It Could Happen Here - The Metaverse and Facebook’s Future of the Internet part 2

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

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

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, 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. 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. Or whenever you get your podcasts. while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call

in podcast Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the show where we're talking right now about the metaverse that a bunch of rich people think that you're going to want to live in once they ruin the regular world and why it's dog shit. And it is dog shit. So it's just it's just it's just total dog shit. Everything about this, I don't know, seems like a waking nightmare to me.

So far, if we're actually talking about what they are immediately trying to, because a bunch of this is aspirational nonsense that, as we've stated, is like, you are never going to play a perfect game of basketball in a mix of real and AR courts with your friend in Hong Kong. That's never going to happen. Never. That's not how physics works. That's not how physics works. That's not how physics works. That's not how electronics works. Maybe when we find out how to literally hack the human brain, we can like put you into a quasi seizure state that mimics that. The closest thing we have to this right now is actually VR board games is the best example of this.

You can play Settlers of Catan with your friend across the globe. And there's some cool shit you can do with haptics. And haptic feedback is like – the basic example of it is when you like touch your phone and your phone like vibrates under your hand to like let you know that you've touched like a command. Yeah. And there's people who think like at some point we would be – we may be able to make using haptic feedback like a virtual keyboard that feels like a real keyboard that might be possible i'm very skeptical of that still that's still like kind of like the idea of a keyboard that isn't there but feels like a real keyboard might be possible you're nowhere close to that that's still on the fringes of possibility like this the fucking shit they're showing in this video is like nonsense. We will have laser cannons before we have any of this bullshit.

Like we will be shooting each other in space before we have this nonsense. And thank God for that, because at least that sounds fun. So the actual center of what they've built in terms of the products that that Facebook is launching now for the metaverse, the core of it is Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds. And I think Horizon is kind of the brand they're going with for all of their different the metaverse. The core of it is Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds. And I think Horizon is kind of the brand they're going with for all of their different like meta programs. Horizon Home is the home spaces thing that they discussed earlier where people can like make their own like houses.

And one of the things they don't talk about in this, they keep saying like, you can build whatever you want. You can make it look like anything. They don't say a word about how like decorating your digital home is going to be monetized um versus how much of it will be sweat equity and again like the smart thing would be make it all sweat equity make it like minecraft make people be able to to build anything they can conceive of if they're actually creative enough and spend the time they won't do that um as they talk about in that like in the video they played like we're like

oh this is a cool world it It was made by a developer. Like, yeah, you're going to buy the cool shit. I don't know. Yeah, you're going to buy it and it's going to suck because all you can do is sit at a table. Yeah. And it's like you can't go into bed. Like, you can't, like, all of this stuff is just cosmetic. Like, you're not going to be tricked into thinking it's real.

I've been in some cool VR, like 3d rooms and like they're cool to look at for like 10 minutes yeah you can't do anything boring yeah like it's easier like oh yeah it's like the real world but i can't touch anything and when they show you the stuff that's closer to real like the different like people chatting in the metaverse and whatever it doesn't look fun there's a there's a scene where they show people watching a YouTube video together in the metaverse, and they're all like these disembodied upper torsos because, of course, VR sets can't read your legs. So it's like a bunch of torsos floating around a maximized YouTube video window.

And it's like, I would rather just show a friend my phone. I would even rather text them a video. You know what's actually realer than that is being in person with somebody and watching it on a phone or even but even without like it's the kind I think that they're expecting that like everyone's kind of bummed when they send a friend a video over signal or text and like

wait for them no I would rather do that than this shit I don't want to hang out as a bunch of torsos around a YouTube window I don't want to have to schedule a VR session every time I want to share a YouTube video. No, that sounds horrible. And it sounds like I would constantly have to be in VR. Like, he talks about how

we're not trying to expand screen time, but like, am I just waiting around in VR to, like, show friends YouTube videos? Why? They are real unclear about how often you need to be in a headset. And it's kind of suspicious. It's almost like they don't actually plan on doing anything.

And it's all bullshit. I'm going to play another video that they claim to be a use case. And the way this video starts is like this actual person is in an actual real-world concert for some guy I've never heard of at Facebook. I think he's clearly some sort of musician with a following that Facebook hired to do a concert for this video. And she calls her friend on the metaverseverse and her friend digitally hops into the concert and they like the digital girl and the real girl are like dancing together at the show which i don't know whatever like that is more possible than the basketball shit um i mean yeah watching

of having a like a vr version of standing in a room where a musician plays sure i mean it's not yeah it's doable but it's doable yeah i would debate like whether or not it's doable but then after that they see like during the concert this like digital thing pops up that's like do you want to go to a free after party um and first off all of these after parties will cost money and they'll all be dog shit but um that's the same with most real after parties. So I guess that's at least Facebook accurately delivering on the promise of the real world. But I want to play like what happens in this metaverse after party that these two both hop into digitally after one of them. So like as this starts, the lady who was actually at the concert like sits down at home and gets into the metaverse. starts the lady who was actually at the concert, like sits down at home and gets into the metaverse.

