Some More News - SMN: Into The Metaverse

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Hi. In today's episode, we explore vast new digital worlds! An ever-expanding landscape of virtual delights and innovations! That you have to pay for with a hideous illustration of a monkey! Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/somemorenews Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune supporting FREE 1 year supply of Vitamin D AND 5 free travel packs with your first purchase if you visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews today. Right now Trade Coffee is offering a total of $20 off your first three bags when you go to http://drinktrade.com/morenews. To get started, take their quiz at http://drinktrade.com/morenews, and start your journey to your perfect cup. Ready to give your brain some TLC? Download Best Fiends FREE today on the App Store or Google Play. That's friends, without the r—Best Fiends. Secure your online data TODAY by visiting http://expressvpn.com/somenews. That's http://expressvpn.com/somenews and you can get an extra three months FREE. Executive Producer - Katy Stoll (@KatyStoll). Written by David Christopher Bell (@Moviehooligan). Directed by Will Gordh (@will_gordh). Edited by Gregg Meller. Graphics by F. Clint DeNisco. Head Writer - David Christopher Bell. Producer - Nick Mundy. Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales (@mijo_marco). Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker (@LTP313). Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenewsSupport the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pew, pew, pew! Ow! Lasers! Hello! Here is some news! Some future news! Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing! More laser sounds! Robot fucking! The Tron Legacy soundtrack, and so on! It is time to talk about the Metaverse! Run the 4D title sequence! Ah. No title sequence? Okay, fine. I'm not mad at all hold on one second all right text katie uh need 4d title sequence when you get a sec t and x all right she will probably get back to me we're pals anyway as you you probably heard, experts have predicted that by the year 2030, a great deal of us

will be living in this upcoming metaverse. Sounds exciting and radical. And by experts, I actually mean a New York Post interview with several futurists and VR enthusiasts. Futurology, of course, being the practice of guessing what the future will be like, and sometimes being right, because that's how guessing works. But still, lawnmower man shit, the matrix and such,

how cool is that? No, seriously, I'm asking, how cool is that? Is it cool? Like do the teens think the metaverse is cool? Because boy, I gotta say, it doesn't actually look, uh. Hey, are you coming? Yeah, just gotta find something to wear. Alright, perfect.

Ooh, boy. Oh, hey, Mark. Hey, what's going on? Hi, Mark. What's up, Mark? Whoa, we're floating in space? Uh-huh. Who made this place?

It's awesome. Woof! He is not a charismatic man. So I don't know. I guess that does look neat, neat-ish, but also just use tabletop simulator or like one of the many poker simulators out there. Also, that's just a video they made and not the metaverse.

Like Elon Musk putting a guy in a suit and calling it a robot, whatever. I have to assume we're not required to play poker with Mark Zuckerberg himself, and that he largely won't be involved in our metaverses. So that makes it marginally better. But this video does remind us of the looming specter that Facebook will be in this new virtual existence.

And yes, I'm going to refer to Facebook as Facebook and not meta, which is technically their new name. Sorry, it's Facebook. Anyway, since this announcement, we're also seeing companies like Microsoft and Apple, and I guess Walmart all begin to hype up their own future metaverse for all the kids to rave about. Although I'm pretty sure teenagers don't hang out

at Walmarts by choice. Nevertheless, it's the future. pew, pew, pew, right? Living and existing in a virtual world. And here at the Showdy, we are down with the future and progress and not just fearing new things, even if they look really, really stupid, which is why we're pulling out all the stops

for this metaverse special. Maybe we'll even jump into a virtual world in this episode. Perhaps we have our own metaverse to share. Some kind of Cody avatar, that would be cute. You'll have to watch to find out. Anything can happen. Katie, hopefully, yeah, all right. Out seeing moonfall, Don't ever text again.

How dare you? Okay, well, still, we definitely have a fun show. I can run this metaverse myself, right? And it's going to be big and fun. And one thing's for sure. By the time this is over, I'm going to have an exciting hot take on the metaverse. You better believe it. I just have to... Hold on.

