I’ve seen this image a few times on tumblr; the most recent story I’ve seen which included it is very satisfying.
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So… buy?
“I vish zer vaz a word to describe za pleasure I feel off viewing your misfortune”
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Well, the good news is that front-line workers like grocery baggers are in demand and getting $15/hr in some places. Good luck, Zuck. 
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What do AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace and Facebook have in common?
Hopefully, we’re about to find out.
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How is AOL doing these days 
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Well, for some definitions of “value”, anyway.
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AOL’s market cap at its height was maybe $200bn? Not more than $400bn in today’s money. Facebook’s wipeout, at least in terms of share value, is bigger.
It hasn’t sunk in because a lot of people think it will recover once the current bout of bad news goes away. Which it might, but it still needs a new business and it doesn’t have one, and there’ll be no shortage of new bad news.
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Who would have thought that misinformation and magicians making videos of white women commiting food crimes would turn out not to be a successful long term business plan
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The market is full of companies that once lost 50% of their market cap and recovered to grow to many multiples of their former size. Losing 100% of your value (Worldcom, Enron, et al) isn’t recoverable though.
Facebook’s slide during a bull market is notable, though. Most other 50% losers happen in concert with each other and the overall market rather than being specifically about the company’s fortures.
I think investors are confused by wtf the metaverse is supposed to be and how it’s better for making money than the way Facebook is right now. There’s a lot of money being spent with no understanding of what the advantage is. That and the ever-looming problem of Gen Z not being into Facebook, though maybe that’s what the Metaverse is supposed to fix. If so they should have bought Minecraft before Microsoft and made that their OS.
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2022 is not a bull market so far though. Nasdaq and S&P 500 are both in a correction, with Nasdaq 15% down and S&P 11% down. Sure, that’s nowhere close to the “recession” Facebook stock is experiencing, but it’s not a trendbuster, more of a trend magnifier.
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The total lack of any real strategy around Metaverse is basically a nail in the longterm coffin. Facebook itself has had a reasonably straightforward monetization and strategy forever, even if it’s been twisted it’s not like the idea of ‘run a site, show relevant ads to users’ is an unreasonable straightforward business plan.
However, as a VR enthusiast, who has an HTC Vive Pro 2 and is pretty invested, I can say that the idea of VR becoming mainstream to the degree of sustaining a company like Meta is just dead on the vine even if Meta wasn’t one of the least trusted companies to do it; there’s a possibility of AR becoming more important/etc, but I don;'t see it being lucrative enough to drive it.
A smaller company with a dedicated focus? Sure I can see them really diving in and focusing on it. Maybe a thousand employees, tops? But Meta has like 53k right now. Even if you toss out the poisonous capitalist ‘every year must be more exponential than the year before!’ bullshit, there’s no way that VR/AR is going to consistently drive enough business.
Two big problems with VR:
One: motion sickness. Most people absolutely get motion sickness when using VR for extended periods of time, and for most people that is like ‘greater than 15 minutes’. Fun toy, but it’s not going to be the sort of thing you live in long enough to acclimate to and all that.
Two: Barrier to entry. Google cardboard had a neat idea, but the long and short of it is that comfortable VR that doesn’t cause eye strain and motion sickness needs lenses and other expensive equipment, and the Oculus Quest is the closest to a ‘consumer grade’ version we’ve seen and it’s highly subsidized by Meta, so they’re basically losing money on every sale trying to desperately grow their userbase.
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I would, if it didn’t seriously impact my professional networking.
(And to head off the criticism I always get when I say that: no, it doesn’t happen on LinkedIn. Not every profession is like your own industry, whatever it might be)
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We know how the movie industry rediscovers 3D movies every three decades, and tries to get everybody to watch 3D movies, and it always lasts about five years and then nobody cares again
It’s been 30 years since the last time “virtual reality” was trendy
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I remember trying VR as a kid in the 90’s…wasn’t great. Then came the recent VR revival…it may look a little better, but my interest in it is 0. I don’t understand the appeal at all.
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I tried shutter glasses when they were a thing for a hot minute 15 or so years ago. I actually really enjoyed them. You could see through them, which avoided a lot of problems of VR. The screen didn’t have to be built into the glasses, which avoided a lot of the problems of AR.
An unexpected benefit was that with your brain combining the slightly different images from your eyes, you got a sort of natural upscale and antialiasing for free. It really made the images and textures look sharper and more natural.
An unexpected drawback was that it actually decreased immersion. Playing a third-person game, for instance, the character started to look like an animated doll floating in front of you. As the camera rotated through an epic canyon, it instead looked like a model as the 3D modeler would have seen it.
(For me, ymmv, etc)
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I think there is entertainment value, games, etc. I have had several of the systems and while they all have their faults there really is something about the sense of scale and presence that can be achieved. If you like to be scared there is nothing like it
That said, the drawbacks are many, including comfort, locomotion, required space for a good experience, and often poor mapping of controls to actions breaking immersion. It is also a sometimes thing - you really don’t want to use if for very long before it’s annoying, it’s a solitary activity (you might be interacting with people virtually, but you are ignoring the people around you), and it is a hassle to get it out and set it up.
It is really fun to get it out and spend an hour introducing someone to it for the first time though!
The idea that people will want to do work or socialize in VR for any length of time is madness
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Maybe it depends on the quality of the movie?
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Don’t fret, Metamates. Grandma will love surfing the metawaves with her metagoggles on.
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