The Metaverse and Facebook’s Future of the Internet part 2

The gang continues their conversation on VR, the metaverse and the rest of Facebook's Meta conference

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back. It could happen here the show where we're
talking right now about the metaverse that a bunch of
rich people think that you're going to want to live
in once they ruin the regular world. Um uh, and
why it's dogshit and it is dogshit, so it's just
it's just it's just total dogshit. Um Everything about this,

(00:27):
I don't know, seems like a waking nightmare to be
to me so far if we're actually talking about like
what they are, what they are immediately trying to because
a bunch of this is aspirational nonsense that as we've
stayed at this, like you are never going to play
a perfect game of basketball in a mix of real
and a R courts with your friend in Hong Kong,
Like that's never going to happen. Never. That's not how

(00:48):
physics works, that's not how electronics works. Maybe when we
find out how to literally hack the human brain, we
can like put you into a quasi seizure state that
that that that mimics that. But like the closest, the
closest thing we have to this right now is actually
uh VR board games is the best is the best
example of this, or you can play with you can
play Settlers of Catan with your friend, a classic across

(01:11):
the Yeah, and there's some cool ship you can do
with haptics and haptic feedback is like the basic example
of it is when you like touch your phone and
your phone like vibrates under your hand to like let
you know that you've you've touched like a command. And
there's there's people who think like at some point we
would be we may be able to make using haptic feedback,
like a virtual keyboard that feels like a real keyboard,
that might be possible. That's still that's still like kind

(01:35):
of like the idea of a keyboard that isn't there
but feels like a real keyboard might be possible. Close
to that, that's still on the fringes of possibility. Like this,
the fucking ship they're showing in this video is like nonsense.
We will have laser cannons before we have any of
this bullshit, Like we will be shooting each other in
space before we have this nonsense. Um, And thank god

(01:57):
for that because at least that sounds fun. So the
actual will center of what they've built in terms of
the products that that Facebook is launching now for the metaverse. UM.
The core of it is Horizon Home and Horizon Worlds,
and I think Horizon is kind of the brand they're
going with for all of their different like meta programs. UM.
Horizon Home is the home spaces thing that they discussed earlier,

(02:17):
where people can like make their own like houses. And
one of the things they don't talk about in this
They keep saying like you can build whatever you want,
you can make it look like anything. They don't say
a word about how like decorating your digital home is
going to be monetized versus how much of it will
be sweat equity. And again, like the smart thing would
be make it all sweat equity, make it like Minecraft,
make people be able to build anything they can conceive

(02:39):
of if they're actually creative enough and spend the time.
They won't do that um as they talk about in that,
Like in the video they played like we're like, oh,
this is a cool world. It was made by a developer, Like, yeah,
you're gonna buy the cool ship. Um, I don't. I
don't know what You're gonna buy it, and it's gonna
suck because all you can do is sit at a table. Yeah,
and it's like you can't go into bed, Like you can't,

(03:00):
Like all of this stuff is just cosmetic, Like it's
you're not gonna be tricked to thinking it's real. I've
I've been in some cool VR like three D rooms
and like they're cool to look at for like ten minutes. Yeah,
any boring. Yeah, Like it's you're like, oh yeah, it's
like the real world, but I can't touch anything. And
when they show you the stuff that's closer to real,

(03:21):
like the different like people chatting in the metaverse and whatever,
it doesn't look fun. There's a there's a scene where
they like show people like watching a YouTube video together
in the metaverse, and they're all like these disembodied upper
torsos because of course VR sets can't can't read your legs,
so it's like a bunch of torsos floating around a
maximized YouTube video window. And it's like I would rather

(03:42):
just show a friend my phone. I would even rather
text the video, and is being in person with somebody
watching on a on a phone or even but even
even if without like it's the kind I think that
they're expecting that, like everyone's kind of bummed when they
send a friend video over signal or text and like
wait for them. No, I would rather do that for
this ship. I don't want to hang out as a

(04:03):
bunch of torsos around a YouTube. We don't want have
to schedule of a VR session every time I want
to share a YouTube video. No, that sounds horrible, and
it sounds like I would constantly have to be in VR.
Like he talks about how we're not trying to expand
screen time, but like, am I just waiting around in
VR to like show friends? YouTube are really unclear about

(04:24):
how often you need to be in a headset, and
it's it's kind of suspicious. It's almost like they don't
actually plan on doing anything. I want to play another
video that they claim to be a use case. And
the way this video starts is like this actual person
is in an actual real world concert for some guy
I've never heard of that Facebook. I think he's he's
some clearly some sort of musician with a following that

(04:45):
Facebook hired to do a concert for this video. And
she like calls her friend on the metaverse, and her
friend digitally hops into the concert and they're like the
digital girl and the real girl are like dancing together
at the show, which I don't know whatever, like that
is more possib both in the basketball shit, Um, I
mean yeah, watching of having a like a VR version

(05:05):
of standing in a room where musician plays. Sure, I
mean it's not Yeah, yeah, I would debate like whether
or not it's doable. But then after that they see,
like during the concert, this like digital thing pops up.
That's like, do you want to go to a free
after party? Um? And first off, all of these after
parties will cost money and they'll all be dogshit. But um,
that's the same with most real after parties. So I

(05:27):
guess that's that's at least Facebook accurately delivering on the
promise of the real world. Um, but I want to
play like what happens in this metaverse after party that
these two both hop into digitally after one of them.
So like as this starts, the lady who was actually
at the concert like sits down at home and gets

(05:47):
into the metaverse. Imagine your best friend is at a
concert somewhere across the world. Uh, what if you could
be there with her? Yeah? Yeah, real, yeah, real and clear?