Imagine your best friend is at a concert somewhere across the world. What if you could be there with her? Yeah. Real, yeah. Real I never had a clue. Yeah. Real, yeah, real unclear how that works. Yeah, real clear how that works. Like, how does the person at the concert see the holographic version? How does the holographic person see that? Yeah, is she wearing all that shit while she's dancing? Is everyone wearing VR and seeing the world through VR?

Because I'll tell you what, like, right now, in our break, You're wearing an Oculus this time I put on an Oculus as a joke and right now I have it on the pass through mode which means I can see the real world through my cameras in the Oculus and you know what it looks like shit it's black and white it's super grainy

it has no like exposure range everything is like you look like you're wearing a sunglasses case in your in front's it's like you look like you're wearing a sunglasses case in your on your in front of your face like i can see the world but like i can't do anything because it all is like a horrible digital like copy like i can't like it's not real like i can't do anything aspects of this like at some point pass-through mode will be in color and the latency will be low enough that you won't really notice it. And there won't be latency.

But it's not going to be as good as looking at it with your human eyeball. And it'll still be a thing. So that girl's going to have to be at a concert, dancing, getting super sweaty, and she's wearing something. Even if it's as small as regular glasses, she's not like, I guess that would be better. I'll talk about this more at the end, but if people are actually going to develop this technology, the real way to do it is with AR, not VR.

Because with AR, yeah, you could have put on actual glasses and have a person show up on the thing and make it look like they're there while actually still seeing the real world. That's going to be the way to do it. Yeah, and I think that is what they're... Companies are trying to do it. Yeah, I think that's what they're claiming here, but it's really unclear how it's all going to interface, how the AR is going to interface with the full VR stuff. Are we going to have two separate sets of gear, one for when we're in the real world and we can't be fully immersive, and one for when we want to dive into the metaverse, because they're not going to be able to do both.

Do we always carry that around wherever we go? Yeah, but I want to play the section... Sorry, I played the video where they were at the concert, just because it looks very silly. I want to play the section i sorry i played the video where they were at the concert just because it it looks very silly i want to play the section where they're at the after party because it's dystopian as fuck so here's the all all metaverse after party that looks like a bunch of fucking connect avatars standing around a neat like a room made out of glowing neon a digital room yeah nobody's drinking which is the only good thing to do at an after party that's not cocaine so from from the jump i'm like well what is the only good thing about an after party is if you want more drugs and all of the drugs places are closed so you go to an after party maybe at the

end you can hook up with a digital avatar yeah it's anyway i'm just gonna play fun i'm just gonna play this dog shit where they were this is wild is it is it they're just slowly dancing he's a giraffe man hey check this out charity auction nfts yeah charity auction for nft merchandise you could connect with other fans that looks like shit your new versions of your favorite song yeah it looks dog shit well now you've got to get it yeah so it's like it's it's a it's a horrible 3d chat room we already have these these already exist and they're not tons of fun the only time they're fun is when you're in fursuits and you're walking around a fake city destroying it that's the only fun way to do this and the thing they're showing in this is that like a an autographed poster for the concert um is is an nft that you can buy for a charity auction and like as they're looking at it the actual musician walks by and tells them it looks cool and so they

buy it and they have the musician come in for that number one to like try to make this kind of like yeah you'll be able to do these digital events where you can meet actual celebrities, which like, no, I'm sure celebrities will agree to do Q&As in the multiverse like they do anywhere else. But they're not going to just walk around in some dog shit virtual party. No, because they have money and they can do actual fun things in the actual real world. They're going to be fucking supermodels while skiing down a mountain in Lake Tahoe because they're rich. down a mountain in Lake Tahoe because they're rich. They're going to be like flying in their private jets or driving in a fucking yacht and eating lobster that's been tortured so it tastes better because they're rich. Like they're not going to be hanging out in a digital lobby telling you that a fucking dog shit poster NFT is cool and that you should buy it. Unless you're a

millionaire and they want your money because they're Nicolas Cage and they have an addiction to buying Tyrannosaurus parts. I don't know. It's silly. It's ridiculous. Yeah. So one of the things that I thought about when I was watching this is like the concept of metaverse culture.

So like at some point, if this is a thing, there's going to be like if there ever is a metaverse, people will develop a culture for it. Just like they've developed a culture for Twitter, a culture for Reddit, a culture for Facebook, just as there were like internet culture or was internet culture before. Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft. Yeah. Yeah. It happens with every community you make online. And that's the thing. Like, there's no I see no space in this thing that Mark Zuckerberg has envisioned as he is presenting it for organic evolution of a culture.

