THE METAVERSE

Hello and plz prepare - it is a long one.

This morning on my walk I got to thinking about the metaverse… HAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I’m really sorry, I tried with that intro. It was in the draft of this edition for like a full 3 days. But when I reread it, I was like I cannot lie to my people like this. There’s just simply no way. I do not think about things like that on my walk. The most I think about on my walk is what I’m going to make for breakfast and how majestic my dog looks in the morning sunlight.

 

BUT YAH SO THE METAVERSE!!!! How ‘bout it??? The big news lately is that Facebook is going to rename itself so that they can tap more into the metaverse and be even more very cool. I am yawning. But I am NOT yawning about the metaverse. I think the metaverse is ACTUALLY cool. Although I did like this quote from Facebook that really sums up what exactly the metaverse is - “the metaverse is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you. Mark has likened it as the successor to the mobile internet.”

In reality the metaverse is not that complicated

and it is also extremely complicated. And if you spend nearly any time online in communities or engrained in the culture of the web… SURPRISE! You’re engaging with a version of ~the metaverse~ (I really think you cannot talk about the metaverse without those little things around it). The thing that’s interesting about the metaverse is that it’s actually been around for a while through options like gaming, NFTs, crypto, and subcultures that have lived on places like Reddit. But the future of the metaverse is really where Zuck is thinking big. The future of it has shades of avatars that represent your physical self in the internet world and where things like crypto rule as a system of value trade.

A world where power hungry individuals are able to carve out a part of the “world” where there are fewer rules and laws. And it begs the larger question at hand - do people really need to be spending this much time glued to the internet? Yes and no. Let’s take NFTs for example - while some argue that NFTs (non-fungible tokens) is essentially like being rich in monopoly money, others claim that it creates a fair alternative for people like digital artists to put a more valuable water mark on content. When we consider things like memes here, there has really never been an opportunity for a creator to remotely capitalize (and profit) off content that goes viral and is used time and time again.

But what if you could put parameters on who uses that digital content? There IS some value there for people who should actually benefit from their likeness or artistry (MEMES ARE ART, PEOPLE) being used over and over again.

 

Something that is truly blowing my mind is that last night all 20,000+ fans who attended the Miami Heat season opener got a t-shirt with a QR code on it that provided them access to an NFT. The whole system is brought to fans by crypto exchange FTX that is paying $135M real world dollars over 19 years for naming rights to the Miami arena. This is how NFTs extend into the real world. This is where it goes from… “lol cool idea, you big loser” to “ummm I’m being personally victimized by the metaverse.” SO PUT YOUR ZUCKERHATS ON, WE’RE GOING METAVERSING.

Frankly all of this just reminds me of that awful Bruce Willis movie Surrogates. 

OK AND NOW THE THINGS I REALLY CARE ABOUT…