Lessons From 19 Years in the Metaverse

social-media platforms now create this real distance, in part by being text-heavy. And that distance can lead you to say things or do things you’d never do in the physical world. It also lowers the bar for engagement, which means that firing off a shitty tweet is easy and people do it without thinking. But there’s so much engagement and visibility ... See more

There’s a difference with a virtual-world space, because in virtual worlds you actually get a sense of immersion and a sense of interacting with a real person in another part of the world. It creates real human engagement in a way that social media, which creates this disorienting illusion of engagement, does not.

Facebook and Twitter actually do a better job keeping people hooked on them than the metaverse, at least right now.

With the Web3 would-be metaverses, I think they put the cart before the horse. If you put out a speculative offering, like a new coin that gains people entry into a digital world, people might show up, but I don’t know why they’d necessarily keep coming back. On a basic philosophical, human level, a thing is only valuable if a group decides it is. ... See more

these worlds aren’t antisocial or necessarily escapes from “the real world.” They’re just a different part of the real world.

The virtual-world experience is an interaction point, but it’s tightly integrated to real life. That’s what we’re going to see more with this metaverse generation, if we want to call it that. They are growing up with those experiences. They are the ones who’ll create whatever comes after traditional social media, not the brands.

What Gen Z is doing in metaverse spaces is what the early Second Life users [were] doing, but on a far, far more massive scale. They don’t consider re-creating the real-life tropes to be as meaningful as adults and brands do.

People focusing on the ways to turn a quick buck will miss the opportunity.