April Fools Day in the Metaverse: Enjoy the Delicious Snark and Pranks!

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The RyanSchultz.com blog will be on an indefinite hiatus, as I am working on a brand new project: writing up a proposal for a VR lab for my university library system! More details here. I’ll be back as soon as I can, folks!

Yesterday, April 1st, was April Fools Day, when people often pull pranks on each other. I wanted to share with you two such pranks, one by Tom Ffiske, and the other by Tony Vitillo (a.k.a. SkarredGhost). Both are active commentators on the evolving metaverse marketplace and, like me, they sometimes poke fun at some of its absurdities!

Tom posted the following to Twitter:

When you visit the website, you are greeted with:

Welcome to the SUPER MEGA ULTRA METAVERSE SUMMIT

Party like it’s 2099 with the world’s largest metaverse conference, with over twenty people confirmed to attend. Get ready to go through an overly complicated sign-up process with zero guidance, and enter the one and only metaverse (apart from Second Life decades ago). All transactions use MetaCoin, a cryptocurrency running on a decentralised network that can be yours for the low price of $0.99 (then $3,000 after gas fees). Are you ready to join the party? 

This parody of the worst of the blockchain metaverse conference events offers the most delicious snark:

Easy to access: Simply buy a VR headset during a semiconductor crisis, and you can party with your friends while jigging in your tiny flat.

Introducing MetaCoin: Escape the banks! All transactions will use MetaCoin, a cryptocurrency that truly democractizes access to finance. Only 70% is owned by the founder.

Enter the metaverse: We have built a metaverse thatrepresenta the future, only there is zero interoperability and we will stop updating it after the weekend.

Among the (fictitious) guest speakers:

Richard Ryder: Sponsoring the event and will send you a follow-up email next week. And the week after.

Sarah Sarahbard: Launched a failed crypto project last month, and is looking to pump up its value before selling her stake.

Derrick Dickard: A futurologist who read about the metaverse on Forbes, and will pretend to be an expert until next year,

Savage, but accurate!

Tony issued a timely commentary on the trend of Horizon Worlds, Rec Room. AltspaceVR, and other metaverse platforms where the avatars lack the lower half of their body, tweeting:

You can read more about Legverse on their official website. Tony is even kind enough to offer a media kit for us bloggers!


Thank you to Tom Ffiske and Tony Vitillo!

P.S. Somebody also messaged me yesterday, saying that Meta had bought Second Life, which of course was an April Fools joke as well!

Facebook/Meta’s New Metaverse Commercials: Is There a Method to Meta’s Madness in Their Current Advertising Campaign?

I first heard about Facebook (now Meta)’s new metaverse commercials via the following tweet by Andrew Woodberry:

This Meta ad ran during tonight’s Notre Dame vs. UVA football game. I’m not even sure Meta knows what “the metaverse” is.

If you happen to have missed this commercial, as I did, and in case you’re curious, here’s the advertisement in full, via the official Meta channel on YouTube:

What is notable about this commercial is that it is not promoting a specific Meta hardware product or platform; it is promoting the idea of the metaverse (and using some surprisingly acid-trip visuals!).

As I predicted, Facebook (sorry, Meta!) is spending a small portion of its billions of dollars in earnings to do a little public relations: to try and implant the idea among the general public that Meta now a metaverse company; and to attempt to distance itself from the now-tarnished Facebook brand.

Here’s another ad in the current campaign (at least this one is for an actual product, the newly-rechristened Meta Quest 2 (formerly known as the Oculus Quest 2):

Jason Aten, a tech columnist with Inc., writes about Meta’s recent round of advertisements in general, and this last video in particular, in a recent editorial titled Facebook’s Ridiculous New Ad Reveals Its Vision of the Metaverse. It’s Everything Wrong with the Company:

If you want people to buy headsets, and Facebook definitely does, you do what companies do and you make an ad. That’s exactly what Facebook did, designed to highlight the Oculus Quest 2. 

In it, two men are playing video games in virtual reality using their Oculus Quest headsets. The two men are apparently neighbors, but have no idea. In fact, they don’t even like each other in real life, demonstrated by the closing scene where they yell at each other for making too much noise through the wall.

In the game, however, they are both teammates and friends. They even complain about their bad neighbors, again not realizing they are referring to each other. The ad is meant to be humorous, of course. It’s not, but that’s not even the biggest problem.

The real problem is that Facebook–which now calls itself Meta but is still the same company, with all the same issues–thinks this is a good representation of why you’d want to put on a VR headset and jump in the metaverse. If that’s the case, it’s a brilliant example of everything wrong with the company.

