It Could Happen Here - The Metaverse That Never Was, Part 1

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

The astroturfed Metaverse is coming, this episode we discuss virtual shopping and VR crypto storefronts. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. What's meta my verse this is it could happen here a podcast entirely dedicated to the metaverse which is the promise of the human future um on with me as always is my co-host mark zuckerberg With me, as always, is my co-host, Mark Zuckerberg.

Hello. I don't know how Mark Zuckerberg talks. I'm not sure how. Yeah, I don't know whose voice you were doing. But it was great. I loved it. I guess. But who knows? He sounds like nothing.

Like no one. Like the absence of a soul. He sounds like the noise when it's dial up. That's his voice. Yeah. That's what's going on inside his head at any moment. When he's not actively making the Internet worse, it's just a dial tone in there. Awesome.

Garrison, what are we talking about today? Well, yeah, we're going to be talking about the metaverse and how how it's different from what people talk about it as and yeah it's it's gonna be it's gonna it's gonna touch on a variety of things split up into two parts um but first i would like to paint you a picture with words a word picture so you're a wicture a wicture yeah you're walking walking through your favorite grocery store there's you know carts passing by horrible music playing it's the lighting is white and and like overexposed and underexposed at the same time it's it's it's hard it's hard to see and this uh this like a person who looks like an employee keeps keeps popping up and trying to take you to different sections of the store. You're trying to just ignore her. It's very annoying. All you need to get is the stuff you have on a little list, and it's awful.

take out, you go to where the wine bottles are, you take them out and you arrange them into a giant penis on the floor, because that's the only thing you can do, because you're not actually in a store. You're in your living room and you have a horrible headset on and you're trying to do shopping in a virtual grocery store. And that's the actual kind of scope of what we're going to be talking about today is virtual marketplaces and how they interact with seemingly real marketplaces. Yeah, I'm sure this is inspired by there were a couple of videos that dropped recently, one of them from, I think, Walmart. We're going to be talking about it. So yeah, so a couple of days after the 2020 New Year, a video went viral across the social medias, ranking up over like 11 million views on Twitter, and it was titled

How Walmart Envisions Shopping in the Metaverse. Now, so what followed was two minutes of an embarrassing VR jank, including throwing around virtual gallons of milk from your cart into a virtual fridge. Many

dunks were made, fun was had, but what few people probably realized is that, like, this wasn't a Walmart metaverse test store. This was actually a five-year-old tech demo from before non-Neil Stevenson fans even knew what the term metaverse meant. So a few years back, a tech company called Mutual Mobile partnered with Walmart for a project set to, quote, reimagine retail with virtual reality. Now, that sounds very fancy and important, but considering this was five years ago, and you're not hearing about it until now, shows how impactful this thing actually was.

The first stated goal of the tech demo, according to the Mutual Mobile website, was to impress influencers at South by Southwest 2017. So just like the so-called metaverse is now, this was largely a promotional project and a way to attract investors. This was never actually a serious thing. I'm going to say it right now. South by Southwest was always one of the stupidest things in the world.

And when it comes back, it will be still because it's stupid. It's a stupid place for the most insufferable people in the world to come and talk about technology. Some people also listen to music. That's fine. So, yeah, for the experience itself, they used an original Oculus Rift and programmed a roughly like four-minute linear expedition into a barren, hellish digital Walmart where you pick up and throw. It did. It did sound exactly. My favorite thing about this video is they were clearly using the audio of some sort of like shooter game because it was awful. Like things would change. It would

sound like you were in like fucking doom going through a portal. It was extremely funny. It was bad. It sounded like hell. You pick up and throw fake wine bottles into your blue digital cart, and the whole thing ends with a fake drone delivering an $800 TV that you fake purchased. It's not great. What Mutual Mobile and Walmart were trying to do, they have a statement on their website back from 2017. They said that Walmart envisioned unveiling a fully virtual shopping experience that puts shoppers inside the store without ever leaving their homes. To attract customers and dispel the

misconception that they're not as advanced as their more digital counterparts, brick-and-mortar establishments are not only accelerating investments in areas like web and mobile, they're also exploring the very edge of emerging technology. Walmart to virtual reality is a case in point. Potential shoppers can virtually pick up products, read labels. Walmart to virtual reality is a case in point. Potential shoppers can virtually pick up products, read labels, talk to virtual associates, and fill their shopping carts. But the goal wasn't just to create something interactive. Walmart needed something that showed the potential of VR in retail while putting them ahead of the competition. So, I mean, this was 2017, so this was kind of ahead in some ways, but also ahead in the ways that it's kind of showing how not useful this example is.

