It Could Happen Here - The Metaverse and Facebook’s Future of the Internet part 1

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

The gang talks VR, the metaverse and the first part of Facebook's Meta conference. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's facing my books? Your grandmother. All of your grandmothers.

Wow, Garrison, my grandmother's dead. Well, they're still Facebooking in the grave. I mean, thank God, no. I think my grandparents briefly got introduced to MySpace before being too sick to use the internet anymore. They were on AOL for a while, though. Aw, that's quaint. Yeah, they were on AOL for a while, though. Aw, that's quaint. Yeah, they were on AOL for a while. You know, it's...

I don't often say thank goodness for Lewy body dementia, but at least it stopped them from knowing the horrors that were to come in the digital age. They got right off the bus before things got terrible. Yeah, that is...

So, friends, Romans, countrymen, how do you feel about meta, which is totally what we're all going to be calling Facebook from now on for forever? My main thought, honestly, is that the word meta... The past two years, the word meta has been ruined by both pop culture thinking it's smart and then shit like this now that a once useful concept has now been obliterated and we can't use it for anything

anymore you can't be meta and and the fact that facebook is attempting to use this as the name of their company shows that mark zuckerberg hasn't had a conversation on an even footing in his entire adult life like everyone is trying to get someone out of him every time he talks to anybody. So nobody would say like, you know, Mark, Meta is a terrible name for a company. But anyway, they did that. And they had a big event about two weeks ago where they got up and talked for an hour and 20 minutes about the future of the internet and what Facebook's vision of the metaverse was going to be. All this, all this very fun stuff. Okay. So here's the thing. It's a bad idea. And normally, like, bad tech ideas are a dime a dozen, and we don't cover them on our show,

because this is a show, it could happen here, about collapse, things falling apart, and the future, and what's going to come next. But in this case, talking about meta is actually really worthwhile, because meta is one example of how the people who are kind of in control or at least in control of a significant amount of the world that we live in, particularly the digital spaces that we've all agreed to be locked into, see the future. I think the thing that like makes it clear why this is in our wheelhouse is an article from Wired by Matthew Galt, who's a buddy of mine. He's a great journalist. And it's titled Billionaires See VR as a Way to Avoid Radical Social Change. And that title does kind of get to the get to the nut of it. But the quotes in this thing are fucking wild.

So before we get into Mark Zuckerberg and his vision of the future of the Internet and of humanity, I want to read some quotes from John Carmack. So John Carmack is the guy he made Doom, right? Like you can't overstate the impact John Carmack. So John Carmack is the guy – he made Doom, right? Like you can't overstate the impact John Carmack had on gaming. Like he invented the first – effectively the first popular first-person shooter. He was the CTO of Oculus for a while. Yeah, he's very familiar with like 3D digital spaces. Yes, and he's very bullish on VR. And he gave a quote – well, not gave a quote,

he talked to Joe Rogan during an interview in 2020, and he said this, some people read this the wrong way and react incorrectly to it. The promise of VR is to make the world you want it. It is not possible on earth to give everyone all that they would want. Not everyone can have Richard Branson's private island.

People react negatively to any talk of economics, but it is resource allocation. You have to make decisions about where things go. Economically, you can deliver a lot more value to a lot of people in the virtual sense. And that's one of those things that you can see how a guy like John Carmack, who is, again, a smart guy who's been ahead of the curve on a number of important things, could convince himself this is true. This is absurd. And I think what we see in Facebook's video is going to make clear that it's absurd. One of the reasons that it's absurd is that, like everything else, the people who are building the metaverse have done, like what they've done

to the internet. The internet before Facebook and Twitter and these behemoths used to be weird and decentralized and primarily not for profit. There was there was a period of time in which like the idea that you would actually make money off the Internet, like really out of like content or whatever, was just silly because it was this it was impossible to monetize. It was this weird, wild, like creative nonsense pile. And you can only kind of make money around the edges of it. But the core of it was just far too strange and uncontrollable, too wild and free. And that's not the internet anymore because of the people – because in large part of the people who are trying to build these metaverses and the idea that they would allow poor people to have the same kind of resources as rich people in the metaverse. They can't let that happen.

