Galloway on The Zuckerverse

With all the internet billionaires jumping on the next big thing called the Metaverse, it might be time to stop and take note of their ‘accomplishments’ so far, argues Scott Galloway in his latest newsletter, predicting that “The Zuckerverse Is the Biggest Tech Fail of 2022”.

It certainly looks like they are giving up on solving the problems of the current web and social media, and focus on creating a new and improved version. But why would we trust them to lead us into a new, unknown world? And design a Metaverse experience based on their beliefs and insights? And while ‘The Metaverse’ doesn’t exist, it might be better to stay far away from a virtual world envisioned by the person whose company has brought good but undoubtedly also much harm to the world.

What’s more precarious, however, is the notion that we’d trust Zuckerberg to be our shepherd in this new world after he chipped away at the self-esteem of our children and harvested, leaked, and sold the personal data of more people than the population of Earth’s southern hemisphere plus India. The mortal who controls the envisioned metaverse would be rendered a god, and the Zuck is a first-ballot hall of fame candidate for people who deserve dramatically less power.

There are already several metaverses. The Appleverse boasts several thousand metaverses sitting on top of one of the most accretive business models in history (the app store) with a portal (Airpods) that ships 40 times as many orders as the Meta portal (Oculus). Apple has already submitted a patent to install a camera in its Airpods and is even experimenting with temperature sensors for health monitoring. The Airpods business alone generates roughly $12 billion a year, more than Shopify, Snap, and Twitter combined.

More reasons Facebook’s VR headset is uniquely positioned to fail: It causes motion sickness and skin rashes and prevents other people from having sex with you. It also doesn’t pass the Crocs Test. Whenever a product seems to be garnering a degree of hype incommensurate with its value, ask yourself: Do people like it more than a rubber clog with holes in it? Answer: Not even close. The firm that will realize (some of) this meta vision with what may be the biggest tech IPO of 2022 is Epic Games. Epic is also the best/worst acquisition for Meta/society that should not happen if the DOJ still has a pulse.

2022 Predictions

Every generation comes with new ideas and ideals, and it might be time for the current internet billionaires to step aside and leave the metaverse to the next group of inventors. If they can even solve some of the persistent and harmful issues, then we might just see a better version on the horizon.