So, obviously, like, this five-year-old video resurfaced now due to Zuckerberg and Epic Games, you know, forcing an astroturfed metaverse into the cultural zeitgeist, coupled with their, you know, conflation of anything VR to the legendary metaverse, right? Because VR does not equal metaverse, nor is it necessarily vice versa. But now these terms are getting used so interchangeably that someone can stumble across this video and be like, oh, look at this metaverse store when it's not. It's just a VR tech demo. The metaverse, in order to be like the thing that people have been imagining through cyberpunk since like the

90s it needs to be persistent and interact directly with the real world in a number of ways like it's it's it's this we'll we'll get into we'll get into kind of what metaverse could be in the future in terms of like the it could happen here idea and then not just a metaverse but a series of metaverse is what they could be and how that kind of negates the original idea of it in the first place. But when asked by Vice News about the resurgence of their Walmart project, Mutual Mobile replied, The vision of a virtual shopping experience we helped Walmart realize back in 2017 stands validated in the metaverse era of today. This whole experience has only encouraged us to keep experimenting, innovating, and leading the charge with cutting-edge tech.

So, I mean, considering most of the virality of this was people joking about it, I, yeah, sure, okay, okay, Mutual Mobile. Good luck with that. So, a few days after the Walmart video went viral, rumors of another big box store going metaverse started to circulate, again accompanied by a video of a possible 3D metaverse storefront. Reports emerged starting in India,

claiming that H&M had announced that it would offer its customers a three-dimensional shopping experience in its virtual store inside the metaverse via something called now i don't know if it's keek city or seek city um i'm not really comfortable saying either of those things because they sound weird but i'm gonna go with i'm gonna go with seek city that's a little bit better keek it sounds like it's a slur i know i know i know it's not but it sounds like it's a slur so i'm to say seek but it's it's s-e-e-k um so this this account on on twitter called a seek vr uh shared the following from its official twitter account shopping in the metaverse with seek coin concept vr store presented to h&M by Seek creates mainstream use cases for Seek coin and scaling virtual reality beyond games.

So, I'll get into what Seek is in a bit, but the report said that customers would be able to walk through the store, choose the apparel they wanted to purchase in the Seek City universe, although the clothes could only be worn in the digital environment. Payment would be made with a Seek coin, and customers could have the opportunity to order the same apparel from H&M's physical stores later. But you're buying two separate things. One of it's the digital skin, one of it's an actual, you know, real thing. So what is Seek?

Seek was launched in 2018. It's a metaverse coin project built on the Ethereum blockchain, and their goal is to connect artists athletes and other digital content creators directly with their fans in virtual worlds seeks nft marketplaces is designed to enable real ownership of digital items the way in which i would actually want that is if it's me having a very sexual zoom chat with pit you know what we don't need to garrison please continue okay uh and i'm quoting from uh seek's website seek currently offers a range of immersive vr experiences within seek city including theater concert arenas sports complex hangout lounge and more wow it's all the things you can do in your real home, but weird, and on the internet.

I really hate it. This is horrible. I see a potential appeal for people who are out in the sticks or in parts of the world where they feel like they're very politically or whatever disconnected, which is the same thing the internet already does. And maybe it being in VR will make it better. I don't know. I've lived in the middle of nowhere and relied on the internet already does i'll talk about it being in vr will make it better

i don't know i've lived in the middle of nowhere and relied on the internet to be social and i don't think i would have wanted to change the internet in for this because it sounds yeah anyway it's i'll talk i'll talk about use cases in a sec but yeah so end users will be able to use seek token to make purchases, vote for content, control programming, and much more after token launch. Seek VR, in partnership with Universal Music, can realize live performances of world-famous artists such as Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga, U2, Sting, and many more can take place on this platform. So Seek is like, it's kind of of this startup but it's been around for a while

it's trying to do like you know virtual venues inside the metaverse they they do have contracts with uh universal so it's it's it's a mix of try it's it's a mix of this coin so it's a mix of this like cryptocurrency also trying to use this cryptocurrency in this world they're trying to build up. Their roadmap to Metaverse right now, first thing is like payment integration. So using SeekCoin, they want SeekCoin to be the coin for everything in the Metaverse.