The things that here are going to make people want to form a culture around it because it's all it looks like it looks like boring, yuppie shit. All of it. None of it is actually looks cool or fun. And none of it. None of it is. He's not talking about any of it with like the there's no there's no openness in it like there's i don't see where a culture could evolve and if one does it's going to be directly like in opposition to facebook moderation um like yeah um well yeah and

i mean and there's there's an extent to which like they can't right because like if you actually let people just like do things like imagine the griefing that's going to happen in one of these spaces right like every person's avatar is going to be like 16 000 dongs yeah that's just that's literally that's all it's going to be like this is this is what twitch looks like right like every twitch chat is just a guy posting a hydra made of dongs like it like none of none of this can actually work if you let people do literally anything if you don't let people do anything like why would you know i'm gonna want to do it yeah yeah like how are you gonna sell them this crap like once upon a time there was a game called

second life i guess it still exists but people were talking people talked about it the way they're talking about the metaverse now and that became just like it was never that but there was like this beautiful moment where this i think anshishi Chung was her name, this culture writer kind of expert lady was doing a Q&A in Second Life that was billed as being this big event for the platform that was going to make people take it seriously. of like users showed up and made a bunch of floating dicks like float through the room during the interview so that like while this person was trying to talk seriously about Second Life just like floating cocks were zooming past her head the entire time and it was extremely funny and it's it's exactly the kind of thing that like yeah Mark that's what all of this is going to look like any mass event is going people will find a way to grief it and that will in fact be the thing they most want to do is that will be the actual

culture part is fucking with facebook yeah yeah like you know but that's the part about that that sucks it's like yeah you know like you're in a virtual reality thing right so like okay what are people going to do in a virtual reality it's well okay you're gonna get you're gonna get a bunch of neo-nazis like triggering out a way to like show you just like the worst shit you've ever seen in your life like it's gonna it's gonna be all the stuff from the 2000s where like half of the internet was just like a video why this is 2010s too like half of twitter is just beheading videos except now it's in vr it's like yeah yeah imagine isis in the metaverse it's gonna be amazing that's something that's even already happening in like vr social media apps i know of a few specific nazis involved in january 6th who networked and

met with people via specifically vr chat so like this this is already a thing um and making it even more broad than like this small you know because the vr right now is mostly just a small subsect of like gaming culture right and people are into it because there is vr games that are cool like like beat saber is fun, right? Yeah, there's fun VR games. Yeah, absolutely. In order for them to break this through into the mainstream, they need to make it appealing in some way.

And the only way they're making it appealing right now is by doing meetings and concerts. So, the next part I want to play doesn't say a lot about the future Mark's trying to build, but it's very funny because it's him sitting down with a woman who works in his gaming department and she's walking him through like what games are going to be integrated into the metaverse. And it fucking reads like, and I think you should leave sketch. Like it feels like a sketch where the joke is

that everyone is awkward and not talking the way human beings talk. And in case you can't watch this chunk of the video and it starts at about like 1934 um in the actual facebook video all of the video games they're talking about like look dog shit they look like the kirkland brand of like popular like fighting games and fps's and stuff none of them look very good um so i'm gonna play a clip from this because it's very funny this can build out active communities. Beat Saber has a passionate community. I love Beat Saber. So do I.

And Beat Saber just passed $100 million in lifetime revenue on Quest Alone. That's a great example of a game that keeps releasing fresh content. They've actually been working on evolving the way that you interact with the tracks and feel the music. The way he's

nodding in this, like his digital avatar looks more like a person. Here's some Beat Saber. It looks like regular Beat Saber. Yep, but it's VR. It already is VR. It's already a VR game. I can't wait to

play this. You can already play it! They have incredible artists who release new music packs all the time. You can do this right now. Did you play the Billie Eilish music pack last month? A little more than I should have. I probably should have been working more on this metaverse presentation. Oh, God. Every scene where she's talking to him and he's just like bobblehead nodding just a little bit, but not like it's.

He looks so fake. He looks so fake. Mark actually will benefit from the metaverse outside of a financial thing because a sculpted 3D representation of him will be a thousand times better. It looks more human than he does. It looks like more of a person. Yeah. I mean, it's just like he's scripted it badly and he's a narcissist, so he has to be the one to present it. Oh, I love Beat Saber. Number one, if Steve Jobs were doing this, number one, he wouldn't

because he understood what people wanted from technology. But if he were doing something like this, he would introduce, like, little chunks of it, and then he would have a famous person who's charismatic introduce the rest of it. Like, that's... Yeah. It wouldn't be fucking him sitting like a bobblehead listening to people

talking about games he's never played. And, like, he would introduce VR and AR into a way that actually integrates how people use the internet already. Because there is ways of doing it. But it's not this super monetized NFT bullshit holographic fake stuff. Yeah. And there's aspects of this. He goes through after this. There's a bunch of gaming stuff, which is impossible for the reasons we've talked about.

