Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The metaverse is bullshit

outline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 780 posts

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#401

Post by civilized »

cromka wrote: post #354
Oddskar wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this three times and I'm still not sure what your point is.

That we, "the old folks", just don't get it, limited by having passed our "exploratory" phase and well into "exploitation" phase (something I read here in HN the other day). And they may have a point: after all, "the old folks" 30 years ago were saying the same thing about the Internet, well into 2000s.

Oh come on. Usenet in the 1980s was full of people in their 30s, 40s, and beyond. Sure, some people didn't "get" the internet, but millions of demographically similar people were getting value out of it. That isn't happening, and won't happen, with this metaverse BS. And if it does, attentive people of all ages will see it coming many years in advance.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#402

Post by spacelamb »

bsenftner wrote: post #350
theelous3 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ofc. Nobody thinks he's cool in this world, so he'll just spam "new worlds" until somebody thinks he's cool in one of them.

Can you imagine being Zuck? Super rich for basically creating the global gossip exchange and fraud factory, and he knows this, he knows Facebook is a clusterfuck of misinformation chaos. And he probably knows he is surrounded by yes people... I wonder if he knows he is in a nightmare.

I don't think it's a nightmare because he has choice and a fair amount of power. He could quietly retire comfortably if he wanted to, but instead he's making the play to reorient his company around a virtual-reality space. That sounds like a motivated person, versus someone trapped and going through the motions.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#403

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

smorgusofborg wrote: post #367
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SL was great and a lot of fun. It just had a rather clunky user interface, and probably other issues (nobody said it was easy). Nevertheless there was an explosion of creativity for a while. Nowadays Minecraft and Roblox seem to fill similar niches. That many attempts failed doesn't mean all attempts will fail. You may not know this, but there were other social networks before Facebook. There was Orkut and MySpace, f…

> Yet Facebook now is a billion dollar company. Yet the social network as a concept that moved from one monopoly to another is a fad that is dieing. It certainly seems likely companies that have gotten their start from VR will succeed in collecting a lot of money and possibly diversifying successfully, but will VR end up being more useful than a FB style social site? The basic problem with VR for me is that second li…

I'm not rooting for Facebook, I just take issue with the takes of people claiming the concept of metaversum is bullshit, many of whom have clearly never even played any of the modern games like Fortnite or Roblox, or tried a Quest.

Nobody would be happier than me if a decentralized alternative to social networks like Facebook could be established.

I am not really seeing it as a given, though - the big companies usually offer more convenience and the masses fall for it. And for content creators it makes more sense to go to where the masses are. I have looked into the Fediverse but it seems there is hardly anything there.

I don't know if VR will replace classic web sites like Facebook. An issue in SL, for me at least, was that it was too difficult to create a good looking avatar. In Facebook you don't have to bother with web design. Not sure how to translate that to VR - everybody having a standard living hexagon for representation probably won't work.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#404

Post by unknownOrigin »

Oddskar wrote: post #341
wruza wrote: post #171

This thread feels like 1860's consilium on what future will look like 500 years later. The shape of the metaverse will be formed by a new generation, not by older guys (and not by fortnite addicts who play by the rules of the former) who know nothing better than drive a fancy “car” on the “road”, as if roads or a concept of physical movement or the euclidean rule would still be there for common use and not for museum…

I read this three times and I'm still not sure what your point is.

Astroturfing Meta

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#405

Post by corin_ »

bsenftner wrote: post #347
theshadowknows wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there’s the newest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. People really love the vr mode and the videos I’ve seen (I’ve never played it) already look pretty darn realistic and engaging.

And people who own it say "yeah, it looks amazing! But it is the same fucking thing it was 20 years ago. But it looks amazing now."

Is that a criticism, or a reflection of the fact that 20 years ago it was already pretty much perfect except for graphics limitations of the tech of the time? (Genuine question as someone who tried it as a kid 20 years ago but doesn't remember much about it.)

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#406

Post by Tangokat »

The internet was text. Then came pictures. Then came video. Then came live streaming. Is it really so far fetched to think that the next phase is 3d?

It makes sense to me. I don't think we have any idea how it's going to turn out though. Certainly the 30+ people here do not understand why teens buy Fortnite hats or have fun in Roblox. The lines between the "real" world and the digital world are blurring and will continue to merge as technology increasingly allows for more and more compelling digital experiences.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#407

Post by DeusExMachina »

edanm wrote: post #327
DeusExMachina wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not find much data but it seems that the finale of Games of thrones had 19 million viewers [1], while the books sold 90 million copies [2]. Since I guess the latter are cumulative over all the five books, it looks like books and series have a similar performance. Looking at something similar, the Lord of the Rings had around 80-90 million viewers (very rough estimation from the global box office [3]) while th…

> I could not find much data but it seems that the finale of Games of thrones had 19 million viewers [1] Umm isn't that just on the date it airs? That's like comparing it to the people who read the book in the first month (year?). There is no way as many people read the books as saw the tv show. I would bet it's at least one order of magnitude difference, if not possibly more.

Since your premise is that there is no way to know, your speculation is then as (in)valid as any other.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#408

Post by corin_ »

vbezhenar wrote: post #190
noduerme wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with manual transmissions. But watching my gf obsess over yeast cultures, I would say same about baking bread. Some people love a challenge; other people don't get it.

Manual transmission is not a challenge. It quickly blurs into muscle memory and you don’t really notice it.

It becomes second nature, but most people find it a bit of a challenge to learn - obviously not a particularly huge or impossible one considering how common it is for people to get the hang of it in tens of hours, but still a challenge compared to just learning to drive in an automatic.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#409

Post by dada78641 »

wokwokwok wrote: post #43

the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry's very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we've never seen before The tech landscape is littered with failed attempts, but we have here two very technically successful companies, Epic and Facebook, both trying to re-imagine the internet as something different. I'm not sure I'd write them of…

> One thing that you can always bet on: Things change.

Change is not inevitable. Every change has to justify its own existence.

Look at your computer. You're likely using a keyboard and a mouse. How long have they existed with no fundamental change to how they operate?

Sure, there are other devices for interacting with computers, and smartphones are totally different beasts altogether, but nothing has supplanted the basic keyboard and mouse setup for desktop computers because they work perfectly well and there isn't really much you can improve about them. Everything else that has been designed is only for niche use.

The promise here is that the Metaverse will be the next evolution of the internet, rather than just an expensive toy for a few rich people. It's supposed to be better than the internet, and so much so that we'll all want to be part of it. It's completely irrational to shrug and turn off your brain and say it's pointless to reason about claims like this because it's "inevitable" because things "change" all the time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#410

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

elorant wrote: post #380
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works a bit like Second Life, the creator of a thing (like a car) can define the behavior of the car. So people wanting to put their car into the metaverse presumably could expend as much effort on it as they want. I mean now if they simulate a car for Grand Turismo, they also use some kind of API (Unity Engine, OpenGL, whatever) to encode the behavior. Likewise a metaverse will have some API which you can use…

Facebook's apis have a reputation for being garbage with poor documentation and frequent functionality issues.

That's a different argument then claiming a metaversum can not work out of principle.

People have managed to create good apps for the Oculus Quest, too.

Post reply on HN