They're not the kind of people who would let that happen. They're going to monetize every aspect of this thing. If it becomes real, if we ever have like an all-encompassing metaverse, every moment of it and everything you do in it, everything you have in it is going to cost you money. Probably with some kind of bullshit subscription plus adding on like randomized caches and other like you know loot box type mechanics selling gambling to children is the business model of the future by the future i mean it's been happening for like 10 years yeah it's the business model they want for now i will state i think some sort of persistent virtual reality thing will probably happen in some way someday. I don't think any of these people, part of why my thesis of this is none of these people

are capable of making it. It's because they look at this the same way like shitty app developer, shitty like game developers for Facebook look at gaming where it's like everything should cost money. You should be able to pay to win. And it's like, well, nobody likes that. Like nobody, nobody likes those games. Those are not the things that are successful like and it is one of the games that comes up a lot when people talk about the metaverse is minecraft and what made minecraft hugely successful and why you can kind

of plausibly see like oh this has elements of a metaverse where you're everybody's building these gigantic persistent things that you can interact with and that you can make these incredible people and be like works of art in Minecraft. They did it for free and they did it because like nothing costs money really in Minecraft. If I'm not mistaken, like you can make anything with nothing. You just buy the game and then you have the game and you can build whatever

you want. Yeah. Your equity is effort, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And if like, you know, like one of my friends like learned computer science, so he could okay he can create circuits right he like he built a like functioning computer in this game just like you can you can build computers yeah like it's it's like it's pretty it's pretty cool yeah if you're gonna tell me sometime in the future virtual reality in the internet is going to get like so good and so pervasive that eventually people will bootstrap together some kind of metaverse yeah maybe like that that could happen if it comes from like a cyber like punk aspect where like emphasis on the punk then sure i can see this being a thing but the way tech

companies are talking about this that's not how people use the internet currently specifically like the mainstream people there's no way yeah and there's there's a few more like one of the things that matt brings up in this article is like vr is a way to avoid radical social change um is uh like kind of the one of the reasons why he's number one and i think where we should all be kind of critical about how realistic it is is is kind of the present state of virtual reality which is about 1.7 percent of Steam users have a VR headset. Steam being kind of the largest app to try to monitor how many people are using VR, right? Like it's kind of your best bet at figuring out the rough size of that.

It's the biggest PC gaming service. Headsets, sales of VR headsets did go up about 30% during the pandemic. But that was kind of alongside a surge in video game sales yeah vr headsets were already we're already boosting and the pandemic definitely it emphasized that because it's like hey i'm stuck in my house what can i do well i'll buy like a 200 oculus so i can you know walk around and fight ninjas in my living room and vr is like real like vr is cool like it's i have a vr headset i've had it for years it can do one of the things that um i talk when i talk about like what it takes for technology new technology to like go viral to become like endemic it has some of that which is that as soon as you put one of these on most people unless you're one of the people that it makes sick most people if you put

the put them on and you show them the right thing they're like oh this is actually way cooler than i thought it was going to be yeah absolutely um so that is like i'm i'm not i'm not like has i i'm not poo-pooing the entire idea of vr um and there's there's there's been some successes on it like half-life alex sold about two million copies yeah um which is huge for vr but like also nothing for a video game like that's like for a big for a fucking half-life game that shit which just it just shows that it's still like fractional which i i don't think any of these people are kind of missing um but it does kind of point to again the the degree to which this technology would have to leap up for anything like what facebook what we're about to talk about like it for that to actually be popular there's a difference between developing vr gaming yeah and developing this metaverse concept which goes way beyond vr gaming yeah yeah um but i so i what

i find what i find so like doomed about this isn't the technology even though i think it's important to acknowledge there's a long way to go just in terms of like how heavy it is how much space you need how graphics not fully immersive it is you know yeah yeah trying to remove lighthouses making it more mobile yeah there's a lot there's a lot of stuff the control schemes are still kind of jank like yeah there's a lot to be done but all of that's i mean think about the first iphone right it was like a fucking brick compared to the shit today all of that gets better yeah and all of the first vr headset compared to the oculus 2 it's like a massive improvement in basically every way i i don't think when people criticize this stuff by pointing out like how primitive vr is today i don't think that means anything um it is like worth noting you know

its current level of adoption but it's not people compare this to like 3d tvs and stuff it's not that 3d tvs were immediately obviously from the beginning nothing but a grift because nobody wanted what – really wanted what 3D TVs had. Like VR, people do want what VR does, and eventually the tech will get there. What's bullshit is the idea – and this is why I think this article by Galt is so good. The idea that VR is going to allow the poor and downtrodden of the world to have a slice of the good life. And this is something Carmack is particularly bullish about. Quote, not everyone can have a mansion. Not everyone can have a home theater.