(06:11):
How that works? Yeah, that was the first of the concert.
See the holographic version of how the person see that. Yeah,
well that she's dancing. Is everyone wearing VR and seeing
the world through VR, because I'll tell you about Like
right now, I'm I in our brain put on put on.
I put on on Oculus as a joke, and right

(06:32):
now I have it on the pass through, which means
I can see the real world through my cameras in
the oculus And you know what it looks like? Shit,
it's black and white. It's super grainy. I can't there
has it has no like exposure range. Everything is like
it's it's like you look like you're wearing a sunglasses
case in your once look like the world. But like

(06:53):
I can't do anything because it all is like a
horrible digital like like I can't like it's not really
like again do anything. Aspects of this one Like at
some point passed through mode will be in color and
the latency will be low enough notice it right like
and there won't be late and seeing like yeah, but
it'll but it's not gonna be human eyeballa, It'll it'll

(07:14):
still be a thing. So that girl is going to
have to be at a concert dancing, getting super sweaty
and like she's wearing something even if it's as small
as like regular glasses and she's not like better, but
what's more to the end, But like, if people are
actually gonna a helop this technology, the real way to
do it is with a R, not not VR, because
with a R, yeah, you could have put on like

(07:35):
actual glasses and have like a person show up on
the thing and make it look like they're there, well
actually still seeing the real world. That's gonna be the
way to do it, Yeah, And I think that's what
to do it. Yeah, I think that's what they're like
claiming here, But it's really unclear how it's all going
to interface, how the a R is going to interface
with like the full VR stuff, Like, are we gonna
have two separate sets of gear, one for when we're

(07:56):
in the real world and we can't be fully immersive
and one for when want to dive into the metaverse?
An do we always carry it around wherever we go? Yeah?
But I want to play the section. I sorry, I
played the video where they were at the concert just
because it it looks very silly. I want to play
the section where they're at the after party because it's
it's dystopian as fux so here's the all all metaverse
after party that looks like a bunch of fucking connect

(08:19):
avatars standing around and like a room made out of
glowing neon, the digital room. Yeah, nobody's drinking, which is
the only good thing to do with an after party
that's not cocaine. So from from the jump, I'm like, well,
what is the only good thing about an after party
is if you want more drugs and all of the
drugs places are closed, maybe at the end you can
hook up with a digital avatar. Yeah, it's anyway. I'm

(08:41):
just I'm just gonna play this dog shit where this
is wild? Is it? They're just slowly dancing as a draftman.
Check this out charity action for n f T merchandise
party that looks like ship of your favorite song. Yeah

(09:05):
it looks dog Yeah. So it's like it's it's a
it's a horrible three D chat. And we already have
these these already exhast and they're not tons of fun.
The only they're fun is when you're in first suits
and you're walking around a fake city destroying it. That's
the only fun way to do this. And the thing

(09:26):
they're showing in this is that like an autographed poster
for the concert. Um is an n f T that
you can buy for a charity auction, and like, as
they're looking at it, the actual musician walks by and
tells them it looks cool, and so they buy it
and they have the musician come in for that number
one to like try to make this kind of like, yeah,
you'll be able to do these digital events where you

(09:47):
can meet actual celebrities, which like, no, I'm sure celebrities
will agree to do q Q and as in the
multiverse like they do anywhere else. But they're not going
to just walk around in some dogshit virtual party because
they have money and they can do actual fun things
the actual real world. They're gonna be fucking supermodels while
skiing down a mountain in Lake Tahoe because they're rich. Um,
they're going to be like flying in their private jets

(10:10):
or driving in a fucking yacht and eating lobster that's
been tortured so it tastes better because they're rich. Like
they're they're not going to be hanging out in a
digital lobby telling you that a fucking dogshit poster in
f T is cool and that you should buy it. Um,
unless you're a millionaire and they want your money because
they're Nicolas Cage and they have an addiction to buying

(10:32):
Tarannosaurus parts. I don't know, it's it's silly, it's it's ridiculous.
Um Yeah. So one of the things that I thought
about when I was watching this is like the concept
of metaverse culture. Um. So, like at some point, if
this is a thing, there's going to be like like
if there ever is a metaverse, people will develop a
culture for it, just like they've developed a culture for Twitter,

(10:53):
a culture for Reddit, a culture for Facebook, just as
they were like internet culture or was fantasy. Yeah, it
had with every community you make online. Um And and
that's the thing, Like, there's no I see no space
in this thing that Mark Zuckerberg has envisioned as he
is presenting it for organic evolution of None of the

(11:14):
things that here are gonna make people want to form
a culture around it because it's all it looks like
it looks like boring yuppie ship, all of it, but
none of it is actually looks cool or fun, and
none of it, none of it is He's not talking
about any of it with like the there's no there's
no openness in it, Like there's no I don't see
where a culture could evolve, and if one does, it's

(11:35):
going to be directly like in opposition to Facebook moderation,
um like yeah, um well yeah, and I mean and
there's there's an ex sense to which it's like they
can't write because like if you actually let people just
like do things, like imagine the griefing that's going to
happen in one of these spaces, right Like every person's
avatar is going to be like sixteen thousand dongs like

(11:58):
this just as literally this all it's going to be
like this, This is this is what Twitch looks like,
right Like every twitch chat is a guy posting a
hydramate of dongs. Like it's like none of none of
this can actually work if you let people do literally anything.
But if you don't let people do anything, like why
would you're going to want to do it? Yeah? Yeah,
like how how are you going to sell them this crap?
Like once upon a time there was a game called
Second Life. I guess it still exists, but still we're talking.

