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Comment by aahortwwy | Hacker News Reader

> Reddit can fit nicely into the metaverse

Why do people keep talking about the metaverse like it already exists and is a huge part of our future?

It's vaporware right now.

Are we all so susceptible to marketing that we've just accepted that if Meta is going all-in on a thing it must be both real and a guaranteed win?

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Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Its nothing more than a way for a few companies to monetize a few extra things and become gate keepers to things that have neither on the internet.

The metaverse is basically what the internet would be if it was invented today

> Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Hey, you gotta give it more credit than that

It's the internet but you'll never be able to use an adblocker!

I think it's time to update the "cloud to butt" plugins...

"With the metaverse, we're no longer restricted by our physical location, but we can all live in the butt."

- Mark Zuckerberg

What is this a reference to?

Back when cloud was the big new buzzword several browser extensions/bookmarklets were created to replace occurrences of "cloud" with "butt".

1_player's comment should have replaced both occurrences of metaverse with butt though.

https://github.com/DaveRandom/cloud-to-butt-mozilla

> Whenever I hear the word metaverse. I just replace it with the word "internet".

Does there happen to be a browser extension to automate this?

Yeah i do this as well. 100%.

I wish facebook had never existed we wouldn't have to deal with this garbage. I'd be curious what would have filled the gap.

It's a hip marketing term that caught on like Hyperloop did, suddenly every time public transit was mentioned, so was Hyperloop.

But don't be fooled. It's Facebook. Don't be fooled by its rename either, it's still Facebook.

1000% this. "Metaverse" is just fancy re-branding of "Facebook but with VR". They want you to buy an Oculus and go to their internet property when and if people start interacting with the internet via VR, just like you buy a phone and go to their internet property. But it's just Facebook. It's going to be an app you run (or site you visit) on whatever hardware you happen to use to connect.

Meta has made a full announcement of vaporware, but the metaverse is specifically not Meta's property, nor do they get to define what the metaverse is/will become.

In that sense, I agree with you we should ignore the marketing, and I also think we should talk about the metaverse as we talk about the web, not as some rigid concept, but more a vague idea of a thing in VR.

> Metaverse as we talk about the web, not as some rigid concept, but more a vague idea of a thing in VR.

Ah I see so it's like a space, but on the web. Like some sort of a cyber...

Anyone talking about this "metaverse" like it is anything other than the normal internet we already have (which is equally amazing, btw) would have to have either created or fallen for some sort of marketing material.

Cyberverse! Where you go to ... cyber. Welp, that had a, uh, certain connotation back in the early 2000s.

I'm sure the metaverse will be 90% ERP channels within a month.

ERP as in Enterprise Resource Planning?

My bet is that it becomes like what Clubhouse is now: a home for all kinds of whackjobs, hustle culture bros, "become wealthy" gurus and recruitment channels for MLMs and political extremists.

I believe you were being facetious, but just in case...

ERP can also mean Erotic Role Playing.

There will not be "a metaverse" or "the metaverse"

They may be some competing metaverses, I doubt one will win out (I kind of doubt any will do well)

my thought exactly. We've had virtual worlds and communities as long as we've had the internet, and the idea of carrying "stuff" from one to the other never worked out.

So my bet is that there will never be The Metaverse just like there never was The Forum, The MMORPG, The MUD.

We may still have useful/fun stuff in specific VR worlds, of course.

But interestingly there is The Internet. But perhaps because that exists, there's no need for the interconnectedness promised by the other things because the internet already delivers it. Or perhaps the future holds multiple internets (especially with political regions doing their best to balkanize the legality of various uses of the internet)?

There was an attempt to connect MUDs together using a protocol called InterMUD, but it never really caught on.

It would be hilarious if this became the next "dropbox" comment. I'm placing my stake here just in case! :)

Interestingly we don't yet have a player coming it with a "we made it cheap and simple" solution.

Even Meta's Quest hardware is still not at that point, and the ecosystem is pretty small. I feel like we're not even at the "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad." stage yet.

Good point. There have been attempts by PC manufacturers to make VR headsets. We need a Windows like OS to make this possible I suppose.

Why wouldn't one win out? There were multiple competing "internets" and now there is the one.

There are some people that consider various aspects of the Oculus and Vive ecosystems to be the metaverse. Some people think The Sandbox and Decentrland are metaverses. There are others, and they're all here now. So, I guess it's a matter of opinion whether you believe any of these can be considered a metaverse.

It does exist in the form of Roblox :)

Roblox could be considered a metaverse, sure[0], but the metaverse implies a ubiquitousness that no offering so far has achieved.

[0] And, honestly, I see Meta's play here as the Google Plus to Roblox's Facebook.

> ubiquitousness that no offering so far has achieved.

The internet does

Since we’re talking about Reddit, my take is that Roblox is Digg and Rec Room (which is VR-native and has much better tech even though it currently has lower user numbers) will end up being the “Reddit” of the space.

You may be right. I hated how ugly and dorky Reddit was compared to digg, but then digg self destructed and now I’m on Reddit. Recroom is like that, it’s annoying it has a terrible interface, it is a giant pain to get a group together to play, the audio is janky to get working right, and then when you finally get to your game it’s almost impossible to play on the same team.

Then after every match I have to spend time opening up some kind of gift that I have no use for. All the while 13 year old kids are being annoying yelling and whining. It’s a pretty rough experience right now.

I suggest giving the oculus rift 2 a try. It is the farthest thing from vaporware.

Besides most people use a loose definition of metaverse that includes things like gaming (Minecraft, roblox), social media, our phones, etc. which are all multi-billion dollar industries already.

And there's the "genius" of their rebrand. By the loose definition the metaverse already exists, so Facebook (a company focused on building software that helps connect people via the Internet) rebranded to Meta (a company focused on building software that helps connect people via... gaming, social media, phones, and... the Internet? -- all of which they were already doing). If what you're setting out to build already exists, you can't fail.

But Mark Zuckerberg doesn't use the loose definition, as I mentioned in another comment. He talks about quite a clear vision of a world in which VR/AR technologies have permeated society and are part of everyone's everyday lives. That vision doesn't exist yet, it's a long way from being realized, and yet people (like the commenter I originally responded to) keep referencing it as if it already exists, is successful, and important. And it's none of those three things yet.

metaverse is whatever anyone wants it to be.

You are being too literal.