These are things we can simulate to some degree in virtual reality. Now, the simulation is not as good as the real thing. If you are rich and you have your own home theater or mansion or in private island, good for you. You're probably not the people who are going to benefit the most. Most of the people in the world lived in cramped quarters that are not what they would choose to be if they had unlimited resources. Incredibly deranged. Yeah, it's out of its mind.

That's not how VR works. I can put on my headset and load up a nice forest and it's not the feeling of being in a fort like no it's not that's not how our senses work so until we can hack our own brains into feeling things we don't actually feel yeah then it's not a thing and we're nowhere close to that level of technology even just to the degree that he's talking about like yeah you could you if you don't have a big

home theater you could just like put it on and have a huge TV, which is a thing that VR can do now. I've tried it. It's not great. But it's not good. Like Garrison, you come over two, three times a week and we watch movies with all of our friends in my living room. Like the good thing about it, like it's nice to have a large screen. I have a big TV, but like a big part of the experience is you're with your friends. You're watching them react like you're eating food together.

You're doing all this stuff that will never really be possible in vr i have a lot of respect for john carmen he made doom right like that's a third of my childhood um he's out of his mind now if he thinks that that's like what people want what poor people want like you've been rich for too long sir you don't understand human beings anymore the particular type of escape like using vr as that type of escapism is totally wrong because like vr can be escapism but it's not going to trick you into thinking you're living in a mansion that's not that's not how vr works because you're walking around a tiny room in your house and you can't feel anything you can like walk through cupboards

which is a great way to play vr games as you can just like hack it by walking into stuff and they're working on so the article notes that el that Elon Musk is working on a brain machine interface called Neuralink. Yeah, Neuralink. Yeah. And who knows what it will – I will say that's a little bit like the – how realistic all of those dreams are is questionable. That said, something like what they're claiming it is will eventually be figured out. It will, and it probably should be destroyed. It probably should be destroyed. questionable that said something like what they're claiming it is will eventually be figured out it will and it and it should it'll probably it probably should be destroyed it probably should

be destroyed like not put the chip in your brain don't do it val's is is really bullish on that technology gabe newell is the guy we have half-life for like he and he and john karmack if there's a mount rushmore of like gamer dudes it's steam on it. Valhalla, Steam, they make one of the better headsets. Yeah. Again, like we're about to talk about Mark Zuckerberg, who I do not think is a visionary. Both Carmack and Newell are visionaries. Doesn't mean they're right because visionaries are wrong all of the fucking time. It's part of their job.

But they're both really, really fucking bullish on this. Newell is a big believer in like the promise of kind of what the Neuralink, the brain interface technology and VR. He told IGN in 2020, we're way closer to the matrix than people realize, which I don't think is the case. And Newell is the person who I've just talked about, like how smart he is. He is even more out of his mind than John Carmack on this shit. even more out of his mind than John Carmack on this shit. In an interview with New Zealand's One News, he talked about his vision of the near future, which is a world in which brains and computers interface and computers can make changes to the human brain.

Uh-huh. That sounds like a good idea. He called the human body a meat peripheral. Jesus Christ. I know. He has lost his mind. This is the thing about VR and the metaverse in general is this overemphasizing that we basically just live in the meat space

and the meat space exists just to make content for the online space. Which is so fucking bleak. And the online space is the actual real space and we just have to operate inside our meat space to make content for that. This is like the way technology has been progressing, the way tech companies have been wanting things to go. And it's the most dystopian thing that's going to give so many people like disassociative mental disorders. Yeah, it's horrible for you.

I'm going to be super interested to see people of my generation, including myself, like how we develop mentally the next 20 years based on how kind of fake our lives have been because of how much we exist and socialize within this like false network it's gonna be interesting to watch i i used to be really optimistic about aspects of vr i actually when i was in mosul i filmed not that like other people did this before i did but i was kind of one of the early people filming like a a vr documentary of some combat of like the Battle of Mosul, aspects of which were aired as a 360 and a bunch of different like TV networks. And I had this belief that like, yeah, VR, because the visual aspect of VR is so good, you know, even at that point, 2017 was already so good. I had this belief that like, well, if you could, because the first time I ever went into a war zone, it was such an affecting experience.