(12:20):
People talked about it the way they're talking about the
metaverse now, and that became just like it was never that,
but there was like this beautiful moment where this I
think and she Chung was her name. Um, this like
culture writer, kind of expert lady was like doing a
Q and A and Second Life that was like build
as being this like big event for the platform that

(12:41):
was going to like make people take it seriously. And
a bunch of like users showed up and made a
bunch of floating dicks like float through the room during
the interview, so that like while this person was trying
to talk seriously about Second Life, just like floating cox
resooming past her head the entire time, and it was
extremely funny. And it's it's exactly the kind of thing
that like, yeah, that's what all of this is going

(13:01):
to look like. Any mass event is going people will
find a way to grief it um and that will
in fact be the thing they most want to do.
Is that will be the actual culture part is fucking
with Facebook. Yeah, but you know, but that's the part
about that that sucks. It's like, yeah, you know, it's
like you're your anniversal reality thing, right, so like okay,
what are people going to do in a virtual reality.
It's well, okay, you're gonna get You're gonna get a

(13:21):
bunch of neo Nazis like figuring out a way to
like show you just like the worst ship you've ever
seen in your life. Like it it's gonna it's gonna
be all the stuff from the two thousands were like
half of the Internet was just like a video. Why
this is the thousand tends to like half of Twitter
is just heading videos. Said now it's in VR, it's
like yeah, yeahs in the metaverse, it's going to be amazing.

(13:42):
Some of that's even already happening in like vir social
media apps. I know of a few specific nazis involved
in January six who networked and met with people via
of specifically VR chat, So like this this is already
a thing, um, and making it more broad than like
this small, you know, because the VR right now is
mostly just a small subsect of like gaming culture right

(14:04):
and people are into it because there is VR games
that are cool, like like like beat Saber is fun.
Rights yeah, absolutely, Um. In order for them to break
this through into the mainstream, they need to make it
appealing some way, and the only way they're making appealing
right now is by doing meetings and like concerts. So
the next part I want to play doesn't say a

(14:25):
lot about the future Marks trying to build, but it's
very funny because it's him sitting down with a woman
who works in his gaming department and she's walking him
through like what games are going to be integrated into
the metaverse, And it fucking reads like and I think
you should leave sketch like it feels like a sketch
where the joke is that everyone is awkward and not
talking the way human beings talk. And in case you

(14:45):
can't watch this chunk of the video and it starts
at about like nineteen thirty four. Um. In the actual
Facebook video, all of the video games they're talking about,
like look, Dogship, they look like the Kirkland brand of
like popular like fighting games and fps is and stuff.
None of them look very good. Um. So I'm gonna
play a clip from this because it's very funny. Can

(15:07):
bailed out active communities Beat Saber has a passionate community,
so do I and just past million dollars and less
I pressed around a creat example in the games releasing
fresh content, they've actually been working on involving the way
that you inter wrapt with the tracks and feel the music.

(15:28):
The way he's nodding in this, like his digital avatar
looks more like a person. Well, here's some beats saber. Yeah,
it looks like regular beat saber. Yeah. But it's it's VR,
it's our it's already as VR. Yeah, it's already a
VR game. You can't wait to play this, and you
can already play with incredible artists to release new music

(15:50):
packs all the time. You can do that a little
more than us have been working more of this metaverse
prison Tack Well, oh god, every scene she's talking to
him and he's just like Bobblehead nodding just a little bit,
but not like it's he looks. Mark actually will benefit
from the metaverse, like outside of a financial thing, because

(16:10):
a a sculpted three D representation of him will be
a thousand times better. It looks more human than he looks,
looks like more of a person. Yeah, it's I mean,
it's just like he's scripted it badly and he's a narcissist,
so he has to be the one to present it again,
am I. Number one? If Steve Jobs were doing this,
Number one, he wouldn't because he understood what people wanted

(16:31):
from technology. But if he were doing something like this.
He would introduce like little chunks of it, and then
he would have a famous person who's charismatic introduced the
rest of it, like yeah, that's like you wouldn't be
it wouldn't mean introduce how I'm sitting like a bobblehead listening,
And he would introduced v R and a R into
a way that actually integrats how people use the Internet, alright,
because there is ways that there is ways of doing it.