And then there's aspects of it that seem cool. gaming stuff which is impossible for the reasons we've talked about then there's aspects of it that seem cool like there's a scene where like an architect gets onto his digital office and like somebody sends him uh schematics to a building they're making and he's able to generate it in 3d and walk around the building like okay that actually seems possible yeah that seems like useful like you've developed a use case for the all of the architects out there yeah it's it's i'm i'm still not convinced that cad would actually be better in 3d than it would be like sure it's debatable i i think like it maybe someday that could actually be useful it could be like if you are one of the increasingly

small number of people who can afford to like build a house of your own i can see why it would be neat to be like okay well let's do a 3d render of the house and I can walk through it and I could maybe make changes at the last moment as I'm kind of experiencing the flow of the room where a window is like, yeah, I can, that, that seems like something, number one, technologically, you could do that more or less now. I don't think it's, it's not going to be as instantaneous as this, but if you give it time to render, it could be done. And it, it's something that a number of people might find useful.

But again, that's a niche product because like 18 people in our generation are buying homes. I mean, yeah, and also it's expensive to develop because you would have, just modeling an actual real life location is a lot of work. Now there is a lot of technology that's getting way better at it by using cameras and like basically filming a space and the computer can reconstruct it pretty accurately. That is a growing field, but still, it's a very niche area, at least at this point.

Yeah. So anyway, there's aspects of this that are ridiculous, aspects of this that seem neat. of this that are ridiculous aspects of this that seem neat but the longer you watch it the thing that come becomes really clear is that all he's really advertising is mass surveillance that's the problem yeah yeah there's a point in this video where they're showing you how they can like map a real world location so you can be in your actual house put on your vr glasses um and it can map the uh your actual home digitally in real time. And as you pick up real things in your house, you see them being picked up in VR

and presumably other people in VR could see it. Which we are not quite there yet. I stay pretty up to date in VR technology. We're getting close to this, but we're not quite there. I mean, we actually are aware what they show in the video and I'm going to play you a second from it because I want to show you something here. At least for consumer products, we're not at this point yet. Yeah, and I want to show you where we are because this video, they're showing actual footage.

So they have built this thing, but there's a catch, and so I'm just going to play it right now. All right. Out the researcher. So what's critical here is that this is all happening in real time. So if you I've just paused it. Well, you've got here on one side, there's a woman in a real like house sitting and picking up like a toy home on her couch. And then on the left, you see the VR version of her house, which looks close to photorealistic. And like the house that she's holding in the real world is floating in the same way that she's holding it like her body isn't there like the

stuff she's interacting with is but if you look at the house she's holding the reason that they're able to do this and it really does work is it's covered in sensors it's covered in and actually every single thing in the real house is covered in sensors um because that's the only way for this to work right now moving is covered in sensors yeah yeah and it is impressive like as a proof of concept like this this is this is here, we can do this, but like, it's still light years away from practical and more to the point. When you look at this, you realize that like, well, if this is ever going to work, the only way to make it work is for Facebook through this service to map your entire home in real time, every hour of the day.

Yeah. And they also go on to talk about like how you're going to have gesture commands and like you'll be able to like make an expression or like a hand gesture and that will do things, which means that like this service isn't just learning what's in your home and what you do with the things in your home. It's learning your facial expressions and your gestures and like what they mean and interpreting those at all times welcome i'm daniel won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iheartart 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. I know you. 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. 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, 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 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. 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. 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 iHeart radio 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

in 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 while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast i can kind of explain where oculus which is over facebook i think they're technically renaming oculus uh yeah spring to just calling it the MetaQuest. Yeah.

Wait, wait, wait. The MetaQuest? That's what they're calling it. Instead of Oculus Quest, it's going to be MetaQuest. Okay. So where they're at right now is basically the only kind of real-world interactivity that they have for their VR headsets, again, for the consumer models,

I don't know what's in development, is hand tracking. This is the thing they've been working on for a long time, is again, for the consumer models, I don't know what's in development, is hand tracking. This is the thing they've been working on for a long time, is that you put on the headset, and the cameras and depth sensors built into the headset can see your hands. And like you said, you have gesture controls, where you can do certain things with your hand, and it'll make certain things happen. This is the only interactivity that we have.

It's okay. It's not perfect. It is better than a lot of the other hand tracking systems from other companies. But it is very much a work in progress. And the way to make this work is very good depth sensing cameras, which I think Apple makes some of

the best ones right now that they put into the iPhone. The other way of doing this is with lighthouses. So this is like separate cameras that you set up around the corners of your house that project different wavelengths of light, and

they get it received back so they can map your house with not just cameras but also infrared sensors and that kind of thing. So these are the two methods of doing it. Facebook is really trying to go full on to the everything is built into the headset thing. So no like lighthouses,

everything is just depth sensing cameras. So that's why they're working on hand tracking so much because that's something you can actually do. But like I can't pick up anything. The only thing I can pick up is my controllers, which because they have sensors built in, they can be rendered in the actual game the same way my hand can be.

