Real Things Now

People want to experience real things now more than ever and—most importantly—they want to experience real people. Zuckerberg, as his trip to the Apex arena in Las Vegas illustrates so perfectly, doesn’t seem to want to be around real people. In fact, it appears that he’s kind of afraid of them. I’m sure if Meta would have released the metaverse in the height of the pandemic, it would have been a more important advancement than Zoom. But as the packed restaurants and full-to-the-brim hotels and overbooked flights illustrate, we are no longer in the height of a pandemic.

Facebook has never designed a successful hardware product, and frankly, looking at their apps and websites, their sense of design is pretty awful. It’s not going to just be whoever was first in the field; it’s going to be whoever is the first to offer a decent experience in the field.

“Mark Has Surrounded Himself With Sycophants”: Zuckerberg’s Big Bet on the Metaverse Is Backfiring