It would be very hard to take my jobs into VR-no one wants a virtual baker when they’re hungry and it’s hard enough to teach cooking online-no way am I trying that in VR. I’ll stick to my meatspace work life. Jobs that can be done by machine have been automated for the most part.
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It’s a liminal space hinting at the Internet’s dead-worst hidden places. It’s limited, crude, bleak. Rarely has a supposed escape looked more like a cell.
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Reading these comments and remembering my own experience of the VR craze back in the 90s just strengthens my long-held belief that VR is a solution perpetually in search of a problem.
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Me too. Just once, I responded to one of them (a low level recruiter somewhere out there) just to see what the deal was… I talked with them about the jobs relevant to my skills, and they said they’d pass along the info to the relevant teams, but wondered if they could see my profile. I explained I did not have a Facebook profile, never had one. When asked why, I said I didn’t feel the need to connect to people that way.
I never heard back.
Which is fine. I’d hate to think they’d have come up with an offer that would have actually tested just how much my ‘principles’ were worth. I suspect a lot less than I hope.
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I got a bunch of messages along the lines of “I know you spoke to someone from our team back in January” (and I was absolutely certain I hadn’t spoken to anyone, much less someone from Meta), and I just assumed it was some scam. Except, after getting a bunch more that also made reference to imaginary previous contacts, I looked up the email and realized they were legit. So weird. I have to assume it came by way of LinkedIn (even though it was Meta employee email addresses), as thanks to them I get deluged with bullshit automated messages about jobs that aren’t relevant to me, thanks to careless keyword matching and no humans in the loop. I assume if I actually responded to the emails I never would have heard back at all (at least from a human being) - not having touched Facebook (or VR for the last 25 years, for that matter).
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Sounds like ATI back in the day. Once your resume was in their system, it would float around forever, occasionally bumping into an HR person. Worthless. I think that they had to contact a certain number of people to justify a team directly picking the person that they really wanted.
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Oh, it’s worse than that, as first of all, you don’t have to apply for a job anywhere, your data gets snagged off of LinkedIn based on keywords shorn of all context, and then stuck in a database (with additional sorting errors - e.g. in my case they decided I was in a “someone already talked to them” category) and passed on to automated systems that start pelting you with emails. It’s this whole algorithmic echo chamber. Clearly no humans are involved, and I suspect no human being ever gets involved until sometime after you actually apply for a job and get past various gate-keeping HR algorithms that do first passes on resumes. I also suspect you have both LinkedIn and Meta’s automated systems doing similar processes (and possibly recruiters with their own automated processes), so you get many times more spam on behalf of bigger companies.
I find LinkedIn in general is super-aggressive about pushing job openings (and giving your data to companies), but also obviously no human being looks at anything, even when third-party recruiters get involved. I got so much spam for jobs that weren’t remotely appropriate just because a keyword was the same somewhere. (Presumably I still do, but I block everything from LinkedIn.) I’m glad Meta’s VR efforts have been collapsing just because I don’t have to get their spam anymore - they were sending it to me directly and bypassing my LinkedIn spam filter.
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This was back in the days before LinkedIn. Monster and such. Who knows, maybe AMD still pings my old email address from time to time.
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No strike through?
(Double ~ before and after)
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Pripyat at least has an interesting and affecting story.
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I can navigate an array of “worlds.” The word is misleading because these worlds, most of which have been designed by users, range from small to very, very small. Technical limitations restrict the number of people in a single “instance" of a world to 32 or fewer. A lot of worlds I visit have no one in them at all.
I’m going to create a world on Metaverse and call it “Crickets.”
.
.
… crickets chirping…
.
.
I’ll show myself out
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i signed up for some developer email list as part of a former job, and now cannot get off it. you need an account to unsubscribe, and i don’t have an account. 
( i’m pretty sure congress passed a law about that at some point, but meta obviously doesn’t care )
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Rent seeking.
No one has added an Infinite IKEA? Disappointing.
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We’re sorry, but the street is busy finding its own uses for your catalytic converter right now …
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The VR space will never take off like facebook. The reason social media took off is because we have iPhones and other smart devices with which we can fill those dumb times when we are bored. Sitting on the toilet, procrastinating at work, standing in lines. You simply can’t do that with a VR headset on. Maybe if an even worse pandemic comes along and none of us can even socialize with family and have to live in isolated pods maybe then we will all take refuge in something like the metaverse… knock on wood… even more involved video games are things that can be played with a general awarness of the real world. You can know when another person enters the room or you can see the snacks and drinks next to you. VR as a technology that cuts you off completely is just an awkward thing. No matter how good the graphics get. Unless they come up with some innovation I’m not considering I can’t see it becoming anything more than a novelty people indulge in for very short periods of time…
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… looks OK to me
Not every person who invents or leads some kind of “paradigm changing” innovation is a genius. I honestly think Zuckerberg is much more “right person at the right time” kinda lucky than approaching any level of genius. Honestly, wtf else has he done that’s impressive since FB? If anything, just the opposite.
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