Jason goes on to write:

…the people who are friends don’t even realize they can’t actually stand in each other in real life. They live next door to each other, never interact in real life other than to ignore each other’s small talk in the elevator, or to yell at each other through the wall. 

Except, that’s everything that’s wrong with the way people connect online. And Facebook is largely the reason. Over the last decade, Facebook has worked hard to make us think that scrolling through a feed of images and posts from people we are loosely connected to is a substitute for actually engaging with real people. 

Not all connections are equal. Following someone on Twitter, or sending a friend request on Facebook doesn’t mean you have a relationship. It doesn’t even mean you know the person in real life. The problem is that we think that we know people because we scroll through an endless feed of carefully curated photos and moments they share. 

Part of the problem of eliminating the friction in making those connections online is that it makes it easier to connect with people you don’t actually know. Real relationships–the kind that add actual value to our lives–require proximity, conversations, and physical interaction. 

If the metaverse is going to be an amplified version of the kind of relationships people have been building online for years, I’m not sure we’re better off. 

In discussing the (in)effectiveness of this advertising campaign on the RyanSchultz.com Discord server, somebody made the following insightful observation:

They don’t need the ad to tell anybody anything- everyone is talking about it. The commercial did what it was supposed to do, get people’s attention and put Meta in the public consciousness.

Say the family is gathered together for the game—the less computer savvy family members go “what the heck was that”, then the techies in the family explain it to them, and have the time to get them to understand it better than a 1 minute ad could hope to do. The tactic was to get people to ask the question.

Hmmm, perhaps there is some method to Meta’s madness after all. The commercials are intended to be some sort of a conversation starter. From an experienced metaverse user perspective it’s bonkers, but then, WE (i.e. the hardcore virtual reality and virtual world crowd) are not the target audience here; the broader general public, who knows little to nothing about social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, is the target.

And, again I say something I repeat often on this blog, the adage that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Meta’s continued pouring of profits into this sort of advertising means that many more new people will be introduced to the concepts of the metaverse. In the long run, this is a good thing for all metaverse world builders and content creators, whether or not they are on board with Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds, or use Meta-branded VR hardware like the Quest 2.

In other words, Meta’s recent promotional push is good for everybody—provided that we (the people and companies who are passionate about social VR and virtual worlds) seize and pursue the opportunities which will arise due to this greater metaverse awareness by the general, non-computer-geek public. Everybody wins.


P.S. I wanted to leave you with something which I found extremely clever and amusing. The government of Iceland has brilliantly parodied Mark Zuckerberg’s recent Connect keynote address in the following funny three-minute video: come to the Icelandverse!

Now THAT is the kind of advertising which Meta should aspire to! 😉

Super Bad Transmittable Contagious Awful Virus! A Selection of My Favourite Pandemic Parody Videos (So Far)

My television died today.

Good-bye, old TV set…
(photo by Gaspar Uhas on Unsplash)

I should hasten to add that it was an ancient, 20-inch, cathode-ray-tube TV set which I inherited from my grandmother when she passed away back in 2004, so this was hardly an unexpected development. Late this afternoon, it started giving off quite a hideous buzzing noise while I was watching various 24/7 news channels, and after turning it off, I discovered later this evening that I could no longer turn it back on. It’s gone.

I should also hasten to add that I pretty much gave up watching any sort of broadcast television years ago. I much prefer consuming TV and movies on my iPad, using various apps such as CBC Gem, Netflix, and YouTube. So really, this is not such a big loss. And it’s a sharp reminder to me, to cut back on the relentless onslaught of coronavirus news coverage.

And, speaking of YouTube, a minor cottage industry appears to have sprung up overnight: coronavirus parody videos of popular songs. I blogged about one parody video a while ago, but the trend has definitely continued, with more creators jumping on the bandwagon! So I thought I would share with you a few sterling examples of this strange but entertaining recent phenomenon.

First up is this straightforward, simple message from Robert Emmett Kelly:

Next up is singer Chris Mann, who has released a similar message to Robert, but in a much more stylish fashion! (He’s got a number of coronavirus parodies on his YouTube channel, including a cover of Adele’s Hello which is also quite funny.)

Next up is another favourite of mine, courtesy of the very talented Daniel Matarazzo:

But I have saved the very best YouTube parody video for last: a British family that has released an updated version of a very well-known song from Les Misérables, which is absolutely genius, in spite of a few flat notes near the end!

Honestly, the level of creativity all of these people have is truly inspiring!