What exactly is the metaverse? Oh. So just like Second Life? Does the metaverse actually matter? Well, okay, shucks and darn. It turns out that the metaverse, as everyone is defining it, is just a 3D virtual world representing social interactions, which I'm pretty sure is just online multiplayer video games,

PlayStation Home, Grand Theft Auto, and World of Warcraft, would probably count as a metaverse in this sense. Remember the Matrix Online? No? Well, it looked neat-ish. And I guess the only reason we're talking about this again is because of new technology like the Oculus Rift and other VR and augmented reality glasses. In theory, we're going to be able to enjoy these 3D spaces a bit more if we have the

ability to experience them in VR, something that a lot of people with absolutely no hard data seem to predict will be a booming industry. But as of right now, the clearest estimate says that only about 60 million people currently use VR. And that's not even people who own a headset, just people estimated to have tried VR at least once per month. This estimate goes on to say that only 6.1 million VR units will be sold in 2021.

Here's another article saying that Oculus specifically sold between 5.3 million and 6.8 million VR devices in 2021. Again, everyone keeps saying that this number will grow, but just so we're clear, there were people saying that Google Glass was going to make billions of dollars by 2018. So again, just guessing.

But here's the thing, VR is actually pretty neat and has advanced quite a bit since the days of Virtual Boy. It's not a fad like Google Glass was and will probably get more popular in the coming years. But there's still a lot of guesswork when it comes to technology that people have to wear on their stupid bodies. Not sure if you've been paying attention

the last few years, but people don't love wearing stuff on their faces. The smart money is almost always on people rejecting gizmos like smart glasses and high-tech shirts and talking butt plugs and stuff like that. In exceptions like the Apple Watch, it's still a growing but niche market.

And what Marksbro Zuckingsburg and others like him are proposing is a world where people would be spending long periods of their day shopping and working in this metaverse reality. Imagine if you could be at the office without the commute. You would still have that sense of presence, shared physical space, those chance interactions

that make your day all accessible from anywhere. Ah, sweet! Crowded office simulator! That's just what we want. So in that video, a man is able to put on a small pair of glasses to enter this metaverse. This is the augmented reality promise of Facebook's Project Nazare.

And heck, that would be really cool for activities that perhaps aren't just centered around work. After all, we sure did love catching all them Pokemon freaks. Except the video goes on to very quickly include this later in the demo. There's a lot of technical work to get this form factor and experience right.

We have to fit hologram displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom silicon chips, cameras, speakers, sensors to map the world around you, and more into glasses that are about five millimeters thick. So we still have a ways to go with Nazare, but we are making good progress. So not exactly a thing that actually exists. It's sort of like if Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone by getting up on a stage and showing a drawing of a rectangle. Apps go here scribbled on it, a little arrow pointing to the screen that was drawn.

But let's just assume for the sake of not being bogged down by details that they eventually nail the technology side of this. And in just a few short years, people will be able to wear customizable glasses that allow them to see the world through augmented reality, coupled with lightweight VR headsets so that they can also exist in this fabled metaverse.

Let's say it's as safe for kids as anything else is and as affordable as a smartphone. Without all those limitations, would people be into the metaverse? The answer, who in the shit knows for sure. As I noted at the top of this video, predicting the future is just throwing out guesses. And I think it's just easier to assume

something will become popular. There are of course scores of examples of people boldly making the wrong predictions about things like the internet and smartphones being fleeting fads. And so no one wants to be the one dipshit late to the party. This is the dreaded fear of missing out where people invest big in something despite that thing being perhaps clearly dumb. Because no one wants to be the person not buying Apple stock in the 80s. And we're gonna get to that as it pertains to the metaverse for sure.

But if you wanna hear this Cody's opinion on it, well, here's what I think. You're like a cool space. I zip through a cyberspace, you know, Cody's node's graphic where I make predictions about the future. Hello, is anyone? Fine, here's my take.

The technology of the metaverse as in augmented and virtual reality is clearly a thing we want and have wanted since mankind looked to the stars of the film Demolition Man. Remember that VR sex shit looked great, real steamy and raw. And I bring up that film because I think that's actually closer to how we'll use VR, not just for sex, but as another tool to interact and enjoy games

with our friends, as opposed to like shopping or working or really doing anything for long periods of time. Most of us aren't going to live out entire days in this virtual world. And I think that because Facebook's pitch for the metaverse seems to be that people will be surrounded by floating screens and interacting with friends at the touch of a button.

But that's just what reality already is. We have the internet in our pockets. That was why smartphones blew up. We can walk around our homes with access to music and friends and movies already at our fingertips. And the entire point of things like working from home or shopping online is to specifically cut out the inconveniences that come with those errands.

