The Metaverse That Never Was, Part 1

The astroturfed Metaverse is coming, this episode we discuss virtual shopping and VR crypto storefronts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
What's meta my verse? This is it could happen here,
a podcast entirely dedicated to the metaverse, UM, which is
the promise of the human future. Um On with me,
as always is my co host Mark Zuckerberg. I don't

(00:25):
I don't know how talks. I'm not sure how. I
don't know. I don't know whose voice you were doing.
I guess he sounds like nothing, like no one, like
the absence of a soul noise when it's dial up. Yeah,
that's what's going on inside his head in any moment

(00:49):
when he's not actively making the Internet worse. It's just
a dial tone in there. Awesome, Garrison, what are we
talking about today? Well, yeah, we're gonna be talking about
the metaverse and how how it's different from what people
talk about it as. And yeah, it's it's gonna be.

(01:09):
It's it's gonna it's gonna touch on a variety of
things that split up into two parts. Um. But first,
I would like to paint you a picture with words,
a word picture. So you're, yeah, you're walking walking through
your favorite grocery store. There's you know, cards passing by,
horrible horrible music playing. It's the lighting is white and

(01:34):
and like overexposed and under exposed at the same time.
It's it's it's hard, it's hard to see. And this, uh,
this like a person who looks like an employee keeps
keeps popping up and trying to take you to different
sections of the store. You're trying to just ignore her.
It's a very annoying. All you need to get is
the stuff you have on a little list, and it's
it's awful. Um. Eventually you get so fed up with

(01:56):
this whole experience that you take out, You go to
where the wine bottles are, you take them out, and
you arrange them into a giant penis on the floor,
because that's the only thing you can do because you're
not actually in a store. You're in your living room
and you have a horrible headset on, and you're trying
to do shopping in a virtual in a virtual grocery store. Um.
And that's that's the actual kind of scope of what

(02:18):
we're gonna be talking about today is virtual marketplaces and
how they interact with seemingly real marketplaces. Yeah, I'm sure
this is inspired by There were a couple of videos
that dropped recently, one of them from I think Walmart.
We're gonna talk, We're gonna be We're gonna be talking
about it. So yeah, So a couple a couple of
days after New Year, a video went viral across the

(02:39):
social media's ranking, up over like eleven million views on
Twitter um and it was titled how Walmart envisions shopping
in the mold in the metaverse Now, So what followed
was like two minutes of an embarrassing like VR jank,
including like throwing around virtual gallons of milk from your
cart into a virtual fridge many many dunks are made.

(03:01):
Fun was had, But what few people probably realized is
that like this, actually this this wasn't a Walmart metaverse
test store. This was actually a five year old tech
demo from before non Neil Stevenson fans even knew what
the term metaverse meant. So a few years back, a
tech company called a Mutual Mobile partnered with Walmart for
a project set to quote reimagine retailed virtual reality. Now

(03:25):
that sounds very fancy and important, but considering this was
five years ago and you're not hearing about it until now,
shows how impactful this thing actually was. The first stated
goal of the tech demo, according to the mutual mobile
website was to impress influencers at south By Southwest ten
so you know, just like the so called metaverse is now,

(03:46):
this was largely a promotional project um and a way
to attract investors. This was this was never actually a
serious thing. It's I'm gonna say it right now. South
By Southwest was always one of the stupidest things in
the world. Um And when it comes act, it will
be still because it's stupid. It's a stupid place for
the most insufferable people in the world to come and

(04:07):
talk about technology. Some people also listen to music. That's fine,
so yeah. For for the for the experience itself, they
used an original Oculus rift and programmed roughly like four
minute linear um expedition into a barren, hellish digital walmart
where you pick up and throw it did it did
sound exactly. My favorite thing about this video is they

(04:30):
were clearly using the audio of some sort of like
shooter game because it was often like things would it
would sound like you were in like fucking doom going
through a portal. It was extremely funny. It was bad.
It sounded like hell you'll you'll pick up and throw
fake wine bottles into your blue digital cart and the
whole thing ends with a fake drone delivering an eight

(04:50):
D dollar TV that you fake purchased. It's it's not great.
What Mutual Mobile and Walmart were trying to do. They
have a constatement on their website back from seventeen It
was they said that Walmart envisioned unveiling a fully virtual
shopping experience that puts shoppers inside the store without ever
leaving their homes to attract customers and to spel the
misconception that they're not as advanced as their more digital counterparts.

