The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#541

Post by ncallaway » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:53 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #504

justapassenger wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s why text based games dominated the world and no one is playing 3D games?

How did you conflate communication between people with entertainment?

> 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 many more "forward looking visionary" startups.

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#542

Post by axby » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:55 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…

To clarify my comment: obviously text will never be "obsolete". But I worry that some day when you search for something like "how do you reverse a linked list", the most popular results will no longer be well thought out articles, perhaps with good use of pictures, and maybe animations when necessary. Perhaps in the future the most popular results could be a video, perhaps also well done, but advertised with clickbait and constant "like and subscribe" and "sponsored by ".

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#543

Post by redisman » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #100

redisman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re seeing only the first iteration of NFTs. Gaming can be interesting. Like if WoW had some unique Legendaries in NFT form I think that would be interesting and lucrative. I’m not sure if the incentive is there for existing games because you’re giving away control of the economy. But for upstarts they can use this as a way to get players to try their game instead since you could maybe sell some of the items for re…

What on earth does the NFT part add here? WoW can add unique, auctionable items at any time using their existing tech. It's already a centralised platform, so decentrilisation doesn't add much...

You could sell your item in a shady alley for money/drugs instead of through the developers marketplace for their in-game currency.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#544

Post by quesera » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 3:59 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #360

hansel_der wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not to dispute your point, but netflix is a library

Uh, no? A library lends out books/media to people at no cost. How is Netflix, a publicly traded for-profit company, anything like a non-profit, usually government-owned library?

Being a library has nothing to do with being non-profit or government-run.

The first libraries were private. Sometimes they were opened to fee-paying members. Netflix is a library.

Public libraries are the "new" thing. But not the only thing.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#545

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:01 PM UTC

finebalance wrote: post #187

kingkawn wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After how it ended I’d argue that they are way less popular now than any of the books

It's kind of astounding how rapidly the series has disappeared from the mainstream. Couldn't have bungled it up worse had they tried.

its like Disney Star Wars - even if you like star wars, knowing how badly it's been bungled makes putting the time into watching it again or being excited about it seem like waste of effort. The payoff isn't there.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#546

Post by am_lu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

DeusExMachina wrote: post #227

fredophile wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear. How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.

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…

19 million counted legal viewers. Myself and everyone I know just torrented it.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#547

Post by axby » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:05 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #538

axby wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope so, and perhaps to some extent quality content always will be rewarded in some circles of the internet. But I worry about the vast majority just falling prey to whatever is most convenient. Maybe it will always be possible to have "traditional" websites, but if only something like 0.1% of the population visits them, and the rest just mindlessly scroll through their Facebook feed or whatever the "metaverse" is supposed to be, then that seems like a problem.

I have never tried to make money producing content on the internet. But I have found a few good content producers who make podcasts and post them to YouTube. I wish that they would also post transcripts and have an RSS feed, but they don't really have any incentive to do that. And I can't blame them: I don't think I would really pay any extra for it. And unless there are better content producers who show up and do those things, I'll probably still keep watching the same podcasts on YouTube.

So I am concerned that all the best content producers just doing whatever will make them money, and:

* ultimately they will probably produce content and host it with a big company.

* And that big company will probably do whatever it can to maximize profits

* (and presumably content providers will typically favour the company that pays them the best).

* And I worry that video content can make way, way more money than text, at least for certain content types.

Certainly I'm probably overstating the issues, but I think there's some truth to this. Look at what happens when you look up cooking recipes on the internet: you almost always get a big article and a bunch of garbage that no one wants. I think I read somewhere that they do that because a recipe can't be copyrighted without an article. If that's true, why isn't there a nice clean recipe site that doesn't have all the garbage in it? Perhaps even with a nifty database where I can filter based on ingredients and stuff that I have? I think the answer is that (#1) I don't look for new recipes that often, and (#2) I am willing to tolerate skimming through some garbage on the rare occasions that I do.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#548

Post by ProjectArcturis » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

alternatetwo wrote: post #497

abakker wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The movie is missing so much of the detail that made the book great, though. I agree, incomparable, really. IMO, the best movies are NOT adaptations.

The best adaptations are short stories, like Predestination, from All you zombies. They also didn't meddle with the logic there, since the writers already found it perfect.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to do a faithful 100-minute adaptation of a 50-page story than a 300-page book.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#549

Post by unixbeard1337 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #529

Oddskar wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you recognize that it doesn't actually have to be a point to it, though? As long as you can spellbind investors there doesn't actually need to be something useful that's build at the end of the day. "Crypto" is a good example of this. A lot of the products and services that were build using Blockchain could just have used a normal RDBMS.

Sure, no doubt. But the arguments fielded on HN as to why these various technologies are dead ends and will implode once people become rational are weak. They're usually from people who literally have never used the technology (or, used it many years ago.) At best, they have, don't get it (which is fine) but then go on to make the leap that since they didn't get anything out of it, the whole thing is a house of cards…

>This is not something to ignore and dismiss, unless you think Zuck is a complete idiot.

Well...

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#550

Post by am_lu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 4:09 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.

clubhouse has some unique market niches. Japanese ex-pat community, not really young ladies talking too each other around the world. Source: mrs wife, she has some "friends" around, listens it a lot, sometimes chats, sometimes gets little parcels sent from somewhere (Germany, Israel, Russia), some biscuits or local snacks inside.