So that's where they're at for that, for the consumer products. It's getting developed. Again, where they're at, you think about what Facebook has already done with the information you provided and how so much of their money comes from selling your data. Yes.

The only way for this to work that they've they've is that the cameras are always watching everything every moment of your existence including like your micro expressions is which is why i keep my oculus in a tiny little box yeah and here's the thing if they were to actually develop the technology which i don't think is impossible, although it's not particularly close, it's not going to be cheap to store all that. So in order to make it worthwhile outside – Well, it's going to be cloud-based, but in order to make it – like cloud isn't free. No, you're going to have to pay a subscription probably. I think you'll pay some, but i think in order to make it affordable um so that more people are on it they're just going to sell sell your data to advertise your

data in a way that has never been in a and and the government will have access to it like yeah it is it's actually like the thing that he is actually proposing here is i want to build a machine god that knows your sins like that knows when your heart rate is elevated that knows what it looks like before you smile that can predict like when you're about to make a gesture or laugh because it it is so accurately mapped your body and motions um it's actually a nightmare like when you really think about what he is trying to build here it's like well what's what's the actual use case for this and it's like well okay so you have a you have a bunch of special forces guys you put them in a vr thing and then you know you can you can you can have them drill on knowing exactly where all the rooms

in the houses where everyone is in where everyone is in a house at any given time and it's like oh hey this is this is going to be great this is yeah it's it's great yeah it, it's really cool. So there is a little bit here briefly about where Mark talks about how the last year or so has been fucking, the term he uses is humbling for them. Oh, God. You kind of think that like he's about to say that like, oh, because we made life dramatically worse and our service was integral in several ethnic cleansings and a couple of civil wars and like hate crimes on a scale that was unimaginable before it really came into being or that we thought had been – at least we thought had been consigned to a century or so ago before Facebook came into being. But no, that's not why it's humbling. Why he says it's been humbling is that Facebook has been developing services for other platforms like the App Store where they don't have total control, and that sucks. And that's like the thing that – that's him admitting a little bit that like a big part of this is they're trying to build a service the entire internet gets filtered

through that they completely control so that they are never in anyone else's wheelhouse. Like everything is done through Facebook and with Facebook's approval as opposed to them having to get Apple to say yes to something. Yeah. Yeah. Facebook is going to become the state. Yeah. And that's the thing that's trying to do. It says so much about Mark that he's like, what's humbling isn't all of the mistakes I've made.

It's that periodically I have not had total control. It's great. He then from immediately from this says that if we all work at it, all of us, the metaverse can reach a billion people

by the next decade, which is very funny. Yeah. That he thinks that that's like an enticing fucking thing. So one of the use cases they try to present is they have a beauty influencer who like made like a fucking candle line or something that she sold on Instagram and she's

very successful on Instagram. They bring this lady in. And number one, as soon as they started interviewing her, it's what I was saying about, yeah, have a hire a celebrity to do this, Mark. You're not charismatic. She's immediately the most engaging person in the entire presentation because she's a successful, like she's someone who understands how she appears on camera, how to make herself seem likable on camera, how to like interact with the world on a camera.

And nobody else in this video understands that, which is just funny. It's not particularly like say anything other than that, like, yeah, have professionals do difficult things, Mark. Don't hire your weird, gawky engineering staff to like be the faces of this thing they're not good at this and neither are you i just want to point out so he says that like he can get 1 billion people the next decade so far there's only been 16 million vr headsets sold ever yeah so getting

that to the point of a billion seems like quite the challenge. I mean, it is a challenge, but you could look at how quickly smartphones went from like— Yeah, except smartphones were useful in improving the world in very obvious ways. Whereas the metaverse, and even VR in general, doesn't improve the world for most people in obvious ways. Yeah, but that's kind of what I'm saying is that the thing that is stupid and doomed about this isn't like, oh, you would have to sell so many headsets. If it was legitimately something every single person wanted on their head, they would sell a billion. They would sell a billion in a couple of years, you know, but they haven't made that look like like. So this this beauty influencer thing is an example of them trying to like explain here's something that people will find cool about the metaverse.

And the way they do it is like talking about how you can have a digital storefront where like people can't just buy products, but they can interact with you. She talks about how it'll be good for letting her interact with her fans, but like bringing them into my home. Oh God. Sounds like a fucking nightmare. It sounds like a nightmare.

We love our fans, but like, no, I do not want anyone from my house. No. I don't want anybody in my goddamn home. No! I barely want my friends in my home half the time. Like, absolutely not. They didn't present us with

a use case of how a brand, in this case this candle company this lady made that's big on Instagram, could release a new candle flavor and launch a digital experience with it so you can buy both real and digital products. It's kind of unclear in the video whether or not you're paying for the digital experience or is it like free when you buy the candle?