(05:13):
Brick and mortar establishments are not only accelerating investments in
areas like web and mobile, they're also exploring the very
edge of emerging technology. Walmart of virtual reality is a
case some point potential shoppers can virtually pick up products,
read labels, talk to virtual associates, and fill their shopping carts.
But the goal wasn't just to create something interactive. Walmart
needed something that showed the potential of VR in retail

(05:36):
while putting them ahead of the competition. So I mean
this was like this was this was kind of ahead
in some ways, but also ahead in the ways that
it's kind of showing how not useful this example is
so obviously like this five year old video resurface now
due to Zuckerberg and Epic Games, you know, forcing an

(05:56):
astroturfed metaverse into the cultural zeitgeist, coupled with or you know,
conflation of anything VR to the legendary metaverse, right, because
VR does not equal metaverse, nor is it nor is
it necessarily vice versa. But now these terms are getting
used so interchangeably that someone can stumble across this video
and be like, oh, look at this metaverse store when like,
it's it's not it's just a it's just a VR text.

(06:18):
The metaverse in order to be like the thing that
people have been imagining through cyberpunk since like the nineties,
it needs to be persistent and interact directly with the
real world in a number of ways, like it it's
it's it's well, we'll get into we'll get into kind
of what metaverse could be in the future in terms
of like the it could happen here idea and then

(06:39):
not just a metaverse, but a series of metaverse is
what they could be, and how that kind of can
negates the original idea of it in the first place.
But um. When asked by Vice News about the resurgence
of their Walmart project, Mutual Mobile replied, the vision of
a virtual shopping experience we helped Walmart realize back in
t seventeen stands validated in the metaverse eara of today.

(07:01):
This whole experience has only encouraged us to keep experimenting, innovating,
and leading the charge with cutting edge tech. So, I mean,
considering most of the virility of this was people joking
about it, I yeah, sure, okay, okay, Mutual good good
luck with that. So a few days after the Walmart

(07:23):
video went viral, rumors of another big box store going
metaverse started to circulate again, accompanied by a video of
a possible like three D metaverse storefront. Reports emerged, starting
in India, claiming that H and M had announced that
it would offer its customers a three dimensional shopping experience
in its a virtual store inside the metaverse via something

(07:45):
called Now. I don't know if it's keek City or
seek City. Um, I'm not really comfortable saying either of
those things because they sound weird, but I'm gonna go.
I'm gonna go with seek City. That's something. It's a
little bit better. It sounds like it's a slur. I know,
I know, but it sounds like it's a slur. So
I'm gonna say seek, but it's it's see k um.

(08:09):
So this This account on on Twitter called us seek
VR shared the following from its official Twitter account, Shopping
in the Metaverse with seek coin. Concept VR store, presented
to H and M by Seek creates mainstream use cases
for seek coin and scaling virtual reality beyond games. So
I'll get into what seek is in a bit. But

(08:31):
the report said that customers will be able to walk
through the store choose the apparel they wanted to purchase
in the Sikh City universe. Um. Although the clothes could
only be worn in the digital environment, payment would be
made with seek coin and customers could have the opportunity
to order the same apparel from H and m's physical
stores later. But that's you're buying two separate things. One

(08:51):
of us the digital skin, one of its an actual,
you know, real thing. Um So what a seek? Seek
was launched in It's a metaverse coin pop project built
on the Ethereum blockchain and their their Their goal is
to connect artists, athletes, and other digital content creators directly
with their fans and virtual worlds. Seeks n f T

