You're not alone - not even Meta's staff know what the Metaverse is
Which given they're sinking billions into this, it doesn't bode well.
Ahhh, social media. Love it or hate it, it’s seemingly here to stay.
But in what form, I hear you cry?
Well, if Darth Zuckerberg has his way, we’ll all be living in some form of dystopian virtual reality 24/7, interacting with the cartoon-esque digital avatars of the people we once knew, whilst flying around on digital magic carpets..
And therein lies the problem.
Let’s take a step back for a moment shall we? I think we need to regroup.
Now, fear not, I’m not going to wax too lyrical on this next part, because we all know how social media has developed & evolved over the last nearly 20 years. And I for one don’t want to dwell on it all too hard - because as I get older, I’ve grown rather weary of it all. And to be honest, more often than not, I tend to these days see social media as mostly a force for ill, rather than good. (Especially when it comes to certain platform’s CEOs.)
But let’s just take a momentary step back to reflect, and really understand what social media was meant to achieve.
It was meant to be a way to reinforce the notion of community, making and maintaining connections with our friends, colleagues, family, albeit in ‘the interwebs’, when maybe it isn’t as feasible or practical to see each other as often as we would like. Our digital selves via these platforms were intended for us to be able to chat, write, and keep those connections alive and well when it wasn’t possible face to face.
This is something that was especially important during the whole lockdown periods through Covid, albeit being a fairly extreme instance which we had no control over! But at least it meant we were still able to be with the people we love, even if we couldn’t in person for months on end.
So I totally accept that social networking can absolutely be a force for good, and has served many people well, to a degree all of us during that particular time in recent human history.
But what about the rest of the time?
There are more and more cases of social media impacting people, body and mental health issues becoming more prevalent as younger and younger kids are being exposed to the hyper-fantastical lives that are on display on Instagram. Something which is in truth completely fictitious, given how social media is - encouraging us to only display our ‘best’ side, which is essentially misrepresenting reality.
( I did see one stat from a news article a few years ago that stated how Kim Kardashian would take upwards of 300 selfies before settling on the one to post on Instagram. With this sort of thing being seen as ‘normal’, especially with her following, it’s no wonder this mentality is being replicated - and why it contributes to the many issues we see today).
I have no problem with social media content that is aspirational in nature - as long as it’s done sensibly. However, ultimately, social media does have very much a dark side that we need to be aware of, and that requires adequate safeguarding for those who are more susceptible to its negative effects.
So where is social media likely to head in the future?
For Facebook, they are betting big on us all living in the CGI digital dystopia they call the ‘Metaverse’. A virtual reality oriented flavour of social media where you can hang out in various locations, replicated from the digital world, where you can meet friends, chat, chill, network, who knows.
The problem is, not even its own employees A) even know what the Metaverse truly is, and B), feel inclined to hang out in it themselves!
In a recent article in The Verge, the Metaverse’s social network platform, named Horizon Worlds, is so buggy and lacking in quality, that even the people building it aren’t using it that much. They’re apparently now in a ‘quality lockdown’ for the remainder of this year at least to try and sort out its not-particularly-short list of all the quality issues that need to be addressed.
Namely the fact that all the graphics that have been proffered by Zuckerberg and his team look completely laughable. For a company that has invested billions of dollars into this venture - I repeat - billions - you’d think they’d be making it look enticing to be a part of?
The graphics have been universally mocked by social media users all over the globe, for their lack of detail, low resolution, and dated appearance. Honestly, if you ever used to play the Nintendo Wii back in the day, circa 2005, the Wii had better looking graphics. By far.
Comedy-inducing graphics aside, the one thing that makes social media so popular with the masses, generally speaking, is its ease of access, and use. Otherwise we wouldn’t use it.
Facebook have now announced on their site that they are having to go down the route of creating online courses to explain what the Metaverse is. If their own employees don’t know what it is, how are we meant to know, or be remotely bothered to find out more?
And to help businesses, creators and others prepare for the metaverse, we’ve partnered with Coursera to develop a free course: “What is the metaverse?”
There are also others that have amusingly mocked Zuckerberg’s own Metaverse avatar, which many have noted make him look more human than he does in real life!
I know I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of Facebook, or indeed its founder. But more fundamentally is the fact that not many people see this grand plan of the Metaverse being remotely sustainable. Virtual Reality has been tried again and again, and failed again and again, by many people over the years, it’s simply never really caught on. So why will this end up being different?
For me, it’s just yet another platform that will see the concept of social media descending further into its dark self-dug abyss, making fewer and fewer people (especially today’s youth) as keen on retaining their connections on a human, in-person level. Delving deeper and deeper into the digital rabbit hole.
By predominantly connecting with people in avatar form, it just echoes every dystopian book or science fiction film you’ve ever seen. Turning us all into a Dorian Grey character for the modern age. Our digital selves looking all young, sleek and fabulous, while we sit withering behind our screens as every year ticks by.
As any new platform or tool like this emerges, it makes our need to be vigilant ever more important, that we ourselves, let alone the more vulnerable, be enticed into something that could end up doing far more harm than good.
It’s a jolly newsletter this, isn’t it?
Stuff I Found That You Should Be Aware Of
Do you ever find that you sometimes get inundated with unwanted emails, and have no idea how they may have got your details?
If you’re a Gmail user, then help is at hand. Because one user recently posted a YouTube short so you can easily tell where random companies obtain your email address, enabling you to track exactly where this ‘leak’ has come from, if your data is being sold without your knowledge.
Seemingly, within Gmail, you actually have unlimited addresses at your disposal. So when you’re signing up for various websites or newsletters, you can create a dedicated email address just for that platform, simply by adding a ‘+’ after your username, and before the ‘@’. So if you were signing up for Facebook, like in the video below, you can have youremailusername+facebook (followed by @ gmail . com) in the usual way, and that specific address still lands in your Gmail inbox as normal.
So if you end up getting any spam emails to that specific email you create from any 3rd party, you’ll know exactly where that company got it from!
Quite a handy little Gmail hack right there.
Removing Unwanted Elements From Images
A free tool that you might find useful to have in your arsenal is Magic Eraser.
Taken a great photo of you and your dog, but found there’s an ugly trash bin in the background? Get rid of the bin using Magic Eraser.
It’s a website that has a funky Photoshop-esque tool that allows you to remove unwanted elements from an image, simply by painting over it. It’ll then use artificial intelligence to analyse the image and replace it with what’s in the background, making it cleaner - all in one click.
There’s a free tier, but it does downscale the image slightly. To combat that, it does require a paid account. But if you’re just needing it for something to post on social media etc, then it should be more than good enough.
I know this edition has been a little bit on the doom and gloom scale! Thanks for sticking with it! Fear not, the next edition will be much more jolly!