Yeah, this is what Epic Games is developing. It's like dropping products at the same time in the real world, in the digital world, but the digital version is free because it's like an ad, right? You get to try something out virtually before you buy it physically. And that's what Epic Games is doing.

And honestly, I think Epic's version of the Metaverse is slightly more hinged. They understand more what people actually want. Yeah, because like all the stuff they're trying with Fortnite, again, it doesn't seem fun for me, but at least it's like an extension of how people use the internet already.

Whereas Facebook's is not that. Yeah, and Mark never really understood what people wanted he he accidentally did when trying to make something else like he wanted a place to share pictures of ladies he thought was hot um and he accidentally built a thing that like gave people something they did want which was a way to stay in contact with their friends from high school and college as they grew older right like that was the thing about Facebook that made it get huge originally. And he hasn't learned anything since he's just been smart. He's he's hired people who are smart enough to be like, hey, Instagram's probably going

to be a big deal by that. You should buy it. Yeah. You know, like that. But I haven't seen anything that's made me think like Mark gets what people want. And this has just made it clear that like he absolutely doesn't. So I want to play this video of like, this is the digital experience to go with this fucking candle that they're,

they're framing is like a piece of art that everybody's going to want to interact with who likes candles. I'm so thrilled to watch it. It's, it's incredible. Cause it again, feels like a nightmare. I am.

I am a big candle fan. So same here. Butterfly effect transports us to something magical. It's like a shitty arboretum. I don't see what this has to do with candles. So Jackie, as we walk through this amazing world, what does the murderverse

mean to you? I just feel like this is like endless possibilities with my imagination. I can't even begin to imagine. I don't understand. What does that have to do with candles? Yeah, like they have, again, like there's nothing. I can walk around. They talk about like, why can't I begin to imagine all the things people are going to do?

I can walk around digital spaces on my quest. It's again, it's fun for like 30 seconds. And then you see everything and you're like, oh, well, I can't touch it or smell it or actually feel it or do anything. So I'm going to go back and have a soda and I don't know, play and like read a book or something. And they've brought in this influencer who like used one of their other services in a way they hadn't initially intended and was successful in that, which is not a bad idea on its surface. Like, yeah, bring in creative people and let them play around and make something new to show people how exciting this is, right? That's the smart thing to do.

But all they've presented is like, look, it's a tiny little weird arboretum you can walk around in after buying a candle. And it's like, well, I like candles, but that doesn't sound like a fun addiction. It's a candle buying process. The whole part of the metaverse is like making like interactivity more like being able to interact with with digital things and like that's not interacting that's just walking around like unless i can like take of like a bazooka and blow up the armor like our arboretum the candle you know you have to do something like all of the vr games that are fun like like like like like a super Superhot or something, it's about picking up objects in VR and throwing them at people.

That's fun. Unless I can pick up this candle and assault people with it in the game, I don't see what's exciting about this. You were saying something, Chris? I guess the thing I keep coming back to with this is that the only way this and this literally any of this makes any sense if it's just like a chip in your brain yeah because all of it all of it is built around that but it's but it's not like it can't be like we don't the technology for that won't exist for like ages and so they're it's like it's like they're selling some of it definitely is headset based like that arboretum thing but for a lot of a lot of it but even yeah but like i mean i think even that, right? Like, okay.

So why would you want, like, yeah, you're saying like, why would you, it's like, okay, it's interesting for like 10 minutes,

right? Yeah. The only way that would be like, the only way that would be an actually interesting experience is if you could get all the full sensory experience. If you could smell and feel. Yeah, right.

And that, that's, that's, that's like, that's, that's the thing where like, it only makes sense if it's like a brain ship. Well,

I mean, there's, there's two versions. There's one, it's a brain ship or two, it's a video game. Yeah. And Epic Games is doing the thing where it's a video game. And's like a brain chip well i mean there's two versions there's one it's a brain chip or two it's a video game yeah and epic games is doing the thing where it's a video game and that makes slightly smarter to me yes yeah yeah but like they don't you know but they're they're trying to sell like and i i think part of what's going

on here is also just like this is this is designed to like like this is designed to like trick silicon valley investors yes that is what's going on yeah and those people i think are just gonna be like oh we'll have brain chips eventually and so we'll just we'll talk about we'll probably talk about that part more at the end because yeah this is just a scam this is just a scam and it is like again to talk about like the dystopian aspects of this chris as you brought up one of the aspects is that like it's a complete panopticon of perfect surveillance if they actually make this thing. And number two is the only way to do most of what they're talking about that's cool is to give Mark Zuckerberg physical control over human beings brain chemistry on a global scale, which I think is a bad idea. I'm not going to sign up for that. I'm not going to sign up for that. I don't want to walk around in a weird candle room that badly.

To your point, Chris, about how there's no sensory stuff, the most popular VR games, the reason why they work so well, the reason why they don't break the uncanny valley is because you're in a barren land. Beat Saber, you're not in a place. You're in the game interface.