They want all of Metaverse to be based off this thing that they invented called SeekCoin because it'll make them money. Next thing they want to do is create a creator-enabled ecosystem. So kind of copy the content creator thing we have right now,

port that into the metaverse, but again, have everything, you know, you can invest in your creators so you can vote on what they do using Seacoins and all of... We talked about personal ownership in the previous episode. But then, a lot of it, they have an NFT marketplace, avatar marketplaces, etc., etc., but a lot of it you know they have like an nft

marketplace avatar marketplaces etc etc but a lot of the stuff is built around like concerts you know venues a lap you know a lounge movie theaters where you can do stuff in vr that is like that is the the main the main thing that seek is trying to do. They do have this one quote somewhere. Oh yeah, the future milestones, so after they achieve this Seek metaverse where everything is ran through Seek, all of like, you know, whether you're on Oculus, whether you're on Vive,

all of it gets run through Seek. It's one multiverse, sorry, one metaverse. Their future milestones are quote a vr space academy they do not do not say what that means okay um geek studios again kind of unclear i'm guessing like original content and then the last one is a blockchain metaverse alliance those are their those are their three big future milestones after they get there there what was that last one blockchain metaverse alliance i mean this was like in the facebook thing too right the idea that we're going to integrate nfts but it was also clearly just like they tossed that in there on the facebook

one there was no evidence they'd thought seriously about nfts or blockchain it was just had gotten big while they were preparing the thing, so they tossed them in there. I get the idea, right? The thing that they keep pitching with this is that you'll be able to have an item in one game that is yours. The company doesn't own it. You can take it to other games, which anyone who makes games will tell you is fucking nonsense. Something like that might be vaguely possible in a metaverse where everything was forced to use the same engine um and all everyone was also forced to abide by a bunch of strict rules by facebook um that also that's probably violating antitrust laws um and also it seems like a

ridiculously sisyphusian task with no real benefit i don't think anyone's going to do it but i'm guessing that's what they're referring to when they want to jam the blockchain up in the fucking metaverse. Like what else could it be? The blockchain metaverse alliance. Yeah. All of the blockchains and metaverses get aligned into, yeah,

like they want to put all of the metaverse stuff into one. Only you can wear this shirt in the metaverse. Yeah. Woo. So just like the real world, the freedom, the freedom of the internet. Can't you feel it? The ever expanding possibilities.

I do love, because they keep talking about within the context of metaverse games, like you'll get to unlock a character that's just yours and nobody else can play it. And he'll have special abilities. That means he wins all the time. Why would people play that game? I think it was Business Insider, someone's article talking about how neat it would be for games to work this way and like think of all the money you'd make,

people wanting to watch your character win. People don't want to just like watch a guy who's structurally unable to lose because he bought the right character in a racing game win every race. That's not, no one's going to pay to watch that. Do you understand what people watch

races for like no yeah anyway it's all nonsense let's hear from our good friends at our products and services before we come back and talk more about seek coins i guess i don't know see yay Yay! 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. 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, will make headlines everywhere. 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,

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in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds All right, we are back. all right we are back so yeah seek coins virtual reality spaces run on smart contracts through the uh through the the buy-ins smart chain and they're they're they're run they're run through the ethereum blockchain um so the the uh there's about seven and 744 million Seat coins in supply. The maximum supply capacity is capped at 1 billion coins. Seat coins peaked at $1.16 a year ago after launching at around $0.04. They're currently being traded for around $0.60. So that's what actual Seat coins are doing.