And I thought like, oh my god, if you could somehow carve out this moment of experience and like transmit it to other people, maybe that would mean something. Maybe it would like have an impact on people. I do think that is possible in the long term. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe. Like we'll see the question is like can you ever make people give a shit yeah if you feel like horror games the level of like

anxiety and some degrees trauma of playing like a really well-made horror vr game is incredibly intense um and that's something that can be done very well so i feel like that type of like surreal experience like a war zone could actually be carried over to some degree in vr to like change people's minds on like hey maybe war is not good yeah i mean that that's the dream i don't know how much i still believe that but reading people like gabe newell and how they talk about this technology makes me lose some hope um yeah it makes me want to throw all the headsets in a lake in a river here's another thing gabe newell said in that interview garrison after calling the human body a meat peripheral.

You're used to experiencing the world through eyes, but eyes were created by this low-cost bidder that didn't care about failure rates and RMAs, and if it got broken, there was no way to repair anything effectively, which totally makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, but is not at all reflective of consumer preferences.

What the fuck? The miracle of the human preferences. What the fuck? The miracle of the human eye! What the fuck? No. Fuck it. Fuck eyes. Gabe. There is some aspects of transhumanism that I like.

I like being able to change body parts at will with my mind. But this type of stuff makes me want to throw all technology into a river. Of course, I support the idea of like it would be great if when people lose their eyes completely from like shrapnel or whatever, some sort of like degenerative disease, we could just pop new eyes in there. Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. We start cloning eyes. I think that's a great thing.

But eyes are amazing. Like the eye is incredible. Like the most impressive camera ever yeah we're nowhere close to replicating the abilities of the human eye it is not a low-cost bidder it is like they're imperfect like everything that that is part of the human body like they didn't break down that he can't monetize it the same way right that's that's his problem he's also talking about like well they break down it's like motherfucker have you used a computer? You're Gabe Newell. I know you've used a computer. Like you want to talk about breaking every computer I've ever owned.

I've used Steam before. Yeah, I use Steam, motherfucker. I like I would rather have my eyes and I'm wearing glasses right now. Go suck an egg. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Fuckin' egg. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. El will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. And it goes on because he can't stop shit talking like reality. He talks about like in the virtual world he wants to build, the real world will seem flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you'll be able to create in people's brains. And I want you to keep that in mind, my dear friends and colleagues, as we leap now into

the Facebook live stream. I mean, first of all, I think, would it be worth explaining? I know we've danced around what the metaverse is, but for people who are totally unfamiliar, do you think it would be worth giving a general explanation? Will that be covered in the Facebook thing? That's kind of covered in the – because this is Facebook building it. But I think we – you're probably right that we should give a little bit of context about like where they got this idea because, again, Mark Zuckerberg has never had an original

thought in his life. He's not the first one to do this. And Gabe Newell and John Carmack have had original thoughts in their life. But this is not an original thought for many of them. No. All of them, everyone anywhere who talks about the metaverse is whether or not they know it, a fan of Neil Stevenson, who wrote a book called Snow Crash, where the point was that in the future, the world is a dystopian corporatized nightmare. And because things are in part because things are

so bad and incredibly highly like advertised and monetized persistent internet called the metaverse that exists all around us and is totally immersive has come to dominate everyday life um and it's a bad thing like yeah snow crash is a story of like wouldn't this future be horrible yeah it's not like hey this is a cool thing but these tech guys read this and are like oh yeah that seems like fun. We could do that. Neil Stevenson, who is yet another person I respect, made one crucial flaw, which is he gave the hero in his book a katana. And because the hero in his book has a katana, everyone was like, wouldn't this be rad if this were the future? Let's make this be the entire future.

It's a real tragedy. We do need to abolish katanas. Like, we would save so many lives honestly you could probably make a strong case that the katana has a huge chunk of the cultural weight that it has because of neil stevenson um he's a big part of that right you know you've got a lot of movies and stuff too but yeah but like the katana cyberpunk kind of melding yeah and it's it's a it's a it's a very i mean it's it's bit dated now, but it's still like a good book to read. Like there's a bunch of silly stuff.