For Superhot, you're in whitewashed abstract like concrete spaces right so like there's nothing there's nothing to smell or feel so like you don't feel like you're missing anything because you're in a very like stripped down version of reality there is a really good a vr game i forget what it's called but it's based on like an office and you're like fighting robots to break out of like this capitalist office room and it's cool because like yeah it's miserable because it's like it's like an office space you feel like you're fighting robots to break out of this capitalist office room. And it's cool because, yeah, it's miserable because it's an office space. You feel like you're in an office because nothing about it is exciting, right?

VR games that are in lush worlds feel so much more disconnected. Because you have an uncanny valley thing, but instead of a face or a person, it's an environment. It's like an environment. 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. 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. Check out betteroffline.com. Elian Gonzalez will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. 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 while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're running low on time. I want to move to something that I think is important here, which is there is one moment in this video where they try to address the fact that they've done a tremendous amount of damage to the world and have repeatedly failed to like uh anticipate dangers that their services have so they need to like deal with that at some point and this is like well what about if like what about bad things that could happen what if like what about like unintended things what about

like ways in which this could be harmful to society that you haven't foreseen so because they're not completely stupid in order to address that they bring on a well-dressed uh or not well-dressed but they bring on like a friendly British man who kind of reads as like a scientific kind of expert guy. They bring on a charming British person to like talk about how they're going to not destroy the world. And this is very telling. So far, it's such visionary stuff. But as you mentioned early on, with all big technological advances, there are inevitably going to be all sorts of challenges and uncertainties. And I know you've talked about

this a bit already, but people want to know how we're going to do all this in a responsible way, and especially that we play our part in helping to keep people safe and protect their privacy online. Yeah, that's right. This is incredibly important. The way I look at it is that in the past, the speed that new technologies emerged sometimes left policymakers and regulators playing catch up. So on the one hand, companies get accused of charging ahead too quickly. And on the other, tech people feel that progress can't afford to wait for the slower pace of regulation. And I really think that it doesn't have to be the case this time around because we have years until the metaverse we envision is fully realized so

this is the start of the journey not the end so that's telling uh that he's like we don't need to worry about like we don't need to like it'll it'll be fine. It'll get regulated properly. It'll be safe enough because it's going to take so long to figure all this out that surely we will anticipate and deal with all of the right guy to have in the only aspect of good casting in this. That is the right guy to have come on and try to allay people's fears that this will destroy society. You bring a charming British man in. That's how you do that kind of thing. That's when I get canceled for the things I've been doing overseas. I'm going to hire a British person to defend myself. Do they make any more comments about like AR glasses or VR?

Yes, quite a few. I wanted to move on to that, even though, yeah, we're so they talk about they have a whole section where they're they're talking about the actual glasses they have. So they announced, number one, they have a project. The goal, as he repeatedly says, is to make a, quote, normal, good-looking pair of glasses that do all this stuff, which obviously, yes. That is the end goal, yeah. And he does, as like a proof of concept, he shows us these AR Ray-Bans that actually look legitimately rad. They look like normal, at least, I haven't touched a

pair of these in my hands, but the videos that are supposed to be these real products show a pair of what look like normal ray bands that you can take pictures and videos with you can answer phone calls on you could do like video phone calls on them and stuff like they seem neat and like they look like normal glasses yeah um and that is pretty cool um they go kind of pivot from that to announcing that like they have this new thing project nazar um which oh i looked up what nazar means a little bit ago it's probably dystopian uh no i think it was just yeah uh it's a town oh it's a surf spot right it's a place and i think portugal where there's like great waves and mark zuckerberg's really into surfing he plays a surfing game at one point in this that is one of the most embarrassing things I've seen in my entire fucking life. But yeah, so Project Nazar is supposed to be like the first true like VR glasses.

So they do the good thing, which is like here's the real technology, these Ray-Bans. And look, these are pretty neat. Obviously, that doesn't come close to what they're promising. And this whole thing where they talk about what the uh the glasses which they say they're making good progress on are going to do we don't ever see any fucking glasses yeah um yep yeah and and that's because they're not really close uh to to to working yet uh i definitely think really hard that the ar glasses are going to be the way to act like if the goal is to integrate digital

spaces into the physical space, I think it's a good goal because what that's going to do that's going to make the digital space less fake. It's injecting that into the actual real world. I think that will actually really help with disassociative stuff because it's actually in the real world as well. I think that's going to be wonderful when that gets

developed. I think the glasses are definitely going to be a thing within the next 10 to 20 years. There are ways of illuminating glass on the side to make what looks like an image. This is definitely going to be a thing that's going to be possible. Don't figure aspects of it out.