People do use this. It's not many people. Like, they do have these contracts with Universal Music. But before this H&M thing, I never heard of Seek coins. So two days after the rumors began circulating that H&M was, you know, partnering with Seek, H&M said, nope, we are not doing this. But they did not close the door on future possibilities. They said, we'd like to confirm that H&M is not opening a

store in the metaverse at this time. We're also not collaborating with Seek. So the official Twitter account for Seek subsequently clarified later on that the store that they were doing was just a concept that was presented to H&M and not a launching virtual store yet. But they do say that they're in discussions with H&M to make this a reality, but it's not a reality as of now. So this kind of begs the question, like, what about a 3D digital space is superior to a 2D digital space for simple tasks like shopping online? So once you start, you know, unfolding questions like this about the Internet, metaverse, AR, VR, there are more the internal sides to this than you would have initially estimated. But first off, before we kind of have this discussion, we should split this into two categories.

One for shopping for, like, real physical items that you plan on like receiving in person and then digital items that don't physically exist and are just just on your computer and monitor. So obviously, like there's no clear advantage in most cases to traversing an isolated virtual environment in order to order food as opposed to just scrolling through a Web page. virtual environment in order to order food as opposed to just scrolling through a web page but once you expand out of the confines of vr's sensory deprivation 3d 3d technology in ar so augmented reality does actually have some useful prospects including some that are already in use amazon and ikea for example have options on their prospective websites and apps that can like project furniture options into your living space. So you can see how they fit. Yeah, that's the kind of thing that has some future, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. So currently this is being done on your phone screen. But an AR glasses application of this would actually serve its purpose quite well. Sure. Yeah, that seems like a thing people would want. Yeah, the phone screen version is pretty mediocre. And that's kind of the thing.

The place we're at, we make fun of this stuff a lot because most of it's nonsense. There's a lot of potential in some of these ideas, but there's potential for like in the same level that the air fryer has potential, where it's like a thing a bunch of people will buy, but it's not. None of this yet is stuff that's going to completely change. Like, yeah, you might get a few million people to get these glasses and, or this app, maybe this glasses for a couple of reasons, but who would use this, this app to like help plan out how they're setting up their houses. You might get a few million people who do that. It's not going to be like an iPod or an iPhone or, or like Facebook that no one's had figured that out yet. There's, there's some neat products that are going to be valuable, but we're still in the stage where nobody's figured out fundamentally what

people want from this, as opposed to like tiny specific needs. In the same way that like there was a number of futurists who quite accurately figured out with a smartphone like, oh, people want a thing that will give them access to all of the knowledge and ideas in the world and also let them yell at anybody anytime they want. Like, that's something that is going to be incredibly successful. And it has, and it's changed the entire world. Zuckerberg was like, people want to be able to be racist faster. And by God, we wanted it. And that was huge. It's a good idea. Yeah, let people scope out how their room is going to look when they're shopping or whatever through AR,

but we haven't yet hit that this is going to change the world. Being slightly better at using Ikea will not change the world. Yeah, I think as an avid air fryer hater, I do think comparing Metaverse to the air fryer is actually a very apt comparison. I love my air fryer, which I I do think comparing Metaverse to the air fryer is actually a very apt comparison. Which I love to say to Garrison. I know, Garrison hates it when I use the air fryer. I love my air fryer.

Anti-air fryer action is my new tattoo. They screech like the person at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They do. like the person at the end of Invasion of the Body Smashers. They do. But my goodness, do they cook my food faster. They air fry it.

Fry it with the air. Wow. Almost like it's impossible. Anyway, Mutual Mobile's digital marketing strategist talked with Vice after the Walmart video went viral. And he explained that the demo was made to show the potential of virtual reality and shopping experiences that they can have for different people, including its ability to connect elderly people or people with disabilities to a shopping experience from the comfort of their own home, something that he thinks might even be attractive to people who have been through several rounds of COVID quarantine. And I can kind of understand this last argument, you know, during early quarantine, I definitely used my VR headset more often than I had before. And with our alienated capitalist world, I can see the use

of walking around a digital store if you're stuck at home due to something like a plague or if you have a physical or mental reason that makes going to a store difficult. Yes, this can help that, but also it's very reliant on how these types of stores are set up and how these stores

affect your brain. A big part of going to the grocery store, what it's designed to do is make it so that we're not just following a shopping list. There's a big part of going to the grocery store. What it's designed to do is make it so that we're not just following a shopping list. There's a structured joy of discovery. Everything about the design of the store is to get you to buy things you didn't think you needed before you walked in.

