed to lose a ton of the worst people in the world’s money.
With the horizons condensed to “like our world, but stupider, uglier and more expensive,” it makes sense that John Morgan saw the Metaverse as yet another place to put up a billboard. Even the digital realm is no escape from the constant litany of the Morgans.
Morgan celebrated his move to the Metaverse with (what else?) a new ad. We’ve pulled some of the strangest moments.