(16:52):
It's not this like super monetized n f T like
bullshit holographic fake stuff. Yeah, and there's there's aspects of this,
like he goes through after this, like there's a bunch
of gaming stuff, which is impossible for the reasons we've
talked about. Then there's aspects of it that seemed cool,
Like there's a scene where like an architect gets onto
his digital office and like somebody sends him uh schematics

(17:15):
to a building they're making, and he's able to generate
a three D and walk around the building Like Okay,
that actually seems that seems like useful, Like you've developed
a use case for the all of the architects out there.
It's it's I'm still not convinced that CAD would actually
be better in three D than it would be Like, sure,
it's I I think it may someday. I think it

(17:38):
could be. Like if you are one of the concreasingly
small number of people who can afford to like build
a house of your own, I can see why it
would be neat to be like, Okay, well let's do
a three D render of the house and I can
walk through and I could maybe make changes at the
last moment. As I'm kind of experienced, that is definitely
useful where a window is like, yeah, I can that.
That seems like something number one Technologically you could do

(17:59):
that more or less. Now, Um, I don't think it's
it's not gonna be as instantaneous as this, but if
you give it time to render, it could be done.
And it it's something that a number of people might
find useful. But again, that's a niche product because like
eighteen people in our generation are going homes. I mean yeah.
And also it's it's it's expensive to develop because you
would have just modeling an actual real life location is

(18:21):
a lot of work. Um. Now, there is there is
a lot of a lot of technology that's getting way
better at it by machine, um and like basically filming
a space and and the computer can reconstruct it pretty accurately.
Uh that that that is a growing field, but still
it is. It's a very niche, you know area, at
least at a Yeah. So the thing that is so anyway,

(18:43):
there's aspects of this that are ridiculous, aspects of this
that seem neat. But the longer you watch it, the
thing that comes becomes really clear is that all he's
really advertising is mass surveillance. Yeah. Yeah, there's a point
in this video where they're showing you how they can
like map a real world location so you can be
in your actual house, put on your VR glasses, um,

(19:04):
and it can map the your actual home digitally in
real time. And as you and as you pick up
real things in your house, you you see them being
picked up in VR and presumably other people in the
VR could see it. Which we are not quite there yet.
I stay pretty here in VR technology, we're getting close
to this, but we're not We're not quite there. I
mean we're we're we're actually we actually are where what

(19:26):
they show in the video, And I'm gonna play you
a second from it because I want to show you
something at least, I mean, like like consumer products. We're
not We're not at this point yet. Yeah, and I
want to show you, uh where we are because this
video they're showing like actual footage. So they have built
this thing. But there's a catch, and so I'm just
gonna play it right now, right out the researcher. So

(19:48):
what's critical here is that this is all happening in
real time. So if you I've just paused it, well
you've got here. On one side, there's a woman in
a real like house, sitting and picking up like a
toy home on her couch. And then on the left
you see the VR version of her house, which looks
close to photo realistic, and like the house that she's
holding in the real world is floating in the same

(20:08):
way that she's holding it, like her body isn't there,
like the stuff she's interacting with is. But if you
look at the house she's holding, the reason that they're
able to do this and it really does work is
it's covered in sensors. And and and actually every single thing
in the real house is covered in sensors because that's
the only way for this to work. Moving is covered
in sensors. Yeah, yeah, and it it is impressive, like
as a proof of concept, like this, this is here,

(20:29):
we can do this, but like it's still light years
away from practical and more to the point, when you
look at this, you realize that, like, well, if this
is ever going to work, the only way to make
it work is for Facebook, through this service, to map
your entire home in real time, every hour of day.
And they also go on to talk about like how

(20:50):
you're gonna have just your commands and like you'll be
able to like make an expression or like a hand
gesture and that will do things, which means that like
this service isn't just learning what's in your home and
what you do with the things in your home. It's
it's learning your facial expressions and your gestures and like
what they mean and interpreting those at all times. I

(21:19):
can kind of explain where oculus which is over Facebook.
I think they're technically renaming oculus spring to just calling
it the metic quest. But what wait wait wait, the
medical quest that that that's that's what they're calling it
instead of instead of oculus um, So where where that
right now? Is basically uh, the only kind of real

(21:42):
world interactivity that they have for their VR headsets. Again
for like the consumer models, I don't know what's in
link development. UM is hand tracking. This this is the
thing they've been working on for a long time. Is
that you put on the headset and the camera like
the cameras and depth sensors built into the headset can
see your hands and like you said, you have like
gesture controls where you can do certain things in your

(22:03):
hand and it will make certain things happen. This is
the only interactivity that that we have. It's okay, it's
not perfect, like it's it is. It is better than
a lot of the other hand tracking systems from other companies,
but like it's it's it is very much a work
in progress. UM. And the way to make this work
is by is very good depth sensing cameras, which I
think Apple makes some of the best ones right now

(22:24):
that they put into the iPhone. UH. The other way
of doing this is with lighthouses. So this is like
separate UM separate like UH, separate cameras that you set
up around the corners of your house that project different
like wavelengths of light and they get it received back
so they can map your house um, with not just
cameras but also like like in like infrared sensors and

(22:47):
that kind of thing. So these are these are like
the two methods of doing it. Uh. Facebook is really
trying to go full on, full on to the everything
is built into the headset thing. So no, so no,
like lighthouses, everything is just depth depth sensing cameras. So
that's why they're working on hand tracking so much, because
that's something you can actually do. But like I can't
pick up anything. Um, the only thing I can pick

(23:09):
up is my controllers, which because they they have centers
built in, they can be rendered in the actual game
the same way like my hand can be. So that
that that's where they're at. For that for the consumer
products get more than it's getting developed. Again, where they're at,
you think about what Facebook has already done with the
information you provided, and how so much of their money
comes from selling your data. Um, the only way for