We're trained from birth to find this process pleasurable. In that way, walking around a VR Walmart or H&M might actually make some people happy, despite that being sad and dystopian if you stop and think about it, right? Because that's actually like – it's a very capitalist thing, but it does make us happy because that's what we've been trained to do since we were babies. So there is that side of it for in terms of like, yeah, I can see if I really don't want to leave the house, but I want to get the experience of walking through a place. Maybe I will walk through a target to get groceries. I don't know. Some people maybe might do that. But otherwise, you know, it's much, it is much

simpler and easier to just scroll through a 2D thing on a web page and do the things you need. That's the thing. Like, it's like, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Because when I was making fun of one of these videos, somebody called it out as being ableist and was like, think of all the uses this has for a disabled person. If they can use this, they can use Amazon. And as a person who sometimes, I don't shop for groceries at Amazon, but I've shopped for groceries

online, it's fine. It's everything it needs to be. You can get your groceries online and the metaverse is just going to make it like weird and off-putting and unnecessarily complicated. Because at the moment,

I can get groceries with my phone while I'm like jogging or as I'm like sitting in traffic or like while I'm on a Zoom call listening to Garrison talk about the metaverse as opposed to putting on a headset and like doing the same thing basically as driving there, but more expensively.

Anyway, it's dumb. Are you grocery shopping right now? I am ordering 1,700 cans of Zevia and 40 pounds of raw beef. That's a normal week's worth of food for me. That's a lot of Zevia. And that's literally like two days for him. See, but Robert, you could be doing this while wearing a bucket on your head and walking around a fake store.

I could wear a bucket on my head to the real store. They can't stop me. I usually wear a bathrobe. 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. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. 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. 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 Piece, 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. of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit 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. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising,

relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. This is the first half where it's like, you know, buying actual physical items that you plan to receive in stores. You know, furniture, this actually kind of makes sense. Food, it's a little bit iffy.

The only kind of consideration there is if people want the mental effect of walking around a store, if they find that pleasurable, then it's a thing. But, you know, it's way more efficient to just scroll through your phone. As for the other side, buying virtual items, whether they be, you know, NFTs, video game game skins or super special exclusive vr hangout rooms i don't give a fuck how this works if you want to walk around a vr mall to buy your vr art and your vr clothes knock yourself out i i buy sonic the hedgehog games we all have our weird things we do that don't make any sense yeah if that's if and that's you

these grocery stores are just gonna be like the 700 weirdest people in the country masturbating as they buy wine and milk. That's the thing, Robert. I was – when I was doing the digital picture in the beginning, I had two scenarios. One where you align the bottles into a deck. The other one I was going to say you take off your pants and start masturbating. And I decided not to do that one. So I'm happy that you brought it up. that was the right call because yeah that is the actual use case for this is that someone's people are going to be walking around these fake walmarts

just all jerking off that's what's going to happen they're going to have this animation of a real real female employee of theirs who like pops up when you do something you're not supposed to do and explain something to you and it's going to be impossible to remove initially. And people are going to turn it into a whole weird, horny thing. And like, they will appear in all these circumstances. It's going to go. It's going to be the only thing that goes viral. Like, it's going to be the only thing people remember five years later about the first of these.

This is I'm going to circle back to this towards the end of part two. But this is the actual way to handle the metaverse, because we're going to this is gonna be forced on us one way or another we're gonna have a form of it and honestly the best thing we can do with it is either ignore it ignore it or maybe more attractively is to fuck with it like that's gonna be the thing that's gonna be the thing to do there was um an article a few days ago that uh the headline is final fantasy porn interrupts italian senate zoom event so someone someone joined in and started playing porn from final fantasy 7 yes like this is this is the thing to do yeah this is the way that we need to do it if there's gonna be dumb ass like meetings on the zuckerberg meta metaverse people need to go in

and make it weirdly horny. Garrison, I could not agree more. That's the... What you need to do, citizens of the internet, is look up something awful Habbo, H-A-B-B-O Hotel. That's the kind of shit that we need to be doing

in fucking... There was basically a children's video game was an early kids mmo and a bunch of weird adults and something awful decided to create an unsettling cult of people who all looked identical and marched around doing all of these weird unsettling things in a children's game it was very fun um like or or like uh in uh in second life when it was the new big sexy thing there was was this very self-important tech writer investor type person who was doing a Q&A and people just animated thousands of floating penises going around. This is going to be the thing. This is what we're going to have to do because if it's going to be this horrible corporate hell, the only way to deal with that is to make it unusable for everybody so that it doesn't get used.

