The issue that I have with Meta and the issue that I have with metaverse critics (basically the entirety of Reddit) is this:

The Metaverse is being considered as a Zuckerberg initiative.

On one hand, Zuckerberg and his pals are patting themselves on the back for trying to own the terminology and the concept. On the other hand, the common human on social media (this thread for instance) is shitting on the metaverse concept because they are associating it with what Zuckerberg means, without wanting to understand what it actually is. Whatever the fuck you are seeing with Horizon Worlds is NOT the Metaverse.

Like it or not, the Metaverse is the evolution of the modern Internet. It’s a seamlessly interconnected virtual world/cyberspace, a 3D visualization of what we experience on the web. And the core tenet of the Metaverse is decentralization on a scale that is deeper than the advanced Web 2.0 phase that we are in.

Corporations like Meta, Microsoft, Google, etc, are selling a flawed idea of what the metaverse is, and people are lapping it up. They shouldn’t be portraying it like they’re building their own “metaverses” which is incorrect. The Metaverse is singular, just like the Internet. What people need to gather from this is that these corporations are simply making building blocks for the actual Metaverse. In the end, everything should connect and everything should communicate, and there are no governing bodies involved.

No one owns the Internet as a whole. No one should own the Metaverse too.

And the Metaverse is not simply relegated to VR. The idea is that in the future, a decade or two from now, you should be able to access the global Metaverse from a variety of devices, like smartphones, smartwatches, computers, tablets, VR/AR headsets and glasses, and even BCI (brain-computer interface) chips, and have the same experience all across (with limitations based on what device you are using to access it).

When corporations like Meta are screwing around with this concept and those Web3 scam artists abusing the concept of NFTs, there are many genuine startups actually taking this seriously and contributing towards building this future. It’s a new industry wherein it’s beneficial to get into now than later.