Now for the record, that now viral video is actually from 2017, which speaks to the fact that this version of the metaverse has been around for a very long time and is actually a stalled concept. Because even before the pandemic, everyone wanted to shop online, as in sit in a chair and tap their phone. That's the whole point of phones.

So we don't have to walk through an aisle and pick up items and look at them. Why pretend to walk through aisles and move your arms to place virtual items in a cart when you can scroll through items and tap them? Because again, we're already living in an augmented reality and it's really, really telling and perhaps something I'm gonna talk about later,

that all these big companies can think of is that VR will be used for shopping and working. You know, the money stuff. And that people will want to sit down and simulate an office environment when the entire point of working from home is that you get to avoid that. The entire appeal of a home office

is to not be distracted by the work office. Having your screens where you want them and existing in the comfort of your personal space. That's the whole gosh darn point. We don't want a virtual work office that everyone can see or that our boss can have say over. Co-workers walking around in our home space. And in fact, the hardest part about working from home

during the pandemic is having to interact with others in ways that aren't face-to-face. There are a bunch of articles on this and so-called Zoom fatigue, where people are finding it difficult to conduct meetings via video because it doesn't naturally facilitate the way we communicate.

VR doesn't solve that and probably makes it even more awkward. Instead of just having a single camera looking into your home, you'll have your workspace melt into your personal space. Communication will be even more diluted with avatars and stereo sounds of people's microphones half working through shoddy internet services. This literally takes all the worst parts of working from home and engulfs you in it. The kind of idea only an out of touch tech billionaire boss would think was good. Because none of what they're pitching actually serves us.

It serves them and their fantasy of what they want workers and consumers to do and boy, more on that later. But there are still a few sticky bits we need to get our fingers all up in when it comes to the logistics of this current metaverse push. The technology being used, the legal and regulatory aspects of it all, et cetera. Because whether or not we use this metaverse,

the value of it as a convenience really shouldn't be the only consideration in judging it. To quote our generation's most revered science mind, "'We're all so preoccupied with whether or not they could. "'They didn't stop to think if they should. That was my Goldblum impression. Anyway, first we're going to do some kind of ad. Oh, what will the ad be for? Only one way to find out, which is by watching the ad, which you're going to right now. Jurassic Park. Well, hello there. You know, your body is

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Man, when are we gonna get that 4D graphic going? Maybe we'll unveil our own Some More News VR game where you toss papers in the air or fight Wormbo. Katie will not answer my texts. Just seems like we should do something special or have some kind of fun character. I'm just a bit lonely, I guess. I'll even eat something, I think.

Okay, so just tell me what you want me to eat. Or, fuck it, okay. So just tell me what you want me to eat or... Fuck it, okay. Wow, I'd hate it if some sort of darn puppet showed up. That'd be bad. Really? He hears me all the time, like all the time. All right.

Hey, Warmbo, what are you up to? I know it's rock bottom, but it just seems like we're probably not gonna cover the metaverse again And we should have more of a showdy, you know? Oh perfect So he's also seeing moonfall! Are they both seeing moonfall without me? I want to see moonfall fucking moon falling Sounds awesome. Maybe there's some kind of way we can metaverse it.

Ooh, okay. Obviously, one of the first ideas for VR is for it to replace movie theaters. Something that we could have done really easily during this pandemic, had people actually own headsets. Instead, we settled on a lot of movies going directly or simultaneously to streaming, which it turns out worked just as well.

However, the first moment they could, young people in particular, flocked back to theaters, despite whether or not that's like a good idea. And I know we just did a whole thing on the virus, but the fact that people aren't really willing to stay inside much longer, despite a pandemic, should give you a hint on what the future of the metaverse holds.

People like being lazy for sure, and VR can add a lot of accessibility to people who can't physically go see something in person. But ultimately, people like going out and being in groups. Yeah, yeah, we all hate each other now, but actually for the most part, people like people and being around them, it's nice. We're seeing this with VR concerts,

which even in the pandemic didn't really take off. Again, not saying these are all dead concepts and there have been some really successful virtual concerts, but ultimately this is an extra thing people will enjoy secondary to the real world experience. We like live music because it's just that, live music. We wanna be there with the band, dancing with other people and grinding our shit on other people's shit.

