The optimistic view is that the metaverse can “connect people” better, which is consistent with what facebook said they were doing since the beginning. The meta

The optimistic view is that the metaverse can “connect people” better, which is consistent with what facebook said they were doing since the beginning. The metaverse promises an immersive experience so that you can feel the other person’s presence, rather than connecting through a video call which is still weird. My view is that it’ll have a deep impact on a small population. VR goggles are still expensive, bulky, and far from providing a “reality-like” experience, especially on the fov front. There is a massive barrier to putting something on your face. 3D movies were to be the next big thing. A lot of TVs ship with 3D displays, but do you know anyone who is actually putting the glasses on to watch anything? So I personally don’t expect to see a wide adoption to this. However some people are likely to enjoy VR a lot. I think a good number of people will get sucked in, black mirror style, cause the escapism it provides is awesome. And facebook is well known for optimizing for “time spent in the app”. So I think people who are lonely or depressed will get to find some social life in the metaverse. It’s something that happened in SL, WoW and all other online worlds. Now Facebook being Facebook, it also means that it won’t do much to prevent extremist groups from recruiting online and try to generate profit from it. The way I see it, is that the metaverse is going to be a place where lonely people go socialize, and where gurus and extremists pay for finding and brainwashing those people. Sort of “brainwashable-people-as-a-service”.