(23:30):
this to work that they've they've passed are always watching
everything every moment of your existence, including like your micro expressions,
which is why I keep my oculence in the tiny
little box. And here's the thing. If they were to
actually develop the technology which I don't think is impossible,
although it's not particularly close. Um, it's not going to

(23:53):
be cheap to store all that. So in order to
make it outside, well, it's going to be cloud based.
But in order to make it like cloud isn't free,
UM subscription probably, I think you'll pay some, but I
think in order to make it affordable, um, so that
more people are on it, they're just going to sell
your data in a way that has never been in

(24:15):
a and and the government will have access to it.
Like it is. It's actually like the thing that he
is actually proposing here is I want to build a
machine god that knows your sins, like that knows when
your heart rate is elevated, knows what in your like
before you smile, that can predict like when you're about
to make a gesture or laugh, because it is so

(24:37):
accurately mapped your body and motions. Um, it's actually a nightmare.
Like when you really think about what he is trying
to build here, and it's like, well, what, what's what
what's the actual use case for this? And it's like, well, okay,
so you haven't. You have a bunch of supposed to
forces guys, you put them in a VR thing and
then you know, you can you can you can you
can have them drill on knowing exactly where all the

(24:57):
rooms in the houses, where everyone is in, where everyone
is in a house any given time. It's like, oh, hey,
this this is gonna be great. This is yeah, it's
it's great. Yeah, it's it's really cool. Um, they have
a So there is a little bit here briefly about
where like Mark talks about how the last year or
so has been um fucking uh. The term he uses

(25:20):
is humbling for them. Oh god, yeah, and you you
kind of think that, like he's about to say that, like, oh,
because we we made life dramatically worse and our service
was integral in several ethnic cleansings and a couple of
civil wars and like hate crimes on a scale that
was unimaginable before it really came into being, or that

(25:42):
we thought had been at least we thought had been
consigned to a century or so ago before Facebook came
into being. But no, that's not why it's humbling. Why
he says it's been humbling is that Facebook has been
developing services for other platforms like the App Store, where
they don't have total control, and that sucks. And that's
like the thing that that's the that's him admitting a
little bit that like a big part of this is
they're trying to build a service the entire Internet gets

(26:04):
filtered through that they completely control, so that they are
never in anyone else's wheelhouse, Like everything is done through Facebook,
and with Facebook's approval as opposed to them, they face Facebook.
Facebook is going to become the state. Yeah, and that's
the thing that it says so much about Mark that
he's like, what's humbling. Isn't all of the mistakes I've made.

(26:25):
It's that periodically I have not had total control. Um,
it's great. Um. He then from immediately from this says
that if we all work at it, all of us,
the metaverse can reach a billion people by the next
decade um, which is very funny. Um that he thinks
that that's like an enticing fucking thing. So one of

(26:48):
the use cases they try to present is they have
a beauty influencer who like made like a fucking candle
line or something, uh, that she's sold on Instagram and
she's she's very successful in Instagram. They bring this lady
in and number one on as soon as they started
interviewing her. It's it's it's what I was saying about.
You have a hire a celebrity to do this, Mark,
You're not charismatic. She's immediately the most engaging person in

(27:08):
the entire presentation because she's a successful in like, she's
someone who understands how she appears on camera, how to
make herself seem likable on camera, how to like interact
with the world on a camera. And nobody else in
this video understands that. Um, which is just funny. It's
not particularly like say anything other than that, Like, you
have professionals do difficult things, Mark, don't don't hire your weird,

(27:29):
gawky engineering staff to like be the faces of this thing.
They're not good at this, and neither are you. I
just want to point out. So he said that, like
he can get one billion people the next decade. So
far there's only been sixteen million Vier headsets sold. Ever, Yeah,
so getting that to the point of a billion seems
like quite quite the challenge. I mean, it is a challenge,

(27:52):
but you could look at like how quickly smartphones went
from Yeah, except smartphones were useful in improving the world
in very obvious ways, whereas the metaverse and even be
our in general doesn't improve the world for most people
in obvious ways. Yeah, but that that's kind of what
I'm saying, is that, like, the thing that is stupid
and doomed about this isn't like, oh, you would have
to sell so many headsets. If it was legitimately something

(28:13):
every single person wanted on their head, they would sell
a billion. They would sell a billion in a couple
of years, you know. Um, but they haven't made that
look like like so this this beauty influencer thing is
an example of them trying to like explain, here's something
that people will find cool about the metaverse, um, and
the way they do it is like talking about how
you can have a digital storefront where like people can't

(28:34):
just buy products, but they can interact with you. Um.
She talks about how it will be good for letting
her interact with their fans, but like bringing them into
my home, which sounds like a fucking we love our fans,
but like, no, I do not want anyone from anybody
goddamn home. I barely want my friends in my home
half the time, like absolutely not. Um, they didn't present

(28:57):
us with a use case of how a brand in
this case, this candle company this lady made that's big
on Instagram could release like a new candle flavor and
launch a digital experience with it, so you can buy
both real and digital products. It's kind of unclear in
the video whether or not you're paying for the digital
experience or is it like free when you buy the
candle um. Yeah, it's like I think games is like
developing is like, you know, dropping products at the same

