The notion of "metaverses" is a fine idea, and we've had great implementations of these for years, decades even.

Meanwhile, Facebook's notion of "The Metaverse" is downright dystopian, and I'm happy that it's proving to be a demoralizing money pit.

The worst part is that it feels that most Metaverse things are a poor copy-paste of a French project "Le Deuxième Monde"

https://twitter.com/bompard/status/1526968731825491969

It wouldn't be an issue if it wouldn't look like we were still in 1997 (and Meta's Metaverse isn't the greatest piece of software either).

Timing is also not great IMO.

We're just getting out of the pandemic and people are excited to be outdoors.

I wouldn't want to spend time in the Metaverse after all the lockdowns and travel restriction during the pandemic.

I can see the tech being super interesting for video games. But the angle of going to work, going to a mall etc. in the metaverse is just super unappealing. The nice thing about working remotely is that I don't have to go to an office and the nice thing about shopping online is that I don't have to go to a mall. So, why would I want to emulate the these things on a platform where something better already exists?

Sometimes going to work involves manipulating things in a hazardous environment and VR can make it easier to do that sort of stuff remotely. Similarly, augmented reality makes it easier to do things when you need dynamic information about a task and you've got your hands full doing the thing.

Get VR and AR _really_ good for those sorts of use cases (and I think there's some money in that stuff) and it becomes a lot easier to expand into other areas.

of course it's interesting for video games, the tech originates from video games.

This is fair - it's at least real engineering and might find some uses. It's probably just not a zillion dollar business from day one.