You've seen this replicated in a lot of other cyberpunk art, some better, some worse. Yes. Some worse cough, cough, Ready Player One. Yeah, and every, like every, not every cyberpunk sense because there's people like Cory Doctorow who do some really cool shit. But most cyberpunk sense has to some extent borrowed from Neil Stevenson's work. And Facebook's entire idea is based on this. And so the idea is that it is a persistent, fully immersive digital world that interacts with the real world. So you can be in VR hanging out with friends from around the world in like a fake living room and then like call someone and see

like a video of them in the real world as they're like walking to a concert or whatever and like talk to them and like make play like that's the idea right yeah um so this video this it opens with you know you've got your your little introduction music and stuff and then we see mark zuckerberg looking like a fucking golem and um yeah and and the first thing that i really noticed about this is that he talks about how we're all going to do this together, meaning invent the technologies and use cases that are going to make the metaverse worthwhile. And when he says all of us, this is not an internal Facebook video. This is a video – the meta video is heavily angled towards developers and investors. And investors. And it's been viewed by a lot of people, like 12 million to date. But he's talking about, like, a big part of what he's saying is that, like, the technology for all of the stuff that we've rendered.

Because most of what's rendered in this isn't game footage, so to speak. Like, it's not a game, but whatever. Here's how it might look if the technology is ever invented. Like, nothing is, like, in engine or anything close to it. It's all speculative. What's interesting about this to me is that he is saying we're going to build this together and sort of acknowledging that like Facebook does not have the capacity to make this thing they've dreamed about. But Facebook is going to own it. So he's – a lot of like this is him tacitly admitting I want to take your surplus value to make a metaverse that I then control and monetize entirely at my own discretion, which is cool. It's great.

It's also like I think, you know, I think if you want a sign of where this is actually going and like the actual creativity behind this, like, OK, again, everything in that video is a mock up, right? It looks like dog shit. It's so ugly. It's hideous. It looks like a fucking Kinect game or like a fucking Wii game, which is fine for a Kinect or a Wii game. But I don't want to live there. Like it's all weird and cartoony. Yeah.

So he talks about in kind of laying out why he thinks this is the future. Zuckerberg talks about how text used to be the basis of everything online, but now like photos and videos dominate. It's a visual thing. Yeah. Yeah. As that change happened from like text to video to photos to videos, the next change, he kind of frames it like the obvious next evolution is to what he calls an embodied internet where you're part of the experience.

And that's the metaverse, which again, if you don't. I think that part has some true i agree i don't think he's entirely wrong there obviously that's not his idea um oh running out of time okay thank you for telling me about the host and now because it's unlimited minutes great uh thanks zoom um speaking of metaverses um yeah like like yeah i mean i'm gonna i'm gonna flop on to a share screen, and I'm going to show you guys a section from this video. Think about computers or phones today. Now, since we're doing this remotely today, I figured let's make this special.

So we've put together something that I think is really going to give you a feeling for what this future could be like. We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet. We'll be able to feel present, like we're right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are. Okay, so I'm pausing it here because I want you to watch this. The room that Mark Zuckerberg is in, he's not in the metaverse yet. He's in like a house. I think it's supposed to be his house. It is clearly not a place human beings live.

It's not an actual house. It has been set dressed. One of the ways you can tell is that all of the books in picture frames on the bookcase are like the same flat tones because they're not meant to stand out. They're meant to blend in. And very tellingly, this is what's interesting to me. out there meant to blend in. And very tellingly, this is what's interesting to me, as soon as he steps into the frame where he's going to announce this, the thing that is directly next to his head is the only thing that's not like the same kind of beige as everything. It's a bottle of barbecue sauce that's being used as the bookend to a bunch of books. Now, Meta immediately after this,

like people joked about it online and Meta started tweeting about it and like trying to make like jokes about, oh, Mark just loves his, you know, his, his barbecue so much. Like they tried to turn it into a meme because they think it's humanizing. And, and, and kind of one aspect of the meme they were putting together is that like, oh, he just forgot to, you know, he just, he's, he's so into barbecue that he leaves his sauce around. That was put there on someone's orders. Like that was planned.