Surveillance and privacy are the big fears for that because we're nowhere close to hacking the brain enough to feel sensations and like the only thing like i've played a lot of vr the only thing that you can feel in vr is fear that's the only thing that vr is capable of replicating that's good as as a feeling it's like you can feel terrified in vr that's that's that's it you can't ever okay there's one other thing you can feel exhausted yeah i played a bow and arrow game,

and I was doing bow draws for four hours, and I was like, oh, man. We've developed a way to make you frightened and tired. That is what VR is best at. Which is, by the way, what Twitter does normally. It's true. All of the Resident Evil VR games, yeah. They're good at making you tired and terrified. And that's kind of it.

So we have to close out, but I want to do that by playing Mark Zuckerberg lamenting the internet that he played a major role in building as a way to talk about why we need a metaverse, because it's kind of funny. We're allowed to build and use are more tightly controlled than ever. And high taxes on creative new ideas are stifling. This is not the way that we are meant to use technology. The metaverse gives us an opportunity

to change that and build it well. But it's going to take all of us. Creators, developers, companies of all sizes. Together, we can finally put people at the center of our technology and deliver an experience where we are present with

each other yeah um what a ghoul what a monster like all of that's nonsense number one you're not you're one of the people who has turned the internet into an expensive walled garden it didn't used to be this way then facebook swooped in made themselves for free um like integral to all content and then started charging those content creators and like fucking them around and lying to them, which led to the destruction of a huge number of websites and a tremendous amount of digital culture. Like you're why it feels like a dead walled garden and everything you've presented in this video makes the metaverse feel like a dead walled garden.

But I want to play his last lines in this video, because this is him kind of summing up his vision for the future via the metaverse. And now it is time to take everything that we've learned and help build the next chapter. I'm dedicating our energy to this more than any other company in the world. And if this is the future that you want to see, then I hope that you will join us, because the future is going to be beyond anything we can imagine. I agree with that part, Mark. The future is going to be beyond what you can imagine.

What a ghoul. Yeah. Because you have no imagination. It's just using trendy tech terms to trick investors into giving them billions of dollars. Yeah. That's all it is because all of this haptic feedback, replicating human feelings and stuff, we're nowhere close to that.

And when we do, it's going to be dystopian, but we're not close to it. And it's going to be dystopian or it's going to be better in ways that like we can't yet conceive of. And then eventually it will be destroyed for profit if it actually gets cool like the old Internet was. it will be destroyed for profit if it actually gets cool, like the old internet was. Yeah. Yeah, but I think both this and even a lot of the Epic stuff,

it's just the new way that tech companies, that's where they think the money vault is, is by using these terms. And they think using these terms is going to get them lots of extra investor money. Because the actual technology is nowhere really close to this, and it's not what people want out of the Internet anyway. It absolutely is not.

But I don't know. I think this was important. I think Facebook is important and has a major impact on the way the Internet is continuing to evolve, usually in negative ways. But this is how these people who are doing a lot of damage view the future so you should know what they're looking at and what they anticipate but i think i think that there's a kind of optimistic note to this though right which is like okay so we've we've reached the point where like even like boris johnson is going like oh god climate change is coming yeah right yeah and this is the best they've got yeah right this

is their vision of the future they have no they have nothing they have nothing and you know i think like what the what are the only ways we can win is if we're facing a uniquely incompetent ruling class yeah and if it if the rule if the if the guy were if a guy we have to deal with in order to like not drown every single whale and and have half of the world's cities consumed by the ocean is Mark Zuckerberg, like... We got a shot. We got a shot. I think there are some smarter people that operate behind the scenes, right? Sure.

Yeah. But I don't think... I think that's a nice note to end on because it is it is worth the nice thing about this is how clearly they don't understand what the future is going to look like online. Yeah. They have ways in which they're trying to direct the future and aspects of that will come true. Like their VR will succeed in some form at some point, and it will be potentially an unprecedented surveillance breakthrough that has some unsettling implications, as well as some positive ones.

Metaverse stuff's getting developed by a lot of other stuff. The move by Twitter to create this, it's called Twitter Spaces, where it's this voice chat room. A lot of people are moving towards this concept where we try to inject more in-person interactivity into this

virtual framework right we have this with like uh with like a clubhouse last year during during the pandemic where people like watching like netflix in the quote same room right yeah like we're seeing people try to do this with varying mixed success but this is the way tech is is is inching so it is a good idea to keep your eye on it because yeah it has a lot of implications for like privacy and advertising and all that kind of stuff. We'll continue to cover aspects of this, talk about the technology, talk about the surveillance implications, talk about the visions these people have. But I think this has been these episodes have been useful. And like, here's what Mark thinks is coming.

Here's what Facebook is pouring like 10 billion dollars into. It's dumb as shit. Have a nice day. 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 iHeart Radio 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. 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 Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Hey, I'm Jacqueline 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. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where

I take phone calls from anonymous strangers as a fake gecko therapist and try to learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's very interesting. Check it out for yourself by searching for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.