(09:14):
Marketplaces is designed to enable real ownership of the way
in which I would actually want. That is, if it's
me having a very sexual zoom chat with you know what,
we don't need to garrison, please continue, okay. Quoting from
siks Weubside. Seek currently offers a range of immersive ther
experiences within Seek City, including theater, concert arenas, sports complex,

(09:39):
hang out lounge, and more. There are all the things
you can do in your real home, but weird and
on the Internet. This is horrible, as I see a
potential appeal for people who are like out in the
sticks or in parts of the world where they're not
they feel not like they're very politically or whatevery disconnected,
which is the same thing the Internet it already does.

(10:01):
I'll talk about being in VR will make it better.
I don't know. I've lived in the middle of nowhere
and relied on the Internet to be social, and I
don't think I would have wanted to change the Internet
in for this because it sounds yeah, anyway, I'll talk.
I'll talk about use cases in a sec. But yeah,
so end users will be able to use Seek token

(10:22):
to make purchases vote for content control programming. A much
more after token launch, seek VR, in partnership with Universal Music,
can realize live performances of world famous artists such as
Bong Jovi, Lady Gaga, You Too, Sting, and many more
can take place on this platform. So seek is like
it's it's kind of the startup, but it's been around

(10:44):
for a while. It's trying to do like you know,
virtual venues inside the metaverse. They they do have contracts
with Universal so it's it's it's a mix of trying
it's it's a mix of this coin, so it's a
mix of this like cryptocurrency, also trying to use the
cryptocurrency in this world. They're trying to build up. UM.

(11:05):
There their their their roadmap to Metaverse right now. First
thing is like payment integration, so using seak Coin. They
want sea Coin to be the coin for everything in
the metaverse. They want all of the Metaverse be based
off this thing that they invented called sea Coin because
it will make them money. Um. Next thing they want
to do is create a creator enabled ecosystem, so kind
of copy the content creator thing we have right now,

(11:29):
poured that into the metaverse. But again have everything you know,
you can invest in your creators so you can vote
on what they do using Sea coins and all of
we talked about like the personal ownership in the previous episode,
but then a lot of it. You know, they have
like an n FT marketplace, Avatar marketplaces, etcetera, etcetera. But
a lot of this stuff is built around like concerts,

(11:49):
you know, venues, you know, a lounge, movie theaters where
you can do stuff in VR. That is like that
is the main the main thing that Seek is trying
to do. They do have this one one quote somewhere,
oh yeah, the future milestone. So after they achieve this

(12:10):
Seek metaverse where everything is ran through Seek, all of
like you know what, whether you're on Oculus, whether you're
on Vibe, all of it gets run through Seeks. It's
one one multiverse, sorry, one metaverse. Their their future milestones
are quote a VR Space Academy. They do not do
not say what that means m keek studios again kind

(12:32):
of unclear. I'm guessing like original content. And then the
last one is a blockchain metaverse alliance. Those are their
those are their three big future milestones. After they get there,
there what was that last one blockchain metaverse alliance. I mean,
this was like in the Facebook thing, to write the
idea that we're going to integrate in f t S.
But it was also clearly just like they tossed that

(12:55):
in there on the Facebook one, there was no evidence
they thought seriously about n f t S or blockchain.
It was just had gotten big while they were preparing
the things, so they tossed them in there. Um. I
I get the idea, right, Like the thing that they
keep pitching with this is that you'll be able to
have an item in one game that is yours, the
company doesn't own it, you can take it to other games,

(13:16):
which anyone who makes games will tell you was fucking nonsense.
It's something like that might be vaguely possible in a
metaverse where everything was forced to use the same engine,
um and all, everyone was also forced to abide by
a bunch of strict rules by Facebook. Um that also,
that's probably violating antitrust laws. Um and also it seems

