Recently, the world has been abuzz with news of the Metaverse: Mark Zuckerberg’s VR paradise that allows you to buy groceries, run errands, and climb mountains from the comfort of your own home. Some people have praised the Metaverse for being innovative and hyper-realistic. But my lived experience has been very different. All I did was steal one (1) loaf of bread from the Metaverse – and now I’m being hunted across its wild plains by a crudely rendered Russell Crowe, who simply will not stop singing at me online.
Why did I steal a loaf of bread from the Metaverse? For one thing, I didn’t realize it was supposed to be a loaf of bread. On the shelf of the Metaverse supermarket, it just looked like three yellow squares. I thought the yellow squares were interesting and that they could be used to provide entertainment for my family. But as soon as I picked them up, an alarm went off and Russell Crowe began singing at me.
You may be asking yourself, if I couldn’t recognize bread as bread, how could I possibly recognize Russell Crowe as Russell Crowe? Well, the answer is, he mostly sings, “I am Russell Crowe and I am taking you to Metaverse jail,” over and over again. Please don’t ask me why he isn’t singing songs from Les Miserables. I am just as confused as you are, and his voice hurts my ears (it sounds strained and haunted).
Anyway, being hunted across all of virtual time and virtual space by a singing Russell Crowe has made my Metaverse experience less than ideal. For example, I recently tried to play a fun game where my friends and I were squirrels trying to steal acorns from a big tree, but Russell Crowe showed up halfway through and started singing, “I am Russell Crowe and I am taking you to Metaverse jail.”
My friends were like, what is this? And everyone got mad at me and made me go lie down in the other room as punishment.
The other thing that happened is that after I got accused of stealing Metaverse bread, I somehow ended up being assigned custody of a child? In VR? And, yeah, you guessed it: the kid sings at me, too. Do you know how difficult it is to explore the world of hyper-realistic VR pornography when a little pixelated orphan keeps singing at you? It is extremely difficult.
To conclude, the Metaverse has much to offer modern-day citizens. However, it has nothing to offer me but one headache after another. From Russell Crowe singing at me to the young computerized man who keeps trying to have sex with my adopted computerized daughter, my time in the Metaverse has been fraught with interpersonal conflict and revolutionary politics.
Overall, I give the Metaverse a C. It was nice when that priest gave me that pair of virtual candlesticks, but everything else has been a bit much.
