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The video they put out is extremely cringe. The whole “metaverse” thing is cringe. It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men who never

• AndyMcConachie 5y ago
  It would have been so much less cringe if they had just hired an actor that people liked to deliver the message. No one likes Mark Zuckerberg, so why is he the talking head. He's a terrible actor and presenter. They really needed to pay a famous person to do it.
• 7373737373 5y ago
  I wish he'd just present as his awkward true self, instead of this prerecorded, fake cringefest, something Musk doesn't shy away from
  • ritchiea 5y ago
    He’s certainly determined whatever his true self is, it’s not good for business.
    • brap 5y ago
      It’s amazing how no one can be frank with him. “Look mark, the CEO doesn’t have to be the presenter. I’m sorry but you just can’t be the face of the company, it’s bad for business. Please, move aside, and get a normal person haircut”.
      • 7373737373 5y ago
        I wouldn't rule out that he could even be liked, if he didn't obviously pretend to be someone he is not
      • junon 5y ago
        I'm one degree away from Mark. I dated someone who was an early employee at Facebook for a little while - all I can really say without revealing who they are. I just know they know Zuck, Cook, and a few others personally. They told me that when Facebook's (or maybe it was Instagram's...) stories came out with video support, Zuck posted a super bizarre video introducing it, being the first one and all. And I guess it was just him awkwardly staring into the camera, not really saying anything. Almost like someone who thinks it's a photo but it's a video instead - though he was fully aware it was a video. His wife was in the background waving and stuff too. The person I was seeing I guess texted him and said something to the effect of "hey this is super awkward, maybe you should re-post it with you talking about it", which I guess Zuck did. So it's my impression that he's not exactly surrounded by yes-men, but instead that he's not really in touch with the social aspect of running one of the largest social networks on earth and how people really behave. I know a lot of people say it's autism but as far as I was told it's not - he's just strange. This is hearsay of course, but I'm pretty confident that I was told the truth given who it was that I talked to about all this.
        • ritchiea 5y ago
          He's lived a different life than nearly anyone else. Certainly so caught up in his responsibilities to Facebook that he's been unable to grow and change and branch out and fail, and be rejected and forced to reinvent or repurpose himself the way most people do. It's impossible to imagine what my life would be like or how my perspective would be different if I was caught in a bubble of a project I started in my late teens turning into a near trillion dollar success that only grew and grew from the moment I started on it.
          • 7373737373 5y ago
            I think him being rejected by most people drove him to do what he does
          • FormerBandmate 5y ago
            I was involved in a startup project the first couple years of college. We didn’t know anything about what we were doing so it languished in development hell and is still in it as far as I know, with a new crop of kids. I can’t imagine being stuck in that mindset, there’s a lot of maturing that happens when you have a boss and need to work with a team and he’s always been the head of this college project that’s worth a trillion dollars now. Doesn’t sound healthy at all
  • smilespray 5y ago
    Add Peter Thiel to this couple and we have a good game of "fuck, marry, kill".
  • EpicEng 5y ago
    Yeah but his "true self" isn't exactly something 99.99% of people enjoy. He's a robotic tool. Looks to me like he signed up for a "how to appear more human 101" course and now gesticulates with his hands non-stop.
    • 7373737373 5y ago
      Musk isn't a great rhetorician, and many people don't like his personality either. But some like him nonetheless, they empathize with him and see beyond that, because they see some of the drives and desires behind the unusual facade. I'm sure Zuckerberg signed up for such courses, but I don't think it's comfortable for him, or his audience either. Ignorance is bliss, forcing oneself to be hyperaware of ones own appearance, gestures and statements to please others seems wrong. Who enjoys such a lie?
      • EpicEng 5y ago
        Yeah Musk isn't exactly Rico Suave, but Zuckerberg is downright revolting to most people. He's robotic and comes off as an alien playing a human.
• spsful 5y ago
  This is what I don't understand about their plan. Who on earth is planning to adopt this? We've seen a push from all sides of the tech industry to open up the AR/VR space, and it never took off. Remember the Snapchat Spectacles? They still sell them but I don't think they were ever popular. Google glass? Popular, but discontinued. Apple's ARKit? Definitely much less adoption than their commercials would have led you to expect. It seems like this is an experiment bound to fail, so good luck to the execs at f̶a̶c̶e̶b̶o̶o̶k̶ meta who have to clean this up in the end.
  • brap 5y ago
    Exactly, this whole things screams “we don’t know what people want”. The video looks like a very well made parody.
  • c0d4h 5y ago
    I can't speak for VR, but AR definitively has a future. You already see practical use of this technology with HUD-tech (Heads up display) in cars, but beyond that you'll find great applications for it within medicine/operations, transportation (directions), marketing (product information, authenticity verification), and the list goes on and on...
    • tsimionescu 5y ago
      Yes, AR has some potential as an industrial or otherwise specialized technology. It won't be revolutionary or change the world in any way, but it will probably improve several kinds of processes, a background tech. VR is much more likely to either become the new TV or to die an obscure death, like 3D movies.
      • kazen44 5y ago
        VR becoming the new TV is highly unlikely because many people multitask while watching TV. this is very difficult to do with VR.
        • 5y ago
• bredren 5y ago
  This seems like a video for investors, not users.
• filoleg 5y ago
  To be fair, that’s the exact same sentiment I remember reading about Zuck on HN around the time Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions happened. People were saying it was one of the dumbest business decisions, that Zuck is just desperate and without any brain trying to spend his FB money on acquisitions before FB inevitably dies of irrelevancy, etc. Look at today, and I think most people would agree that acquiring whatsapp and instagram back then was a great business decision on his end. And, in my eyes, the whole Meta thing makes way more sense to begin with than those acquisitions did.