(13:38):
like a ridiculously Sisiphisian task with no real benefit. I
don't think anyone's going to do it, but I'm guessing
that's what they're referring to when they want to jam
the blockchain up in the fucking metaverse, Like what else
could it plain? The blockchain metaverse alliance, all of the
blockchains the metaverse is gonna align into. Yeah, like they
don't want to put all of the metaverse wear this
shirt in the metaverse. So, just like the real world,

(14:04):
the freedom, the freedom of the internet catch you feel.
It's the ever expanding possibilities. I do love because they
keep talking about within the context of metaverse games like
you'll get to unlock a character that's just yours and
nobody else can play it, and they'll have special abilities
that means he wins all the time. It's like, why
would people play that game? I think it was Business
Insiders someone's article talking about how neat it would be

(14:25):
for games to work this way, and like, think of
all the money you'd make people wanting to watch your
character wins. People don't want to just like watch a
guy who's structurally unable to lose because he he bought
the right character in a racing game win every race.
That's not no one's going to pay to watch that.
Do you understand what people watch races for? Like anyway,

(14:49):
let's hear from our good friends at our products and
services before we come back and talk more about seek coins.
I guess I don't know sa M all right, we

(15:10):
are back. So sea coins virtual reality spaces run on
smart contracts through the through the Bayans smart chain and
there they're they're run the run through the Ethereum blockchain. UM.
So the the there's about seven and seven four millions

(15:32):
seek coins and supply. The maximum supply capacity is capped
at one billion coins. Uh. Sea coins peaked at one
one dollar and sixteen cents a year ago after launching
it and around four cents um. They're currently being traded
for around sixty cents. So that's that's what actual sea
coins doing. Like like like people do use this, just

(15:52):
not many people like they They do have these contracts
with with with Universal Music UM. But for this H
and M thing, I I never heard of seek coins.
Um So, two days after the rumors began circulating that
H and M was, you know, partnering with seek, H
and M said nope, we did not, we are We're

(16:13):
not doing this, but they did not close the door
in future possibilities. They said, uh, we we we like
to we'd like to confirm that H and M is
not is not opening a store in the metaverse at
this time. We're also not collaborating with Seek. So the
official Twitter account for Seek subsequently clarified later on that
the store that they were doing was just a concept
that was presented to H and M and not a

(16:34):
not a launching virtual store yet. Um, but they do
they do say that they're in discussions with H and
M to make this a reality, but it's not a
reality as of now. So this this kind of begs
the question, like, what about a three D digital space
is superior to a two D digital space for simple
tasks like shopping online. So once you start, you know,

(16:57):
unfolding questions like this about the Internet metaverse a r VR,
you there are more the conternal sides to this than
you would have initially estimated. Um. But first off, before
we kind of have this discussion, we should split this
into two categories. One for shopping for like real physical
items that you plan on like receiving in person, and
then digital items that don't physically exist and are just

(17:18):
just on your computer and monitor. So obviously, like there's
no clear advantage in most cases to traversing an isolated
virtual environment in order to order food as opposed to
just scrolling through a web page. Um. But once you
expand out of the confines of VRS sensory deprivation three

(17:39):
three D technology in a r SO augmented reality does
actually have some USEUL prospects, including some that are already
in use. Um. Amazon and Ikea, for example, have options
on their perspective websites and apps that can like project
furniture options into your living space, so you can that
has some future I think, yeah, yeah, so this is
currently this is being done on your phone screen, but

(18:01):
in a R glasses application of this actually serve its
purpose quite well, something that people would want. Yeah. Yeah,
the phone screen version is pretty meatdiocre. And these are
And that's kind of the thing the place where at
I we make fun of this stuff a lot because
most of its nonsense. There are there are really there's
a lot of potential in some of these ideas, but
there's their potential for like and the same level that

(18:24):
the air fryer has potential where it's like a thing
a bunch of people will buy, but it's not. None
of this yet is stuff that's going to completely change, Like, yeah,
you might get a few million people to to get
these glasses and or this app made these glasses for
a couple of reasons. But who would use this this
app to like help plan out how they're setting up
their houses. You might get a few million people who
do that. It's not going to be like an iPod

