Lessons From 19 Years in the Metaverse

if you give a user community powerful enough creator tools, what they create in these worlds will be far more interesting than anything a major company can officially create.

Philip Rosedale supposedly had the vision of Second Life while at the Burning Man festival and one of the first events they had in the game was a Burning Man recreation in 2003, and that helped set the pace and tone of what the community would be like. There was a heavy emphasis on serendipity and free-form engagement in the world. That might sound... See more

Since Facebook rebranded as Meta, the idea of the metaverse has been consumed by a kind of ahistorical hype cycle. Brands are flooding into the space and people are issuing broad proclamations about what a virtual world is supposed to look like. There are also plenty who are dismissing the metaverse as “something nobody asked for,” but as Au’s expe... See more

Meta is throwing money at the problem without throwing much wisdom at it.

Warzel: I love the way you put that, that the virtual-world experience is tightly integrated with real life. I feel like it’s also a poignant reminder of what you said earlier, that these worlds aren’t antisocial or necessarily escapes from “the real world.” They’re just a different part of the real world.

something I try to keep in mind when writing about online communities is that they’re (usually) filled with real, complex people. They’re not just weird introverts or shut-ins or people trying to escape reality.

these worlds aren’t antisocial or necessarily escapes from “the real world.” They’re just a different part of the real world.

People focusing on the ways to turn a quick buck will miss the opportunity.

as humans, we take all of the big challenges of real life and the complex social structures of the physical world and they get re-created in weird ways in a digital, social space.