Metaverse occurs without permission from Meta

Despite Facebook's new name, focus, and billions in investment, the metaverse will emerge radically different from its vision.

By changing the name of its parent company to Meta, Facebook was putting a stake in the land: it would be the symbol of the evolution of the Internet, the metaverse. Whether we like it or not.

According to Meta, the metaverse is "a collection of digital spaces for socializing, learning, playing, and more." Its first real attempt came in the form of Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality universe so lifeless and devoid of content that people wonder if the metaverse is a step forward or backward.

Fortunately, it won't matter.

The metaverse, a term long before Facebook existed, is happening. Its potential and appeal are in existing places – games like Fortnite, platforms like Roblox, and online hubs like Discord. There will be no launch of the metaverse, no switch that activates it. You have experienced parts of it, whether you realize it or not. More and more, your real identity has become mixed with your digital identity. IRL to URL, and vice versa.

The metaverse is not what you read

Obviously the metaverse is not what Meta says it is.

"A collection of digital spaces for socializing, learning, playing, and more" accurately describes today's apps and games, but this simplified definition has made the term "metaverse" synonymous with stuffy software like Horizon Worlds, a world Painfully unimaginative 3D with early 2000s graphics and plenty of space for ads.

Empty 3D world with large digital billboards with ads on it, digital art, Y2K aesthetic. Source: DALL-E

For those unfamiliar with writer Matthew Ball's precise definition, the metaverse can be thought of as a shift in how we perceive and experience our digital lives - not a 3D world, but a shift to a more immersive, simultaneous and representative relationship between our physical and digital selves. The metaverse blurs the line between the real and the digital, an evolution of c...