It was to create me. We're seeing, we're seeing marvel do this as well yeah they're releasing promotional images specifically designed to be turned into memes and it doesn't work because it's so obvious like because people like you know yeah we're not going to use this because it's it's a it's a dog shit horrible like horrible cinematography bad colors it's not a fun meme but people did fall for the mark zuckerberg thing uh like oh look at the barbecue sauce but yeah no that was intentional to create like a viral thing to try yep yeah anyway i'm gonna let mark uh continue here after i made my little point when i send my parents a video of

my kids they're gonna feel like they're right in the moment with us not peering through a little window when you play a game with your friends you'll feel like you're right there together in a different world, not just on your computer by yourself. And when you're in a meeting in the metaverse, it'll feel like you're right in the room together, making eye contact, having a shared sense of space, and not just looking at a grid of faces. So that's important because a big aspect of what he's trying to sell here, why he's trying to convince people that this is a real thing is that it's a balm for loneliness, right? He is – and he's one of the people who's responsible for pushing our society to such an atomized and isolated direction. Facebook propaganda has isolated huge numbers of people from their families.

And of course then there's just the aspect of it that is the lockdown, which has isolated people, a number of, a lot of which ties back to disinformation spread on Facebook. But like, he's selling this, you know, as a, this will make you less lonely. It'll make you feel like you're all together. And it's, he specifically says at one point, this isn't about spending more time on screens.

It's about making the time we spend on screens already better, which is horseshit. Because as the Facebook papers make clear, Facebook has repeatedly refused to do things that would have reduced the harm of their platform because it would have reduced the traffic that they've got. And I think those are the kind of decisions you can – yeah. And still, like, technologically, we're still not there. still like tech technologically we're still not there like when when you're in vr you even if you're interacting with other like 3d like personas of people specifically like vr chat was very popular among like furries and i think they are honestly the best example of what the metaverse could actually be is how furries use vr chat um yes even still that is very different um than standing in a room with someone in a fursuit, right? It's totally different.

And metaverses and this type of thing, I don't think will actually solve alienation. I don't think... No! Because you're not actually touching anyone. No. There's still that digital fog between you and everything else. Do I think there's some elements of it

that could be developed specifically using AR that would make things a little bit cool? Yeah. but it's not going to solve alienation as a concept in fact it could actually make it worse it could make it worse like again there's some use cases for i don't know people who have like als maybe you could develop some sort of rig that would allow them to interact like yeah more with with people around them and like that could be useful for those people but like it is not a societal answer to loneliness. And I think one thing that makes that clear is you look at their vision of home spaces.

So this is kind of the center of the metaverse they wanna build is everybody has their little digital home that you can set up and you can design to your liking and you can buy things like NFTs to decorate it. This becomes a big part of the pitch that like NFTs are gonna be in it. And like, that way you know that they have at one point like somebody buys like an autographed poster

for a metaverse concert that's an nft and they get to put it in their room and know that it's the only one of those posters or something which is the dumbest thing i can imagine um maybe it'll work i don't know i i don't really see how that's any different from an NFT being revolutionary case than like, you know, being able to buy something in a fucking video game. No, it's just – The way people already hate to do. Yeah. It's just buying skins or whatever bullshit cosmetic stuff. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999,

a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit.

The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works Thank you. on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it.

Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. One of the things that's entertaining about this is how bad a lot of the acting is. For all the money and time they have. Like Mark Zuckerberg is a shit presenter. And this bit where he tries to explain why the home space is so cool and it shows you like their home space. It starts at about 430 on the video of people at home want to watch is just a perfect, perfect encapsulation of like how inhuman this this world they want to build build really feels, even when they try to present it in its best face.

Oh, hey, Mark. Hey, what's going on? What's up, Mark? Whoa, we're floating in space? Who made this place? It's awesome. Right? It's from a crater I met in LA. This place is amazing. Boz, is that you? Of course it's me. You know I had to be the

robot man. I thought I was had to be the robot, man. I thought I was supposed to be the robot. Whoa. I knew you were bluffing. Hey, wait. Where is Naomi? Let's call her. Naomi! Hey, should we deal you in? Sorry I'm running late, but you've got to see what we're checking out.

There's an artist going around Soho hiding AR pieces for people to find. 3D street art? That's cool. Send that link to our social media. So I wanted to stop here because this is also part of like what's – it's this perfect – it's like NFT culture and all this shit. Like the street art they show, this is clearly them trying to be like, here's one of these cool use cases for how the metaverse is going to interact with and influence the real world. Like this artist pastes this art on a wall

that when you look at it in the metaverse or when you film it and you send a video to people in the metaverse, it becomes this big 3D thing. And it just looks like shit. It's just a bunch of like squiggly lines and stuff. Like it's not, like there's good graffiti, especially in San Francisco.

