I don't care about the Metaverse

The first time I heard about metaverse was when Facebook announced the group name change to Meta. As I work with marketing and our main product dissemination platform are from Facebook, this has generated a certain frenzy in our industry. Over the days, we realized that change would not affect our work, but would have profound consequences for digital culture.

There was an explosion of news about the name change and facebook's new positioning, which has now focused its engineers on building the "metaverse." Stories in portals, newspapers, and magazines, tv reports. It all talked about the revolution that Meta was planning for years to come. A completely connected and digital world.

One of the reports I saw was from a reporter from Fantástico, at Globo, interviewing Mark Zuckerberg in a digital environment. The reporter in a room in Brazil and Mark, elsewhere on the globe, met in a virtual office interpreting "dolls", their digital avatars, with the help of "virtual reality" glasses.

Over the months, dozens of platforms have emerged and promised the same metaverse experience. Many companies have announced events in the metaverse, as well as lectures, parties and even weddings. To participate is very simple: with your computer (or mobile phone), access the link provided, customize your avatar and start to follow everything through the screen of your computer, in the comfort of your home or office.

Somehow, it attracts people a lot. I spent a lot of time playing Second Life, Minecraft, Habbo, GTA Online and Mu, but I saw it differently. For me, it was leisure and fun and, despite having all the same items of the metaverse of Facebook (except leisure and fun), it was not considered a post-reality universe where everything would happen.

It is worth noting that the change of identity came after a long period of controversy, through the case "Facebook–Cambridge Analytica" and the leak of documents and internal analyses that showed that Meta was aware of the negative effects that its platforms had on society, especially in adolescents who used Instagram, Facebook's contribution to the evolution of violence in developing countries, the ease of disseminating false information, publications with hate content, self-harm and anorexia.

The Internet has evolved a lot since it was created and many things we imagined impossible are now accessible thanks to the worldwide network of computers, but the technology has become increasingly invasive. Many services and products that were symbols of unification and breaking of boundaries between people, such as emails and social networks, have transformed to satisfy interest in profits of large corporations.

Big Techs are increasingly present in our lives and homes with the conveniences they have created. Traffic, transportation, shopping, relationship, entertainment, etc. applications. Now, the idea of the metaverse is no longer simple convenience, but complete dependence on the "virtual world" created by these companies. Much more intrusive, the metaverse also dehumanizes people. In this environment, you are just a representation of what you are in real life, an avatar.

The equipment needed for us to experience the entire metaverse is already under development, and together with them new forms of surveillance and data collection. Oculos VR contains tracking technology that features orientation and motion sensors and external mapping cameras.

This will be added to all the other data these companies have on us and will create a new era of advertising, something like Minority Report, The Matrix or Blade Runner. In addition, many corporations are already thinking about ways to make money in this environment as the Earth's physical resources become increasingly scarce. Meta works on the development of a cryptocurrency and large companies already sell digital products for high values based on the artificial creation of scarcity. A capitalist dream. In the metaverse, we will literally be a product.