But this is again, the could of it all. Let's talk about the should, specifically the fact that this metaverse would have to be in some way regulated. After all, despite them wanting us to call them meta now, which we won't, we're talking about fucking Facebook. If you think they've hit their limit of how much of our information they can skim, you really haven't thought hard enough

about their acquisition of the Oculus headsets, also known as devices specifically designed to be covered in cameras. Oculus Insight relies on three types of sensor data. Image data from cameras in the headset to generate a 3D map of the room, pinpointing landmarks such as corners of furniture and patterns on your floor. Rotational velocity and linear acceleration data from the inertial measurement units in the headset and controllers track your head and hand movements. And infrared LEDs in the controllers are detected by the headset cameras, further

improving Insight's ability to track the position of the controllers. Yeah, seems bad. Especially since nothing in Oculus' Terms of Service specifies how data is captured and stored through the headset. And when asked about this, Facebook put out a statement saying, and I quote, "'We don't collect and store images or 3D maps "'of your environment on our servers today.'" Yeah, it's a nice little last word you got there. I'm sure the company famous for lying about giving out our personal data

totally won't use the camera covered 3D mapping headset for anything bad. And as this idea of augmented reality becomes more and more realized, that just means more of these privacy doubts. And this really gets to what I would call the larger problem with the internet that no one has solved and perhaps should solve, perhaps soon.

It used to be that with radio and television and physical media, information was a one-way path into our homes. What the internet did was essentially make a way for media and data to go both ways, in and out of our holes all day, every day. We now put information out into the world and companies sure want that information. And because the government never really got ahead of that,

fucking everything and everyone is selling our data, our mobile carriers, ISPs, and even the goddamn TVs are spying on us. For the most part, we don't really care. Or I guess we do care, but not enough for it to make a difference. After all, it's how a lot of products and services are so cheap.

But at some point, we're really gonna wish we did care more because Facebook, for example, has grown to be so unavoidable that they collect your data even if you aren't using their apps or products. And now they want to digitally map out your home and office and even your facial expressions. And so I think a question we should be asking ourselves is,

how did it come to this? Why are these companies allowed to do whatever they want with our data? Who regulates Facebook and by extension, social media and inevitably the metaverse? The answer is horrifying. See the internet itself as in the series of tubes

is simple enough to regulate. After all at its core, this is no different than regulating the telephone, right? It's a bunch of wires that we use to communicate. And for that reason, really seems like it should be treated more like a utility. When talking about net neutrality, this was often a part of the debate. The FCC constantly redefining broadband internet as either a telecommunication or information service.

If it's telecommunications, which it obviously is, then it needs to be regulated to ensure that ISPs don't give preferential treatment the same way phone companies can't make certain phone calls better quality than others. During the Trump years, they tried to redefine it as an information service so they could regulate ISPs less.

The point being that the physical internet, the tubes, they are handled by the FCC, which regulates communications. What the FCC doesn't regulate, however, is the handled by the FCC, which regulates communications. What the FCC doesn't regulate however, is the content on the internet, the businesses using the tubes. For that you have the FTC or Federal Trade Commission, otherwise known as the people

who handle consumer protection. And what's weird to think about is that despite having taken over the internet as the way most of the world communicates with each other, Facebook and Twitter and social media are still technically businesses that exist on the internet. To the government, they are no different than Ritz crackers or Lockheed Martin

or your grandmother's sex toy Etsy shop. You know the place. Dildos by NAMM. And so shockingly, most of this business with data and privacy is being funneled through the FTC. All these questions about allowing misinformation and Nazis and such, all of it is legally seen through the lens of a business

and not a telecommunications service. It's also why we often laugh at people when they claim that Twitter bans are harming freedom of speech. We often remind those people that Twitter is a private company and can ban people for any reason they like. But also, maybe we should rethink this?

I don't know if you've noticed, but the internet is now just like five social media sites. And no matter which site you spend all your time on, they all just serve as a hub for other people's content. They're middlemen, virtual tubes. So now we have these real tubes that we access with internet browsers, which open up hubs

that organize the stuff we actually want to see. News and funny pictures and handsome YouTube celebrities and so on. For you young folk, it wasn't always like this. There used to be different websites that you'd go to for news or memes or super cool lists about pop culture or strong bads. The appeal was that there were no gatekeepers.