(29:20):
time in the real world in the digital world, but
like the digital version is free because it's like because
it's like an ad, right, you could try something out
virtually before you buy it physically. And that's what like
Epic Games is doing. And honestly, I think epics version
of the Metavors is slightly more hinged. They understand more
what people actually want. Yeah, because like all the stuff
they're trying with Fortnite again, it doesn't seem fun for me,

(29:41):
but at least it's like an extension of how people
use the Internet already, whereas Facebook's is not that. Yeah,
and and Mark never really understood what people wanted. He
accidentally did basically make something else like he wanted a
place to share pictures of ladies he thought was hot,
and he accidentally built a thing that like gave people

(30:02):
something they did one, which was a way to stay
in contact with their friends from high school in college
as they grew older. Right, Like that was the thing
about Facebook that made it get huge originally. Um, and
he hasn't learned anything since he's just been smart. He's
he's hired people who are smart enough to be like, hey,
Instagram is probably gonna be a big deal by that,
you know, um like that that, But I haven't seen
anything that's made me think like Mark gets what people want,

(30:26):
and this has just made it clear that like he
absolutely doesn't. So I want to play this video of
like this is the digital experience to go with this
fucking candle that they're they're framing is like a piece
of art that everybody's gonna want to interact with who
likes candles. It's it's incredible because it again feels like
a nightmare. I am. I am a big candle fan.
So same here what I fly effect to transports us

(30:48):
something to magic. It's like a shitty arboretum. I don't
do what what that has to do with candle's It's
Jackie as we walk through this amazing world. I just
feel like this is like endless possibilities of my imaginations.

(31:09):
I can't even begin to imagine. But I don't understand
what has that to do with candles? Yeah, like they
have again, like there's I can walk around, Like why
can't we can to imagine all the things people are
going to I can walk around digital spaces and like
quest it's again, it's fun for like thirty seconds, and
then you see everything and you're like, well, I can't
touch it or smell it or actually feel it or

(31:29):
do anything. So I'm gonna go back and have a
soda and yeah play and like read a book or
something like that. And they've brought in this influencer who
like used one of their other services in a way
they hadn't initially intended and was successful in that, which
is not a bad idea in its surface, Like, yeah,
bring in creative people and let them play around and
make something new to show people how exciting this is. Right,

(31:52):
that's the smart thing to do. But all they've presented
is like, look, it's a tiny little weird arboretum. You
can walk around and after buying a candle and like, well,
I like candles, but that's not fun. That doesn't sound
like a part of the metaverse is like making like
interactivity more like being able to interact with with digital things,
and like that's not interacting. That's just walking around like

(32:14):
unless I can like take of like a bazooka and
blow up our like the candle, you know, like that's
like you have to do something like all of the
VR games that are fun, like like like like like
a super Hot or something like something. It's about, you know,
picking up objects in VR and throwing them at people.
That's fun and you like also unless I can pick

(32:35):
up this candle and it's all people with it in
the game, I don't see what really the dry like,
what's what's exciting about this? You were saying something, Chris, Oh,
I guess you know. The thing I keep coming back
to with this is it the only way this and
this literally any of this makes any sense if it's
just like a chip in your brain just because all
of it, all of it is built around that. But
it's but it's not like it can't be like we

(32:56):
don't the technology for that won't exist for like ages
and so there it's like it's it's like they're they're
selling some of it definitely is headset based, like that
arboretum thing, but a lot of it. But even yeah,
but like i mean I think even that right, like okay,
so why would you want like yeah, you're if you're saying,
like why would you It's like, okay, it's interesting for
like ten minutes, right, yeah. The only way that would

(33:16):
be like, the only way that would be an actually
interesting experience is if you could get all the full
century experience you can smell and feel, yeah, right, and
that that's that's that's like, that's that's the thing where
something only makes sense if it's like a brain ship. Well,
I mean there's there's two versions. There's one it's a
brain ship, or two it's a video game. And Epic
Games is doing the thing where it's a video game
and that's slightly more y. Yeah yeah, but like they
don't you know, but they're they're trying to sell, like

(33:39):
and I think part of what's going on here is
also just like this is this is designed to like
like this is designed to like trick Silicon Valley investors.
That is like yeah, and those people I think are
just gonna be like, oh well, we'll have brain ships eventually,
and so we'll just we'll talk about probably talk about
that part more at the end, because yeah, this is
just a scam. This is just a scam, and it

(34:01):
is like again to talk about like the dystopian aspects
of this, Chris, as you brought up. One of the
aspects is that like it's a complete panopticon of perfect
surveillance if they actually make this thing, and number two
is the only way to do most of what they're
talking about that's cool is to give Mark Zuckerberg physical
control over human being's brain chemistry on a global scale,
which I think it is a bad I'm not going

(34:22):
to sign up for that for that. I don't I
don't want to walk around in a weird candle room
that badly. Like to your point, Chris about like how
it's you know, there's no sensory stuff. Is like like
the most popular VR games, the reason why they work
so well, there's why that they don't, like Break the
Uncanny Valley is because you're in like a barren land,
like you know, the Saber, You're not in a place

(34:44):
you know, you're in the in the game interface for
like for Super Hot you're in like whitewashed, abstract like
concrete spaces, right, so like there's nothing, there is nothing
to smell or feels like you don't feel like you're
missing anything because you're in a very like stripped down
version of reality. There is. It's a really good of
yr game. I forget what it's called, but it's it's
based on like an office and you're like fighting robots

(35:05):
to break out of like this capitalist office room. And
it's cool because like, yeah, it's miserable because it's like
it's like an office space. You feel like you're in
an office because it's nothing about it's exciting right there.
Games that are in like lush worlds they feel so
much more like disconnected because you have like a weird
like you have you have like you have like an
uncanny valley thing, but instead of like a face or
a person, it's like an environment. We're running a long time.