There's incredible fucking graffiti. This is just like nonsense. It looks like, it looks like a fucking NFT. Like it's just this, this kind of shitty. It was obviously designed by a computer, not an actual person.

Yeah. And there's nothing like, it doesn't say anything. There's nothing cool about it. And they haven't, again, because Mark Zuckerberg can't conceive of art. There's nothing about this that like makes me think oh what a neat futuristic thing it's just like oh cool i can see squiggly lines yeah and it has in person and on my phone i mean the big

part of metaverse and like ar and vr is like you know making depth within actually making 2d space appear to be 3d space this still just looks 2d like it doesn't it is not it's not tricking my brain in any way whatsoever especially with the concept of like filming it on your phone we have the technology now like that's not that's not the metaverse that's just filming it already on your little box as mark zuckerberg said and we have the technology to do like that ar thing with fucking um uh with your pokemon go did that like five years ago and it's not what people want um well pokemon go was for a long time yeah but pokemon go was the closest we ever got to world peace and it was a cia i mean pokemon go is probably the closest we ever got to like the metaverse like realistically

but people don't want people don't want to like take photos of crappy street art that then becomes 3d but still isn't like i don't know there's it photos of crappy street art that then becomes 3D but still isn't like, I don't know. It is incredibly grim that most of like the case uses for metaverse stuff, the only thing they can imagine it being is like fucking meetings. This is like the biggest thing that they show is like, oh, we can make virtual meetings. can make virtual meetings they've tried that the video that we just played they're all in like this spaceship and everybody's 3d or like one person it looks like kind of a hologram of their real body some people are just like 3d rendered cartoons of themselves one person's a big robot and they're all like floating in zero g and playing cards sitting at a table and playing virtual cards and there's like a bed in the background but like yeah you can't go in the

bed because it's not a fake it's a fake and you're not floating in zero G because VR will never be able to trick you into thinking you're sitting in your chair in a room with some shit on your face. You're fucking Carl Havoc and trying to pretend that you're like having a good time playing cards with your friends. It's like, yeah, if I could have a space station house where my friends and I could float around and play cards, that would be sick. But you're not promising me that, are you, Mark? You're not actually doing that. There is games that simulate zero-G. They don't trick you. They make you nauseous. Sometimes

it can be fun, but I'm not going to be fooled. Yeah, in the same way that eating Hawaiian baby wood rose seeds can be fun. Exactly. Yeah. So, he goes on to talk about the avatars that you'll have, which are basically, he describes them as profile pictures, but much

richer because they're live, which I find unsettling, in part by thinking about what'll happen when people die to their digital avatars, but whatever. At this point, he goes on to talk about how he thinks people are going to actually use these avatars, and it's very unhinged. One for hanging out and maybe even a fantasy one for gaming you're gonna

have a wardrobe of virtual clothes for different occasions designed by different creators and from different apps and experiences so one of the things he's talking about that is exciting is that like you'll be able to have a different avatar for uh like work if you're in a work meeting or like hanging out with your friends um and to me that says like oh so now it i'm gonna be expected to like maintain and keep up an avatar for like my job and like dress that fucking thing and then i'll have to like switch to hang out with people and like why why does that what does that provide me being able to like sit in a room as an avatar that I don't currently have like through zoom? Like why, why is in what world is that something people want?

The only, only good use case for this is furries. This is the only way it's worked because they, that has almost like a true representation of their own body. almost like a true representation of their own body what what's this is going to do for regular for like people who are not furries is it'll probably give people a lot of weird like dysmorphia yeah um or if you're or if you're trans and you make a female avatar assuming like like you know for me if i was to make like an avatar that's more feminine that can be fun for me um but for a lot of people these weird like digital versions of themselves will probably just – they're just like uncanny valley and it will probably just make you feel weird. Yeah, and he's so focused on like this as a way for people to work together while being remote, which says a lot. Like about a half a minute after this point or a minute or so after this point, he brags that your home space can even have your own personal

office where you work, which is within the metaverse. Which is really bleak to me. You can go to work digitally. It's going to ruin your eyes. You cannot wear VR goggles that long. Your eyes get ruined because it's blasting light into your retinas.