(18:45):
or an iPhone or or like Facebook that no one's
had figured that out yet. There's there's some neat products
that are going to be valuable, but we're still on
the stage where nobody's under nobody's figured out fundamentally what
people want from this as opposed through like tiny specific
needs in the same way that like there was a
number of futurists who quite add accurately figured out with

(19:08):
a smartphone, like, oh, people want a thing that will
give them access to all of the knowledge and ideas
in the world and also let them yell at anybody
anytime they want. Like, that's something that is going to
be incredibly successful, and it has and it's changed the
entire world. Zuckerberger was like, people want to be able
to be racist faster, and by god, we wanted it,
and and that was huge. Um, I don't like these

(19:31):
are it's a good idea, like Yeah, let people scope
out how their room is going to look when they're
shopping or whatever through a r But we haven't yet
hit that this is going to change the world, because
being slightly better at using Ikea will not change the world. Yeah,
I think as an avid air fryer hater, I do
think comparing metaverse to the air fryer is actually which

(19:54):
I love to say to Garrison. I know Garrison hates
it when I use the air fryer. I love my
air fire mhm anti air frier action is my new tattoo.
They screech like the person at the end of Invasion
of the Body. They do. But my goodness, do they

(20:16):
cook my food faster frate with the air Wow? Almost
like it's impossible anyway. UM Mutual Mobiles digital marketing shategists
talked with Vice after the Walrut video went viral, and
he explained that like the demo was made to show

(20:37):
the potential of virtual reality and shopping experiences that they
can have for you know, different people, UM, including its
ability to connect like elderly people or people with disabilities
to a shopping experience from the comfort of their own home,
something that he thinks might even be you know, attractive
to people who have been through several rounds of COVID quarantine.
And I can kind of understand this last argument. During

(21:00):
early quarantine, I definitely used my VR headset more often
than I had before. Um And with our alienated capitalist world,
I can see the use of walking around a digital
store if you're stuck at home, um, due to something
like a plague, or if you know, if you have
a physical or mental reason that makes you know, going
to a story difficult, because but like it's yes, this
this can help that, but also this is always it's

(21:24):
very religed on how these types of stores are set
up and how these stories like affect your brain. It's
like a big part of going to the grocery store
what it's designed to do. Let's make it so that
we're not just following a shopping list. There's like a
structured joy of discovery. Everything about the design to the
store is to get you to buy things you didn't
think you needed before you walked in. And we're trained
from birth to like to find this process pleasurable. So

(21:47):
in that way, walking around a VR like wal Mart
or H and M might actually make some people happy.
Despite that being sad and dystopian if you stop and
think about it, right, like, because that's that's actually like
it's a it's a very capitalist thing. But it does
make us happy because that's that's what we've been trained
to do since we're babies. So that there's there is
that side of it for in terms of like, yeah,

(22:07):
I can see if I really don't want to leave
the house, but I want to get the experience of
walking through a place, maybe I will walk through a
target to get groceries. I don't know as some people
maybe it might do that, but otherwise, you know, it's
much It is much simpler and easier to just scroll
through a two D thing on a web page and
and and and and do the things you need. That's
the thing. Like it's like, yeah, I mean absolutely because

(22:30):
I I when I was making fun of one of
these videos, somebody like called it out as being able
list and was like fixing all the uses this as
for a disabled person if they can use this, they
can use Amazon. And like as a person who sometimes
I don't shop for groceries at Amazon, but I've shop
for groceries online. It's fine. The it's it's it's everything
it needs to be. You can get your groceries online,

(22:52):
and the metaverse is just going to make it like
weird and off putting and unnecessarily complicated, because at the moment,
I can get groceries with my own while I'm like
jogging um or as I'm like sitting in traffic, or
like while I'm on a zoom call listening to Garrison
talk about the metaverse as opposed to putting on a
headset and like doing the same thing basically as driving there,