  • koonsolo 5y ago
    I agree that Facebook and Zuch can't be that stupid. But for me, I can't see this working. There is no VR game that really killed it. I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. So it's not a "idiots!", but more of a "what am I missing here?". Will be interesting to see this play out
    • rblatz 5y ago
      I've got a group of 6 of us that play Echo Arena on the Quest 2 about 3 hours every week. Beat saber is also a fun game, but does get a bit stale for most people after a couple weeks. None of these are VR's Halo, but it seems that VR is getting out of the tech demo/hobbyist space and into a broader market appeal. If facebook keeps iterating and pushing out quality improvements at the current price point it's just a matter of time.
    • T-A 5y ago
      > I also don't see which generation would actually be into this. Roblox has more than 200 million daily active users; 67% of them are under 16 [1]. Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? [1] https://backlinko.com/roblox-users https://backlinko.com/roblox-users
      • JetSpiegel 5y ago
        > Where will they go when hormones hit and blocky avatars no longer seem all that compelling? To college, where actual humans will be available for porking at all hours. If this Meta thing is a success, there might not be a following generation.
• polote 5y ago
  > It makes me believe Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men I feel like the opposite. Zuck is the only one to believe in the metaverse and as a result people who worked on the communication did it badly without a lot of conviction. He is in a pretty comfortable position, one of the richest people on earth doing 20% of growth every year. And still he wants to make a big risky bet like this one. I'm not really in favor of the metaverse but history has shown us that Zuck is pretty successful at things he wants to do
  • wpietri 5y ago
    What things would those be? As far as I know his successes are a) 1 idea he had as a 19-year-old plus b) some other things that he bought with the money from that.
    • ethanyu94 5y ago
      How about building one of the largest companies in the world? Would others be able to do that if they had that idea as a 19-year-old? Let's not reduce all his accomplishments to a single idea. Ideas don't matter, execution matters.
      • wpietri 5y ago
        That would still be one success. And I'm pretty sure other people had something to do with that. So I'd like a little more evidence, thanks.
        • zenmaster10665 5y ago
          Lol...you want him to have built more than one of the most successful businesses in history? It isn't one idea that got him here.. Everyone's a critic.
        • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
          This is just coming across as completely ridiculous.
• throwoutway 5y ago
  Or that he just watched/read "Ready Player One" and was like "yes. that. now"
• wpietri 5y ago
  There's a concept I find really useful: Acquired Situational Narcissism. If somebody spends enough time in an environment where everything is about them, they can easily come to believe everything is about them. Another thing I think is at play is people confusing luck with genius. Zuckerberg is clearly smart, but Facebook was also a right-time, right-place thing. As FaceMash and Facebook showed, he understood his audience because he was his audience. But now, nearly 20 years later, Zuckerberg-the-billionaire has very little in common with the audience he needs if he is going to make the metaverse happen. I mean, I too read and like Snow Crash, so I get the emotional appeal. But a middle-aged guy's favorite dystopian novel from 30 years ago may not be a useful blueprint today.
  • Permit 5y ago
    I'm trying to word this kindly, but I think you should instead look at the concept of "Parasocial Relationships" if you think it's appropriate to diagnose Mark Zuckerberg with Acquired Situational Narcissism. You do not know him, you have not met him and it does not make sense to try to diagnose a public figure based on what you've been presented by either his own press releases or media coverage of him. You and the person you have replied to have bought into the idea that no one at Facebook challenges him despite having not worked at Facebook or personally witnessing this.
    • hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      Dude, we're all just shootin' the shit on a random tech forum site. Saying "Damn, Zuckerberg must be a total narcissist to have come up with this shit" is not exactly like I'm writing "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" in his medical chart or something. It's more an expression that "I think this idea is so bat shitty that I don't want to know jack about how someone came up with it, just seems like a narcissistic idea to me."
    • numair 5y ago
      I’ve met him. I know the people who made him. I know the people who went to his wedding. I vouch for the parent commenter’s statement.
    • 5y ago
• yurlungur 5y ago
  Although I do feel the same I think given the world we are in today, I wouldn't necessarily bet big on its failure. That would probably make too much sense.
• TameAntelope 5y ago
  That "cringe" your feeling could be how people felt about the Internet in the 80s. Just keep that in mind.
  • brap 5y ago
    Maybe. But the internet grew organically, over decades. It was not shoved down our throats by a corporation telling us “this is cool, this is what everyone wants now, and this is the future”. I’m sure VR/AR will be big too, but it’s going to take a while, many technological breakthroughs, and it’s not going to look like that.
• xtat 5y ago
  So much this.
• paganel 5y ago
  > Zuckerberg is completely surrounded by yes-men That's what I think happens, yes. They should have learned something from the failure of Google+, after all they were directly involved in that, apparently they haven't.
• dmix 5y ago
  The video also showed Zuckerberg really pixelated green-screen effect and low-framerate: https://i.imgur.com/AGklzd2.png https://i.imgur.com/AGklzd2.png Using a low quality virtual background might have been a poor choice when it's fundamental to the idea.
• twofornone 5y ago
  >He is truly detached from us normal people and our human experience. From watching his mannerisms and facial expressions, I get the feeling that he is high functioning but very much on the autistic spectrum, and emulates many subtle movements/behaviors during communication that come naturally to "normies". That's why he comes off as a robot deep in the uncanny valley. I like to think of it as partly emulating with software some of the communication hardware that neurotypical people have innately. Which is why social interactions can be taxing for those with Asperger's, the extra cycles are draining and distracting, in addition to the necessary self consciousness which also costs some amount of compute.