This is why a good physics education is important... Under certain conditions the standard model includes several spontaneous transformations from eyeballs -> cash. The trick is getting a critical mass of eyeballs for the conversions to be frequent enough to pay the bills.
I think you mean metaphysics?
When you have enough eyeballs they will collapse into a plasma state from their own mass and then you can harvest that into work or electricity then sell that for money
How to invoke unseriousness in humans: mention metaphysics.
> the standard model
I do not think it means what you think it means.
I'm talking about literal eyeballs transmuting to cash as if it's the result of particle physics. I don't think you should read anything more than "its a joke" into my comment.
That's exactly why a good physics education is important
I hope an RPG designer read your joke. I'd love to see a "transmute eyeballs to gold" alchemical recipe show up. Would be hilarious. Especially in an MMORPG where it's crucial to their bottom line to keep players' attention for as long as possible.
Facebook and Instagram showed that eyeballs can be very lucrative . The old web 1.0 sites simply didn't have good ways to monetize it , unlike today. Mobile advertising didn't exist, neither did tracking and big data.
This may sound like a tautology, but those eyeballs were only "lucrative" because they could be converted to money. As the person you were responding to implied.
I think that was always the plan. Eyeballs in the short term, profits in the long term.
I remember people talking about internal rivalries at IBM and Microsoft over user's eyeballs. Every app wants to be the main productivity app., king of the eyeballs!
I bet even the founders of Google didn't even know at first how much eyeballs are worth.
That's an oversimplification of Google's business model vs something like Facebook. Facebook is selling pure eyeballs because their ads are intrusive and unsolicited, with the somewhat flawed assumption that just because someone talked about something, they are keen to buy it. Google is selling purchase intent. When someone specifically asks Google where to find something, they have far higher purchase intent than if they simply talked about it on their page.