It was a totally free place where anyone could create anything they wanted, where corporations had just as much control as some guy making a rap song about Star Trek. And so for a lot of us, it's kind of weird and fucked up that social media basically destroyed all of that. By aggregating the internet under one umbrella, they took all the limitations of capitalism

and applied it to this digital space. And a big problem that happened with Facebook specifically is that they became gatekeepers instead of aggregators. Suddenly the big companies with money could get more visibility while the smaller ones were fighting for their lives. This is why we lost so many comedy websites in the early teens,

including one that perhaps I worked at. Facebook essentially became the internet, exerting control over other websites, while at the same time enjoying the luxury of being regulated as a business. And that's what we're facing with the metaverse, another service that can legally define itself as just another website,

while also being the essential infrastructure that could make or break anyone who exists on it. This wouldn't be an issue if they were just pitching an open world where you get to play games and fly around. That is of course what we would actually want in a metaverse. It's the appeal, the freedom we also enjoyed with the conception of the internet,

a place we can be and do whatever we want. Ease and accessibility, the idea that everyone can have a front row seat to an experience that you might not be able to have in real life. But that isn't the metaverse these people have in mind. What they have in mind is much, much sillier. Dare I say, the mostest silly. Owning land now in the metaverse is a little bit like buying land in New York 250 years ago. Metaverse real estate isn't all that different from property in the real world. It just exists digitally in 3D cities where users can simulate real life pursuits.

There are only a few platforms where investors can buy and sell real estate, each with their own unique cryptocurrencies. Each platform has a limited number of parcels available for purchase, which is tracked using blockchain technology. In November, Republic Realm, a firm that buys and develops real estate in the metaverse, said it paid $4.3 million for land in the world of Sandbox. It's the largest digital property sale publicized to date. The whole reason why it is a store of value is because at the outset, each metaverse platform declares exactly how many parcels there will be. So they would be cannibalizing the value of their own holdings if they continued to mint

more and more of it. So that tenet of scarcity is what gives the category value. Hey, cool! You know how most of us can't afford a house? Well, what if we took that real world frustration and applied it to the limitless space of VR too? Like, I'm not the most tech savvy folk in the world, but most pop culture depictions of virtual reality

are of an everyday person escaping their shitty life and entering the world of limitless freedom, zip zapping around and turning into sex dragonflies. Most VR apps today draw off of this to create out of body experiences. And what I'm getting at is that if anyone tries to sell you something digital based on artificial limitations and scarcity,

be it fake real estate or a fucking JPEG of a monkey, well then that thing probably isn't and definitely shouldn't be the future. Most likely it's a symbiotic relationship between scam artists and people who are terrified of not catching the next big wave. And yes, sadly, we have to talk about NFTs when also talking about the metaverse

because the same silly ass people are pushing both. The idea being that these collectible pictures will be the currency in this metaverse that I guess we'll buy virtual land with. But even if we wanted the fake land, why wouldn't we just use money? Like digital purchases, you know, the way we already do. This isn't an NFT video,

but geez, I think I just defeated the cryptocurrency by pointing that out. Ah, seems stupid is my point. Anyway, seems like, much like the very silly concept of virtual real estate, making up virtual currency completely misses the entire point of the internet. Like, you know how money is fake and something we made up?

The point of stressing that fact is to emphasize that there's no reason that anyone should be starving in the streets. We don't have a shortage of land or food in this country, but rather we built a system where the basic things people need to survive are artificially made scarce. So it's just extremely funny that there's a chunk of people also realizing that money is fake

and coming to the conclusion that we should make even more fake money, but put a fucking dog on it or whatever. Take the absurdities of capitalism and apply it to like fucking colors. Yeah, let's monetize colors. That's definitely the future. This is like taking the red pill,

realizing you're in the matrix, and then deciding the solution is to build a second worse matrix where everyone has troll face avatars. In the end, it's not only just dumb scams, but really old scams being applied to a new unregulated system. Stuff like inflating an NFT's value

by trading it between two people is literally something people have been doing for centuries. And these scams are gonna bleed right over into this shitty version of a metaverse, which is super why we need it to be actually regulated, not by the FTC, but perhaps a brand new agency that understands this goes beyond consumer protection. Because they're not creating a free world

of infinite possibilities, but once again, hijacking the tubes and taking control over something that should be free and cool. They're bringing the worst parts of capitalism into the metaverse before it's even a fucking thing yet. And the only reason I'm not more upset about this is because I'm pretty sure it won't work,

or rather the metaverse, as these companies and scammers are picturing it work. Or rather the metaverse as these companies and scammers are picturing it, is certainly not the metaverse that will succeed. And I'm going to tell you why, after we do more advertising in exchange for money that we use for weed. And then, I don't know,