It's also just like sitting with a laptop and I have a laptop and I have a second screen for my laptop and I sit at my comfortable living room table and I write and browse the internet and research and stuff. And yeah, every now and then,

like I hunch over too much and my back gets a little bit sore, but like it's not, it's pretty comfortable and I can get up and move and do stuff in the house. Putting a bunch of shit on me and sitting still and like being unable to perceive the world around me and locked into this uncomfortable digital desk because it's – later on, whenever they do, there's this mix of you can see the videos of the technology as it actually exists and they're aspirational. And the aspirational version, it's like you're in this gorgeous three-dimensional office that looks like something like that.

Yeah, you're playing basketball both in real life and in the hologram, which is, first of all, just impossible. Like, never going to happen. You're never going to do. Never, ever going to happen. It's just physically impossible. But when you see the clips of, like, what...

Because they do have aspects of this built. When you see the clips of, like, the workspaces they have built, it's like, oh, 80% of my screen is the Microsoft Word app or Excel word app or excel um as it or or outlook as it currently exists and 20 of it is like the edges of this little vr office yeah so all i'm looking at is i'm seeing a full eye version of like whatever apps i'm using you can yeah you can you can get a vr headset you can download virtual desktop you can bring your

desktop into your v into your VR space. It's not useful. No. It's novel for the first 20 minutes, and then you get bored of it because you realize that you can't actually see your keyboard, so you can't type as fast. Yeah. There's a great joke about this in the last season of Community. Community has the best example of the metaverse. The big part of Epic Games' version of the metaverse is like interacting with like brands and all your apps within a 3d digital

space which is what uh the dean does in community he has to like yeah run to his email which is yeah like this is a great example of why this technology is never going to actually catch on for regular people because that's not how they use the internet you you don't want to traverse a 3d digital space to get to your email that's that's asinine yeah and it's there's aspects of it that are asinine and there's aspects of it that are just just impossible so like a big thing that he's hitting on with this is interoperability which is like you want to be able to trans travel between different apps between different programs that different people have made and you want to to be able to take whatever items you buy, whatever NFTs you have with you.

And he's talking about this will work in games. This is a thing that you've seen people talk about with the promise of NFTs for gaming. You could get an item that is yours, so they can't nerf it or whatever, and it'll travel for you from game to game. There's a developer I follow on Twitter. He made the game Adios, which is about a guy who disposes of bodies for the mob and game to game. There's a developer I follow on Twitter. He made the game Adios, which is about like a guy who disposes of bodies for the mob and tries to quit. It's a cool game. He's a good developer, Doc something or other. He wrote a huge article about like why

none of this NFTs can't work for gaming. That also hits on like why what Zuckerberg's saying is impossible, which is that like, so you're saying that everyone who makes a game has to build in like a way to handle every single item that you could possibly get in the metaverse and everything that you're having. It's a nightmare for developers. Yeah, it's an unthinkable challenge. And like, why? And what if a game shuts down, right? Like, are you saying they have to continue operating the game forever and updating it forever, even once it's no longer longer profitable so that you can keep using your eye like no it's just it's it's functionally impossible um but it's it's what's interesting to me is he's talking about all this he has to know this is impossible when he does there's all these scenes like you said where people like playing basketball and like one of them's in the real world and one of them's in

vr but they're both playing in a real world and they're interacting with the ball yeah with a with a virtual ball and it's like number one how is the person in the real world how do they feel that ball he says some vague shit about like haptic feedback which doesn't work that way um maybe there's a way if you're wearing like a glove that it could trick you into believing you were hitting a ball or something um and yeah like and not everyone's wearing headsets like now it's just we'll get to that in part two the headset question um but it what what's interesting is that like a huge amount of the the coolest stuff the stuff that you can be like well that would be neat yeah if i could fucking if i could fucking play um pool with my friend in germany and it would feel like

we were both in the same room um even though only one of us is standing around a real pool table. Yeah, that would be an amazing feat of technology. It's never going to happen. Certainly not in any kind of reasonable timeframe. Mark knows that. All that is going to happen at most is like a digital conference suite that like is – damages people's eyes and brains. And he knows that, but he's angry that Zoom beat him to the punch when the pandemic hit. And this is his, like, that's kind of one of the sinister things about it. There's other sinister

shit, which we'll talk about in part two. But you know what, guys? It's time to end part one. This is enough for part one. We'll talk more about, we'll talk about what's really frightening about a lot of what Mark's trying to build in part two. But for right now, I want to talk about ending the episode, which I guess I just did. Goodbye. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably

keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying

legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google

Search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found

off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.