(23:13):
but more expensively. Anyway, are your shopping right now? I
am ordering se cans of zvia and forty pounds of
raw beef, normal week's worth of food for me, And
that's literally like two days for him. See but Robert,
you could be doing this while wearing a bucket on

(23:35):
your head and walking around a fake store. I could
wear a bucket on my head to the real store.
They can't stop me. I usually wear a bathrobe. This
is the first half where it's like, you know, buying

(23:55):
actual physical items you planned to receive in stores, you know, furniture.
It's actually kind of makes sense. Uh. Food, it's a
little bit iffy. The only kind of consideration there is
If people want the mental effect of walking around a store,
if they find that pleasurable, then it's a thing. But
you know, it's way more efficient to just scroll through
your phone. Um As for the other side buying virtual items,

(24:16):
whether they be you know, n f T S video
game skins or super special exclusive VR hangout rooms, I
don't give a funk how this works. If you want
to walk around a VR vault about your VR art
and your VR clothes, knock yourself out. I buy Sonic
the Hedgehog games. We all have our weird things we
do that don't make any sense. Yeah, if that's if

(24:37):
these parcery stores are just gonna be like the seven
weirdest people in the country masturbannings, they buy wine. And
that's the thing, Robert I was when I was when
I was doing the digital picture. At the beginning, I
had two scenarios, one where you align the bottles into
a deck. The other one I was gonna say, you
take off your pants and start masturbating, and I decided

(24:58):
not to do that one. So I'm happy that it
was because because yeah, that is the actual use case
for this, is that someone people are gonna be walking
around these fake Walmarts just all cherking off. That's what's
gonna happen there. They're gonna have this animation of a real,
real female employee of theirs who like pops up when
you do something you're not supposed to do and explain
something to you. And it's going to be impossible to

(25:19):
remove initially, and people are going to turn it into
a whole weird, horny thing, and like they will appear
in all these circumstances, it's gonna go. It's going to
be the only thing that goes viral, Like it's gonna
be the only thing people remember five years later about
the first of these This is I'm gonna start go
back to this towards the end of part two, But
this is the actual way to handle the metaverse, because
we're gonna this this thing is going to be forced

(25:41):
on us one way or another. We're gonna have a
form of it, and honestly, the best thing we can
do with it is either ignore it, ignore it, or
maybe more attractively, is to funk with it. Like that's
gonna be the thing that's gonna be the thing to do.
There was an acule a few days ago that the
headline is Final Fantasy porn interrupts a Allian Senate zoom event.

(26:02):
Someone someone joined it and started playing poured from Final
Fantasy seven, Like this is to do This is the
way that we need to do it. If there's gonna
be dumbmass like meetings on the Zuckerberg metaverse, people need
to go in and make it weirdly horny. Yeah, Garrison,

(26:23):
I could not agree more that that's the what you
need to do, citizens of the Internet is look up
something awful habo h A B b O hotel. That's
the kind of ship that we need to be doing.
In fucking um. In in the there was basically a
children's video game was an early kids MMO and a
bunch of weird adults and something awful decided to create

(26:45):
an unsettling cult of people who all looked identical and
marched around doing all of these weird, unsettling things in
a children's game. It was very fun um like or
or like in a in Second life when it was
the new big sexy thing. There is this very self
important tech writer, investor type person who was doing a

(27:05):
Q and A and people just like animated thousands of
floating penises going around this is, this is gonna be
the thing. This is what you're gonna have to do
because in order, because if it's gonna be this horrible
corporate hell, the only way to do it, the only
way to deal with that is to make it unusable
for everybody so that so that it doesn't get used.
And the way to do that is by putting dicks

(27:26):
everywhere dicks, andwhe ever decides to do a multiverse presentation,
or if one party or another has had decides to
a multiverse debate, it is everyone's moral responsibility, civic civic duty.
This goes beyond civic. This is as a citizen of
the human race. You know, as a member of this species,
you have to try to find a way to funk

(27:47):
it up for them. Something could be more important. So yeah,
So if if you're buying digital items, do you never
plant everything even person, I don't care how you do it.
Knock yourself out. We all have our weird things. I
b saw like DLCs, people do World of Warcraft. If
you want to get of art piece, you can only
hang in your digital room. That sounds miserable, but have fun.

