You seem to believe that only things financed by Facebook qualify as "metaverse", a concept which existed long before Facebook:
Similarly, despite the obscure industry term predating Facebooks push, it is not a common term, and even techies do not think of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being 'Facebooks Metaverse'.
A company cannot just start using a term and then retroactivly justify their expense based on other external examples.
No, you are.
> it is not a common term, and even techies do not think of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being 'Facebooks Metaverse'
Here's a well-publicized example of techies persistently doing just that:
October 2021: https://medium.com/@ow/the-metaverse-is-already-here-its-cal...
August 2022: https://tech.hindustantimes.com/gaming/news/fortnite-gamemak...
September 2022: https://mashable.com/article/fortnite-is-the-real-metaverse
September 2022: https://nordic.ign.com/fortnite/60374/opinion/how-fortnite-i...
December 2022: https://mixed-news.com/en/fortnite-studio-epic-games-develop...
December 2022: https://coingape.com/education/explained-fortnite-game-and-w...
While the term was certainly used prior to the announcement what made it anywhere close to common was Facebook's version (the first small bump and the second overwhelming bump) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...
Why must the metaverse be the result of billions Facebook invested? Maybe Facebook spent billions on attempting to clone Minecraft, and failed?
Can a regular person?
And don't say things like RecRoom, because those exist independent of the billions Facebook spent on meta