(35:36):
I want to move to something that I think is
important here, which is there is one moment in this
video where they try to address the fact that they've
done a tremendous amount of damage to the world and
they have repeatedly failed to like uh, anticipate dangers that
their services have, so they need to like deal with
that at some point. And this is like, well, what
about if, like what about bad things that could happen?
What if like what about like unintended things? What about

(35:58):
like ways in which this could be harmful to society
that you haven't foreseen. So, because they're not completely stupid,
in order to address that, they bring on a well
dressed or not well dressed, but they bring on like
a friendly British man who kind of kind of reads
as like a like a scientific kind of expert guy.
They bring on a charming British person to like talk
about how they're going to not not destroy the world.

(36:20):
And this is very telling so far. It's it's such
visionary stuff. But as you mentioned early on, with all
big technological advances, there are inever to be going to
be in all sorts of challenges and uncertainties. And I
know you've talked about this a bit already, but people
want to know how we're going to do all this
in a responsible way, and especially that we play our

(36:41):
part in helping to keep people safe and protect their
privacy online. Yeah, that's right. This is incredibly important. The
way I look at it, is that in the past,
the speed that new technologies emerged sometimes left policy makers
and regulators playing catch up. So on the one hand,
companies get accused of charging ahead too quickly, and on
the other tech people feel that progress can't afford to

(37:04):
wait for the slower pace of regulation. And I really
think that it doesn't have to be the case this
time around, because we have years until the metaverse we
envision is fully realized. So this is the start of
the journey, not the end. So that's telling uh that
he's like, we don't need to worry about like we

(37:25):
don't need it. Like it'll be it'll get regulated properly,
it'll be safe enough because it's going to take so
long to figure all this out that surely we will
anticipate and deal with all of the potentially toxic side
effects of this technology ahead of time. Um. And if
you believe that, I would say, take a look at
Facebook's track record with that kind of thing. Um. But

(37:46):
they are smart and having a charming British man do it,
that's the right guy to have in the only aspect
of good casting in this that is the right guy
to have come on and try to allay people's fears
that this will destroy society. You bring you bring a
charming British man in, you know, that's how you do
that kind of thing. Um, that's when I get canceled
for the things I've been doing overseas. Um, I'm going

(38:07):
to hire a British person to defend myself. Do they
make any more comments about like a R glasses or
VR quite a few. I wanted to move on to that.
Um even though yeah, we're so um they talk about
they have a whole section where they're they're talking about
the actual glasses they have. So they announced the number one.
They have a project. The goal, as he repeatedly says,

(38:29):
is to make a quote normal, good looking pair of
glasses that do all this stuff, which is um and
he he does in order as like approve of concept,
he shows us these a R ray bands that actually
look legitimately rad They look like normal at least the
privn't touched a pair of these in my hands. But
the the the videos that are supposed to be these
real products show a pair of what looked like normal

(38:51):
ray bands that you can take pictures and videos with,
You can answer phone calls on, you can do like
video phone calls on the actually that they seem neat
and like they look like normal glasses. Um, and that
is pretty cool. Um. They go kind of pivot from
that to announcing that like they have this new thing,
project nizar um which I looked up what nazarre means

(39:11):
a little bit ago. It's probably dystopian. Uh no, I
think it was just yeah, uh, it's a town or
it's a surf spot, right, it's a place and I
think Portugal where there's like great waves and Mark Zuckerberg
is really into surfing. He plays a surfing game at
one point in this That is one of the most
um embarrassing things. Embarrassing thing because I've seen in my
entire fucking life. Um. But yeah, so Project nazar is

(39:34):
that they're supposed to be like the first true like
VR glasses. So they do the good thing, which is
like here's the real technology, these ray bands and look,
these are pretty neat. Obviously that doesn't come close to
what they're promising. Um. And this whole thing where they
talk about what the glasses, which they say they're making
good progress on, are going to do, we don't ever
see any fucking glasses. Um. Yeah. And and that's because

(39:58):
they're not really close uh to to working yet. That's
the air glasses are gonna be the way to act.
Like if the goal is to integrate digital spaces into
the physical space, I think I think it's a good
goal because what that's gonna do, that's gonna make the
digital space less fake, right, It's injecting that into the
actual real world. So I think that will actually really

(40:20):
help with like dis associate of stuff is because it's
actually in it's actually in the real world as well.
I think that's gonna be wonderful when that gets developed.
And I think the glasses are are definitely going to
be a thing within the next ten to twenty years.
There is ways of like illuminating glass on the side
to make like like what it looks like an image.
This is definitely gonna be a thing that's going to
be possible. Like surveillance and privacy is like the big

(40:44):
big fears for that because we're nowhere close to hacking
the brain enough to feel sensations and like the only
thing I've played a lot of VR, the only thing
that you can feel in VR is fear. That's the
only thing that VR is capable of replicating as as
a feeling. It's like, you can feel terrified and VR
that's that's, that's it. You can't never look like there's

(41:05):
one thing you can feel exhausted game. And I was
doing like bow draws for like four hours, and I
was like, we've we've developed the way to make you
frightened and tired. That is, which is all, by the way,
what Twitter does normally. It's true, all of like all
of like the Resident Evil VR games. Yeah, they're gonna
making you tired and terrified, and that's kind of it.

