> Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. A

> Universities and companies paid stupid amounts of money for digital real estate. Wired ran profiles of Second Life speculators who got rich in the bubble. A lot of dumb things happened in the past, especially with companies that tried to substitute virtual scarcity speculation for an actual business model. It's easy to mock them for how ridiculous it all is, but I don't see any evidence that Meta is charging down a path of repeating all of the failed business models of years past. I think a lot of the old timers who have seen hype cycles of past businesses are projecting too much of those old, failed businesses on to this new wave of activities. Everyone is so busy speculating that Meta is going to fail that it's hard to actually understand what they're doing or what their business model really is. Regardless, it's trivial to see that video games and VR of 2021 are nothing like the Second Life of almost two decades prior. Back then, video games and even computer-based entertainment were a niche hobby. Today, video games are everywhere, VR is cheap, and everyone is already attached to their phones 24/7. I'm interested to see where this goes.