The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#531

Post by JKCalhoun » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

emilsedgh wrote: post #305

Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's…

> Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation.

Ha ha, so, in fact, bullshit.

I'm so happy someone called it out. Being a developer, tech-savvy person, I should be all into BitCoin, VR, meta ... but I have recoiled from more or less the last decade of crap (including, I might add, "social" and maybe even phones — although they are great for navigating).

Maybe I am just getting old (that is true) or maybe this is in fact a load of bullshit: just Big-Internet trying to make "meta" a thing.

Pass.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#532

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

JohnAaronNelson wrote: post #486

mox111 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is forcing us to use this tech. If we all happened to agree that it was annoying or "super weird" then we would just opt out. Fact is, that for now it feels valuable enough for us to keep using it (more so for social 'hangouts' than for things like stand-ups, which we still do via Zoom and where we can be as authentic and vulnerable as we like)

How many people participate? Doesn’t seem like it would scale outside a small group. Once you get past that size, it becomes a clique and thus corrosive to team building. A small group will have a wonderful time, everyone else will resent them. The company will then crumble or become something different entirely

voice calls don't scale to beyond a few people either

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#533

Post by tjpnz » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

melomal wrote: post #468

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

Remember Clubhouse? The $1bn Unicorn? Basically defunct now because people just defaulted back to passive aggressive typing.

Or people just tired of all the snobs and pseudo intellectuals that had infested the platform and went back to their podcasts?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#534

Post by 2sk21 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

binbag wrote: post #470

This article nails it. Particularly the part where the author reminds us that Gibson's cyberspace and Stephenson's metaverse were both DYStopias run by and for massive evil corporations. It's like they are trying to make that awful future a reality.

Indeed! I wonder why more people don't see the equivalence between L. Bob Rife and Zuckerberg.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#535

Post by 0235005 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

It is a good idea (the metaverse) but you can not take this shift seariously because they are trying to reflect the bad press of the whistleblowers of the last weeks.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#536

Post by nobleach » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #231

mlindner wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a much younger cousin who's in their teens. Teens of today prefer text messaging because they don't have to show their face. Even when my cousins video chat they don't like to show their face and will aim the camera in other directions despite being in video chat.

I feel nobody “likes” video chat beyond small children and grandparents- I know I always endeavor to have connection issues.

This is because while we chat with people in-person, we're not as aware that people are looking at us. We feel more free to react with body language, or expression. We can interrupt without the awkward, "Oh, I'm sorry, you go first". The communication via Zoom/Google is very synchronous. It's so unnatural to the point that most hate it. I agree, my mom loves seeing my kids on video though.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#537

Post by orasis » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

emilsedgh wrote: post #305

Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's…

Sorry, have you seen their profits? Facebook is not going away any time soon.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#538

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

axby wrote: post #496

dandotway wrote: post #71

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

While ultimately text content will always have a place, I do worry that video content could become way more popular, and text content much less so: simply because advertisers have a big incentive to push video content (bigger ads, more front and centre), and content producers are usually going to cater to the advertisers (unless people start paying for content more often). I don't see the appeal of TikTok (though I h…

>And the algorithms are ultimately going to optimize for profit, and not "quality content" or even "content that isn't harmful".

If people value quality content, quality content will be rewarded. If people don't care it won't. Some people just want to have a laugh and don't care about the production value of the video.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#539

Post by redisman » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:50 PM UTC

pram wrote: post #216

silvestrov wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results They were successful with one thing. Now they are talking about something else. Why shouldn't "MetaVerse" be compared to the insane optimism of AI in the 1980'ies? Something that seemed just around the corner, but never arrived. It's like Thorium reactors: half the people think it's the next great thing, the other half thinks it will never come into production.

Successful with a huge asterisk, considering Fortnite was completely dead until they tacked on the Battlegrounds clone.

I don’t understand why would that be an asterisk. Anyway they have the multiplayer game with the biggest reach (Fortnite) and they develop the premier game engine Unreal. I don’t see why they wouldn’t be in a good position to make a play in this space.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#540

Post by gfodor » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #411

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…

> The shape of the metaverse will be formed by a new generation Even this begs the question. Why do people take it as a given that there will be a "metaverse"? I mean, personally, I think that a genuinely interoperable, decentralized VR/AR infrastructure would be pretty neat—I have no idea if it would solve any specific real-world problems, but "decentralized and interoperable" is a world better than the systems we'v…

The idea of a metaverse of some form or another falls out as a consequence of an assumption that there will be devices people wear that allow software to fully override their visual and auditory experience. These kinds of devices in their most rudimentary form have already arrived for experiences that do not incorporate the physical world (or other people in the physical world), but the ones that fully "close the loop" on physical reality being incorporated into the rendering pipeline will arrive in 2022.

There are no great incentives for Meta or whoever to make their vision of the metaverse align with the openness of the web or Internet, other than perhaps a desire by their leader to do something good for the world to cement his legacy. So this is why it is important smart people work on providing alternative visions, as oppose to writing off the entire thing while the future arrives and we're left subject to corporations because the nay-sayers didn't understand what was about to happen. (See also: the iPhone)