The difference between say, VRChat (but also non-VR equivalents like second life, MUDs and certain MMOs) and whatever the Silicon Valley metaverse thing was ver

The difference between say, VRChat (but also non-VR equivalents like second life, MUDs and certain MMOs) and whatever the Silicon Valley metaverse thing was very much visible in how they envisioned it. Silicon Valleys approach was literally "put a bunch of 3D models that are meant to look like you + things you know from the real world and then transport as many real world bureaucracies and ideas as possible into it" (and throw making money on top because that's clearly what people want to do more than anything else[0]). It was doomed from the outset because it fundamentally restricted user creativity and expression as much as possible to try and mimic the real world. VRChat from what I can tell instead stapled a basic interface together for making a "metaverse" (map, player objects and basic scripting) and then set players loose on the field with all the creation tools to customize it (iirc the only hardcap in VRChat is the polygon count on any individual model). The result is that VRChat is a. incomprehensible to outsiders and b. undeniably creative. Most other examples don't offer the freedom VRChat does (closest to VRC is probably something like Garrys Mod? Second Life still tries to go for a realistic aesthetic, although it allows user creations), but if you place VRChat as one extreme and Facebooks anemic "metaverse" at the other, you'll find that most succesful metaverses lean closer to the VRChat degree of freedom than they do to Facebooks version of where creativity doesn't exist beyond what Facebook pre-approved of (and what a users wallet could afford, nothing for free, of course). Or if you just want the crass answer: VRChat let weirdos be weird and express themselves however weird they wanted to be. Silicon Valley saw that weirdness as a problem to be solved away and tried to make everyone fit an "acceptable", pre-approved mold. The reality is that most people do not like being made to fit in existing molds, even if what they do fit into isn't too different from those molds in the first place. [0]: I hope the sarcasm is obvious.