And the way to do that is by putting dicks everywhere. Yeah. Dicks and boobs everywhere. If Biden ever decides to do a multiverse presentation or if one party or another decides to do a multiverse debate, it is everyone's moral responsibility to fuck it up. Civic responsibility. Yeah, it is your duty moral responsibility civic civic yeah it is your duty this goes beyond civic this is as a citizen of the human race you know as a member of this species you have to try to find a way to fuck it up for them so nothing could be more important

so yeah so if if you're buying digital items you never plan to receive in person i do not care how you do it knock yourself out we all have our weird things. I buy Sonic DLCs. People do World of Warcraft. If you want to get an art piece you can only hang in your digital room, that sounds miserable, but have fun. Yeah, I used the internet to order very off-putting Danish cheese product.

Oh, yeah, that did happen. That was off-putting. It was weird. It was like caramel nonsense. You tried to trick yourself into liking it when you were eating it, though. I don't remember not liking it because I ate a good amount, but I've had the second cube sitting around and I've had no desire to open it. No desire. Yeah.

Anyway. I didn't not like it. I just don't know that I ever want to eat it again. I love that for you. Quality audio content. So here's the thing. I have not actually been talking about the metaverse. audio content. So, here's the thing.

I have not actually been talking about the metaverse. Nothing I've mentioned thus far actually is the metaverse and doesn't have really anything to do with the metaverse besides the technology of VR and AR. You know, it turns out companies like Facebook, Epic, Microsoft and Valve, the way they talk about the metaverse is kind of all a big lie.

It's not metaverse. It's an astro-turfed, top-down marketing scheme to turn more of you into data and to create viral marketing. Instead of an interconnected solution to the alienated bubbles of Web 2, it's just a social media network that encompasses all of your vision

and encourages even more digital alienation and less in-person socialization. Hey, kids, you know the worst stuff about the Internet? What if it was the only thing about the internet? What if it was accompanying everything you see instead of just a computer screen? It's like all of the gaming CEOs who were talking about the promise of NFTs

and I think it was one of the guys who runs Reddit, I think it might have been Alexis Ohanian or whatever their name is, who said that in five years, 90% of games will be NFT based because people don't like wasting their time and not getting compensated for it. They're like, do you know what a game is? That's not why people play games. Do you know what a game is?

So I'm going to talk more about Metaverse as big tech or just bigger tech in part two. But this will be wrapping up part one of the digital storefronts. And then we'll get into some more kind of applications of this and how we're actually seeing it in the second half. So Robert, do you want to go buy a virtual block of Danish cheese?

No, I did when I was hanging out on top of a mountain the other day. I ran into a guy flying some drones, which I normally don't like, but this guy had a VR control rig for his very nice drones. Oh, yeah. Those are fun. That seemed kind of dope. I might get into that shit.

Sure. But no, I have no desire to shop. I like going to the grocery store. Yeah. I do as much of my shopping that way as possible because it's soothing and nice and I think very human to go be around other people to get food. Yeah, and things like the pandemic where that becomes harder, I think that is where the use cases for the digital stores actually come in, like theoretically. If it could deliver that feeling, that soothing, which it all just looks deeply off-putting.

The problem is that it's stuck in the uncanny valley, so it's not pleasurable to be in those digital spaces. Because even though it's being marketed as a solution to alienation, it's just more alienating. Because it's very clearly exposing the alienation that we try to avoid. So it falls right in the middle of the uncanny valley and it's not pleasant. But we will talk more about that in part two.

If you want to follow the show on the social medias, that is CoolZoneMedia and HappenHerePod. You can keep up with my tweets when I, I don't know, I don't know what I do on Twitter anymore, but that's Hungry Bowtie and you can harass Robert Evans at I Read OK.

Yeah, motherfuckers. Do it. That's the show. Do it. Do it or I'll kill you. Robert, no. 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.

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