(41:27):
So we we have to close out. But I want
to do that by playing Mark Zuckerberg lamenting the Internet
that he played a major role in in building as
a way to talk about why we need a metaverse,
because it's kind of funny because we're allowed to build
and use are more tightly controlled than ever, and high
taxes on creative new ideas are stifling. This is not

(41:48):
the way that we were met to use technology. The
metaverse gives us an opportunity, but it's gonna take all
of us creators, develop oper's companies of all sizes together.
We can finally put people at the center of our
technology and deliver an experience where we are present with

(42:09):
each other. Yeah, what what a Google? Like? All of
that's nonsense. Everyone, You're not You're one of the people
who has turned the Internet into an expensive walled garden.
It didn't used to be this way. Then Facebook swooped
in made themselves for free um like integral to all content,
and then started charging those content creators and like sucking

(42:30):
them around and lying to them, which led to the
destruction of a huge number of websites and a tremendous
amount of digital culture. Like your Wyatt feels like a
dead waled garden, and everything you've presented in this video
makes the metaverse feel like a dead waled garden. But
I want to play his last lines in the in
this video because this is him kind of summing up
his vision for the future via the metaverse. And now

(42:52):
it is time to take everything that we've learned and
help build the next chapter. I am dedicating our energy
to this than any other company in the world. And
if this is the future that you want to see,
then I hope that you will join us, because the
future is going to be beyond anything we can imagine.
I agree with that part Mark the future is going

(43:13):
to be beyond what you can imagine. What a gool, yeah,
because you have no im It's just it's just using
trendy tech terms to trick investors into giving them billions
of dollars. That's like the right, that's that's all it
is because all of this, like this like haptic feedback
replicating like human feelings and stuff, that we're nowhere close
to that, and when we do, it's going to be

(43:33):
a dystopian but we're not close to it, and it's
going to be dystopian or it's going to be better
in ways that like we can't yet conceive of um
and then eventually it will be destroyed for profit if
it actually gets cool like the old Internet was. Yeah,
it's yeah, it's it's yeah. But I think but both
this and even a lot like a lot of the

(43:54):
epic stuff just seems Ah, it's just the new way
that tech companies. That's where they think the money vault
is is by using these terms, and they think using
these terms is going to get them lots of extra
investor money because the actual technology is nowhere really close
to this that it's not what people wanted out of
the Internet. Anyway, it absolutely is not. But I don't know,

(44:16):
I think this was important. I think Facebook is important
and has a major impact on the way the Internet
is continuing to evolve. Um, usually in negative ways. But
this is how these people who are doing a lot
of damage view the future. So you should know what
they're looking at and what they anticipate. But I think
I think that there's a kind of optimistic note to

(44:36):
this though, right, was just like, Okay, so we've we've
reached the point where like even like Boris Johnson is
going like, oh god, climate change is coming, right, and
this is the best they've got, right they have they
have nothing, They have nothing, And you know what, I think, like,

(44:59):
what are the only ways we can win is if
we're facing a uniquely incompetent ruling class, and if it's
if the rule, if the if the guy were, if
a guy we have to deal with in order to
like not drown every single whale and like have half
of the world's city is consumed, but the ocean is
Mark Zuckerberg like, we got a shot some smarter people

(45:20):
that are yeah that this is not mind the scenes, right,
Like yeah, um, but I I don't think I think
That's a nice note to end on because it is
it is worth The nice thing about this is how
clearly they don't understand what the future is going to
look like online. Um, they have ways in which they're
trying to direct the future, and aspects of that will

(45:41):
come true, like the VR will succeed in some form
at some point and it will be potentially an unprecedented
surveillance breakthrough that has some unsettling implications and better steps
getting developed a lot of other stuff. I think the
move by Twitter to create like this, like it's called
like like Twitter Space where it's like this like you know,

(46:02):
basically like voice chat room. Like a lot of people
are moving towards this concept where we try to like
inject more like in person interactivity into this virtual framework, right.
Which how this with like with like a clubhouse last
year during during the pandemic where people like watching like
Netflix in the quote same room, right, Like, We're seeing
people try to do this with varying mixed success. But
this is the way tech is is inching. So it

(46:24):
is a good idea to keep your eye on it
because it has a lot of implications for like clevacy
and advertising and all that kind of stuff. We'll continue
to cover aspects of this, talk about the technology, talk
about the surveillance implications, talk about the visions these people have.
But I think this has been these episodes have been
useful and like, here's what Mark thinks is coming, Here's
what Facebook is pouring, like ten billion dollars into it's
dumbest shit. Have a nice day. It could Happen Here

(46:51):
is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
dot com, or check us out on the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or where you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks
for listening.