(28:08):
I I used the internet to order very off putting
Danish cheese product. Oh yeah, that did happen. That was
off putting. It was weird. It was like you tried
to trick yourself into liking it when you were eating it.
Though I we I don't remember not liking it because
I hated it amount. But I've had the second cube
sitting around and I've had no desired to open desired.
Yeah anyway, so I did not like it. I just

(28:30):
I don't know that I ever want to eat it again.
Quality audio content. So here's the thing. I have not
actually been talking about the metaverse. Nothing I've mentioned thus
far actually is the metaverse and doesn't have really anything
to do with the metaverse besides the technology of a
VR and a R. You know. It turns out companies
like Facebook, Epic, Microsoft, Invalve, the way they talk about

(28:52):
the metaverse is kind of all a big lie. Like
if it's not metaverse, it's a it's an astros turf
top down marketing scheme to turn more of you into
data and to create and to create vinyl marketing like
that's instant instead of an interconnected solution to the alienated
bubbles of Web two, it's just a social media network
that encompasses all of your vision and encourages even more

(29:13):
digital alienation and less in person socialization. Kids, you know
the worst stuff about the internet. What if it was
the only thing about the Internet. What if it was
encompanying everything you see instead of just a computer screen.
And so all of the gaming CEOs who were talking
about the promise of n f T s and like,
I think it was the one of the guys who

(29:34):
runs read and I think it might have been Alexis
so haney In or whatever their name is who said that,
like in five years of games will be n f
T based because people don't like wasting their time and
not getting compensated for it. Like, do you know what
it games is? That's not what people. So I'm gonna
I'm gonna talk more about metaverse as big tech or

(29:56):
just bigger tech in part two. But this this, this,
this will be wrapping up part one of the digital storefronts,
and then we'll get into some more kind of applications
of this and how we're actually seeing it in the
second half. So, Robert, do you wanna do you want
to go buy a virtual uh block of Danish cheese? Um? No,
I did when I was hanging out on top of

(30:17):
the mountain. The other day, I ran into a guy
flying some drones, which I normally don't like. But this
guy had a VR control rig for his very nice drones.
That's those are dope. I might, I might get into
that ship. Uh, but no, I have no desire to shop.
I like going to the grocery store, um as, I
do as much of my shopping that way as possible

(30:38):
because it's soothing and uh nice, and I think very
human to go be around other people to get food.
But yeah, that's the thing, you know, and things like
the pandemic where that it comes harder. I think that
is where the use cases for the digital stores actually
come in, Like theoretically, but we've never you've never seen
them that feeling that's soothing, which it all just looks

(30:59):
deeply off putting. It all. It's the problem is that
it's it's stuck. It's stuck in the uncanny valley. So
it's not pleasurable to be in those digital spaces because
you're even though it's being marketed as a solution to alienation,
it's just more alienating because it's because it's it's like
very clearly exposing the alienation that we try to avoid. UM,

(31:22):
So it falls right in the middle of the uncanny
valley and it's not pleasant, but we we we we
We will talk more about that in part two. Um.
If you want to follow the show on the social
media's that is cool Zone Media and Happen Here pod.
You can keep up with my tweets when I I
don't know, I don't know what I do on Twitter anymore,
but that's hungry about tie. And you can harass Robert

(31:44):
Evans at I read Okay, that's the show. Do it
do it? Are all kill? It Could Happen Here is
a production of pool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
the Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com or check us out on the I Heart

(32:05):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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