maybe we'll even unveil our own NFT. That would be weird since we just shat all over them. Okay, enjoy the ads. Yes, you covered. We offer low rates, next day funding, and no hidden fees. So you can focus on growing your business instead of worrying about your expensive merchant services. Plus, our easy to use platform makes it simple to accept payments and manage your transactions. Don't let high merchant fees hold you back from recording a record profit in 2023. Switch to BAMS.com and start saving today. Indies political thrillers? We all love chilling out to PatriAMS.com and start saving today. or absolute power. Best Fiends is for any adult looking to just chill out in those hours before bed, or really whenever you need

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That's friends without the R, Best Fiends. Psst, hey, hi, hey, it's me, Katie. No, no, no, really, really, I can prove it. Ask me something that only Katie would know the answer to. Did you, did you ask? The answer is six, huh? Impressive, right? Look, I get it.

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That is E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash some news. Visit expressvpn.com slash some news to learn more. Yum, yum. Ads. gobble, gobble. Mmm, tasty. No time for ad jokes. There's more showdy. You know, all this talk about the future makes me wonder what a future version of me might think of the metaverse. I bet it would go a little like this.

Okay, I guess that grizzled future version of me is also busy. Hold on. Hey, future Cody, you around? I can pay this time. So anyway, I was just saying that all this metaverse jizz is probably and hopefully going to fail. And more than that, fail in a way that will bankrupt a lot of people

trying to make the metaverse bad. One second. It's just an emoji of the moon with four exclamation points. Anyway, what these people buying virtual real estate are betting on is not only the idea of a virtual main street where young people will go shopping and hang out with friends,

but that the specific property they bought will be the main street people will use. And if that doesn't happen, then they just lost all their money, which I'm pretty sure they will. This is not only a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works, but how young people work as well.

They're going to require from technology an experience that's 3D and immersive, and they are not going to be content with their parents' social media or e-commerce experiences, which are 2D and about scrolling. They're gonna wanna go meet their friends in what we now call a metaverse, where they can interact in a way that feels much more human

and much more normal. So I'm not the most teen savvy folk in the world. I don't hang out with a lot of teenagers and quite frankly, don't plan to. But despite what a lot of media wants you to think, teens actually still want to go outside and hang out with their friends IRL. That's teen speak for in real life.

Yes, the pandemic has skewed things a bit, but teens largely haven't actually changed much between the 90s and today. What I mean is that, for example, you might see articles about how kids don't go outside and the average teen or child spends between five and eight hours a day in front of a screen. Here's one saying that teens spend an average

of seven hours a day looking at screens for entertainment, which is interesting because that number happens to be the same amount of time Nielsen reported that average Americans watch TV per day in 1996. Here's another article clocking screen time in the 90s at six hours and 43 minutes for kids over eight. And so what I'm getting at here is that we've been talking about screens and kids since TV was invented.

And yet since computers and the internet, that average hasn't really risen, at least not that much. Like I imagine it did go up a bit because people have screens in their pockets now and we have tied more aspects of life to screens, shopping, news, et cetera. But the access kids have to the internet didn't replace real life interaction

any more than access to the telephone did. Kids chat with their friends the same way 90s teens hogged the landline. Like here's a survey from 2015 showing that teens were more likely to hang out at a friend's house than online. And while the internet did take up a lot of that hangout time as well,

they still largely did activities in real world places like school or going to clubs and junk like that. You know, just like we all did at that age. Remember all the drugs and fucking we did as teens? Yeah, you can't do that online. That's still analog for now. And so again, stuff like concerts and movies will always be things young folk want to do in person,

even if there's also a screen involved. Kids are naturally social, which is of course why this whole pandemic lockdown was very difficult on them. Also, they grow just the raddest facial hair and the masks get in the way, but the internet is a great way for them to stay connected when they can't see each other.

The actual problem isn't the screens, but the fact that the world sucks. Aside from the pandemic itself, people have largely moved to places like suburbs and cities where trees are becoming less and less common. There's actually a growing lack of access to nature for a lot of kids, specifically in communities of color. And while that's the subject of another video,

it really speaks to the backward thinking of adults who hand wave teens as being lazy or not wanting to go outside anymore as the world gets hotter and more toxic every fucking year. Just like me. Ooh, year. Just like me. Ooh, yeah, just like me. That was a fun zinger. Why didn't we get the title monkey to do that?

