Throughout the presentation, Zuckerberg is fixated on the notions of “presence” and “shared sense of space,” as if the metaverse could somehow provide us with a way of logging off the Internet rather than sucking us deeper in. “You’ll feel like you’re right there together in a different world, not just on your computer by yourself.” The metaverse will be “more natural and vivid,” he continues. “Your devices won’t be the focal point of your attention anymore,” he says, never mind the fact that Facebook and Instagram are some of the addictive targets of our attention on our devices. The metaverse will be less obtrusive and more organic than the current version of the Internet, he explains, in the relentlessly sunny tone of a pharmaceutical sales rep. With waxen skin and glazed eyes, clothed in a signature dark long-sleeved shirt and jeans, Zuckerberg seems little more human than the replicant avatar he uses to demonstrate immersive 3-D experiences. Tightly composed and robotically scripted, Zuckerberg’s video sounds more like a cultic prophecy than a product announcement. He is focussed on a newer, better world, a world in which the insidious problems caused by Facebook are remedied with a simple solution: even more Facebook-sorry, Meta-in every aspect of our lives. Zuckerberg seems ready to leave all of his company’s pesky issues behind, like relics of an already distant and irrelevant history. Zuckerberg’s pivot to the metaverse is a useful distraction from an unflattering press cycle, of course, but it signals a much longer-term strategy, as well.
According to the leaked files known as the Facebook Papers, Facebook has long been aware of the damage that its social networks cause, from the way Instagram intensifies teen-agers’ body-image problems to how Facebook accelerates disinformation and ideological extremism via its algorithmic News Feed. Zuckerberg’s optimistic tone, as he toured this fantasy world, stood in stark contrast to all that his company was going through in the real one.
Users will be able to communicate and navigate “across different layers of reality,” he continued, watching a concert with a friend in virtual reality or collaborating with the hologram of a colleague across a desk. The metaverse, which Zuckerberg has previously touted in earnings calls, will be “an embodied Internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it,” he said, as he paced through a series of palatial interiors, ambiguously real or rendered. Last Thursday, the same day that Facebook’s parent company rebranded under the new name Meta, Mark Zuckerberg gave a meandering tour of the metaverse-the as-yet-hypothetical next phase of the Internet, a unified space that mingles digital and physical reality-in a video presentation for the Facebook Connect 2021 event.
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