Title monkey, why didn't you swoop that across the screen? BRB seeing moon fall. Motherfucker! So I guess my point here is that the idea that the youth of the future are going to naturally glom onto a metaverse is actually really cynical because it subconsciously assumes that the world will get so shitty that they won't have a choice.

But even if I'm wrong and this metaverse becomes the next new hotness, I really don't think it'll be Facebook's version. While we normally like to back up as much as we can with sources on this show, I don't really have a factual way to frame this except to say Zuckerberg's version of the metaverse just looks bad.

And in fact, most of the versions we keep seeing suck. Much like these NFTs, they're rather artless and gaudy and just uncreative, derivative. They seem to be starting with the concept of monetization and working backwards, trying to reverse engineer something genuine, like someone tracing over an old Banksy painting and then scanning it and selling it

on the blockchain or whatever. Because unlike the internet of yesterdildos started by the common folk making fun of things that grew in popularity, this version of the metaverse is being built by the big corporations. It's the out of touch rich person's version of the metaverse is being built by the big corporations. It's the out of touch rich person's version of the metaverse. And so naturally it's just pulling from pop culture

and stolen content and boy, sure seems to assume that everyone in the world lives in these giant fucking rooms where they can do all the VR they want. Like the fact that one of the first things they're focusing on is fucking real estate and virtual offices should tell you everything you need to know about these people. It's not revolutionary.

It's not interesting. I mean, I couldn't even get Wormbo here to talk about it. Hard to compete with a film about the moon falling, obviously, which is objectively 10 times more interesting than a fucking virtual Walmart. And I guess that's why this is just a straightforward missionary position video about it, because it sucks and it's pretty dumb and doesn't deserve to be talked about very much.

Even movies about VR aren't worth talking about. Like I could have tied this into Ready Player One, but chose to do Moonfall instead because that's way more awesome. The moon is attacking the earth in that film! I haven't even seen it yet, but come on! That's money in the bank right there. And so I super don't think the youth of tomorrow is going to give much of a shit about it.

But that isn't to say the technology itself won't be useful, just not in the way I think these big companies are planning. I wanna show you something and it might better explain what I'm getting at. There's never been an iPod that can do this. Or this. Or this.

Or for that matter, this? That is one of the first ads for the iPhone, an objectively revolutionary technology made by a big dumb corporation. There is no denying that this moment was historic for tech. But what's funny to me is that out of all of those ads, not a single one of them focused on text messaging. They all ended by highlighting that it was a classic phone.

All of the early iPhone ads did this. They were really proud that you could make voice calls on it. In fact, text messaging wasn't even really available on these early models, despite being the actual way young people communicate today. I don't know, I just find that funny. We're seeing this revolutionary product that is still defined by the expectations of the company making it,

boasting the least important communication feature of their product while completely ignoring the most important one. And I think the metaverse is no different. We're not actually going to use the metaverse based on what a big company tells us. And if I had to bet on whether in 10 years, people are talking about the historic time Facebook guy proposed,

we have virtual meetings where people in a screen look at another fake screen. It just seems really doubtful. I'm not psychic and don't expert in futurology, but what it comes down to is that we're still very much in the early stages of the internet. It hasn't really been regulated correctly and the pandemic has skewed everyone's perspective on it. And now we're seeing a lot of bad ideas become very popular

and maybe these bad ideas will stick around, but I sure hope they don't because they're bad. This Facebook metaverse is silly and ugly. NFTs are silly and ugly. I'm sorry, they just are. Like I have yet to see a single cool... Shucks, all right. But that's the only good one.

All right, we will replace all currency with moon fall bucks but then that's it. All right, we've officially solved money. So that's good. Congratulations to us, video complete. Gonna go burn all my money and I guess ask the gang how Moonfall was. They're seeing it again? Wow, I'm stuck in a virtual paradise. Hi, thanks for watching the video.

You are beautiful and sweet. Make sure to like and subscribe and the YouTube stuff. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news and a podcast called even more news. You can listen to this show as a podcast if you want. And if you don't like my face, that's fine. That's fine. It's fine. Uh, we've also got a merch store and we've got a clips channel. Some more news, some more, some, some more news clips, I think. I don't know. I think, I don't know, Google clips and some more news and also sign up for our Wormbo NFTs.

Screen grab this. It's money now.