The Future is a Dead Mall
March 27, 2023 7:20 AM Subscribe
Dan Olson (aka Folding Ideas) on Decentraland, the Metaverse, and the shitty grift at the center of the (meta)universe. A long, excellent YouTube video that is also something of a spiritual sequel to Olson's Line Goes Up, also featured on the blue.
A pull quote if you are a bit too fussed to watch a two-hour YouTube video right now (it's brilliant and often hilarious in the bleak sort of way that the whole Web3 grift is, though, so you should give it some time when you can):
A pull quote if you are a bit too fussed to watch a two-hour YouTube video right now (it's brilliant and often hilarious in the bleak sort of way that the whole Web3 grift is, though, so you should give it some time when you can):
So the authors of Decentraland, its creators and its users, paint a magic circle around it with a narrative of inevitability, a narrative of the metaverse, a narrative of a true, separate, new world that you will eventually move your life into. Because if your neighbors aren’t going to eventually be compelled to be here tomorrow, why would you ever want this today?For some background, this, from "The house that Bitcoin built":
Decentraland is, at every level, a collective fairy tale -- just people playing pretend. Whether it be the Pedigree Fosterverse scraping data from adoptapet, users playing lawyer in their corporate offices or purporting to be the future of news -- Decentraland’s value to businesses is plainly absurd. And as we’ve seen, even its decentralized premise is a fantasy. The DAO has no authority and is comically hapless, content to play politics all the while pretending they have a stake in a billion-dollar product. And it’s not enough to convince themselves; they need to convince you. So, that is what they do, by any means necessary. They will pander, mislead, outright lie -- whatever it takes for you to buy into their narrative. Because this only makes sense from inside the circle.
Decentraland is a farce and a tragedy; it is painted into a corner by a combination of ineptitude and inherently bad ideas, and it cannot escape its fundamental being. Whatever other ideals are spit out, whatever rhetoric about liberation or political experimentation is employed, the simple fact that it was materially born as a pre-sale of lots of "land" based on a fiction of people "moving in" sets off a chain of decisions and incentives about design and functionality that bind it, forever, to being little more than a fantasy real estate scheme, an endless world of uniquely scarce dead malls.
To put it in layman’s terms, Decentraland was a virtual world with a limited number of properties that people could buy through a proprietary currency and sell for real money. It was a petri dish for the ideals of democracy and decentralization they championed, built on the premise that a virtual world controlled by its own “citizens” could more effectively govern itself — and offer more stable investment opportunities — than a real one governed by elites. Decentraland’s founders stipulated that it would be overseen by a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” a group of Decentraland residents who would vote on management decisions.Extremely funny and stupid things mentioned in the video include:
...
[Decentraland] has languished without centralized leadership. Today, one of its tokens is worth about 16 cents (half of its all-time high); when we inquired about the day’s visitor numbers on a Monday in August, it had only 800.
- Hershey's bad storefront, here fluffed up by its progenitor ad agency
- Lindt's even worse chocolate-based storefront made to sound As Good As Possible, e.g. "truly innovative", in a press release
- Decentraland Fashion Week, here propped up by a nonplussed journalist
- Decentraland's Metaverse Music Festival, here profoundly misunderstood by a journalist
DOH - forgot to link to the Cremaster videos.
Cremaster takedown part 1
Cremaster takedown part 2
I felt seen when I saw these.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:37 AM on March 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
Cremaster takedown part 1
Cremaster takedown part 2
I felt seen when I saw these.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:37 AM on March 27, 2023 [10 favorites]
I really enjoyed when he found the cool Nintendo house. Then found the same house like 500 times all owned and "for sale" by the same person.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:55 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 7:55 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?
An OSHA superfund site and a lifetime supply of lawsuits for every axis of negligence and fraud imaginable.
posted by mhoye at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2023 [13 favorites]
An OSHA superfund site and a lifetime supply of lawsuits for every axis of negligence and fraud imaginable.
posted by mhoye at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2023 [13 favorites]
I watch Dan's Twitch streams on the regular. In those streams, he's wandered around Decentraland both for his own amusement and as research for this video.
Couple months ago, we all watched — slack-jawed and horrified — a Taco Bell sponsored wedding, hosted by Kal Penn.
I don't think the wedding made it into the video, but the event showcased the worst failings of the Metaverse alongside the worst excesses of Capitalism that I've ever seen.
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 8:17 AM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
Couple months ago, we all watched — slack-jawed and horrified — a Taco Bell sponsored wedding, hosted by Kal Penn.
I don't think the wedding made it into the video, but the event showcased the worst failings of the Metaverse alongside the worst excesses of Capitalism that I've ever seen.
posted by Laura Palmer's Cold Dead Kiss at 8:17 AM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I watched this the other night. It's like the more learned sibling of the videos I've watched with titles like "I play games nobody plays" and "I explore dead live-service games" and such. It's interesting how many projects have been built that are just languishing. I mean, it would be a shame if these things went away on some level (archival for the future at least!), but it does cost money to keep these servers running and such.
It's all fascinating to me, really. I'm not a gamer, but I find a lot about it really interesting.
posted by hippybear at 8:24 AM on March 27, 2023
It's all fascinating to me, really. I'm not a gamer, but I find a lot about it really interesting.
posted by hippybear at 8:24 AM on March 27, 2023
(A bit of a derail, but thank you for those Cremaster videos. I remember Barney's solo show at the Guggenheim as being my introduction to just how infantile and broken the art world was. It was the museum version of that moment when you realize that the grownups you've looked up to all your life are a mess.)
posted by phooky at 8:26 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by phooky at 8:26 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
These people owe their vast sums of money to having been early adopters in a land rush. It's no wonder that they keep trying to make more land rushes happen which will benefit them. It's the only way they know how to many money.
I remember the early dot-com days too when it seemed like all you needed to become a millionaire was to either register a domain name with a business concept that was "do X, but on the Internet" or invest in someone who did. And everyone who successfully did those things (and didn't lose everything in the crash) is now a titan of industry with enough survivorship bias to fund a dozen metaverses.
It's no wonder that we keep having the same stupid scam over and over again where people are promised that if they buy in on the ground floor, they'll reap enormous wealth just for being an early adopter. Bitcoin, NFTs, the Metaverse--they're all just cargo cult attempts at making the magic of the Internet happen again, but this time the game is rigged so the winners of the last land rush will still come out on top.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:30 AM on March 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
I remember the early dot-com days too when it seemed like all you needed to become a millionaire was to either register a domain name with a business concept that was "do X, but on the Internet" or invest in someone who did. And everyone who successfully did those things (and didn't lose everything in the crash) is now a titan of industry with enough survivorship bias to fund a dozen metaverses.
It's no wonder that we keep having the same stupid scam over and over again where people are promised that if they buy in on the ground floor, they'll reap enormous wealth just for being an early adopter. Bitcoin, NFTs, the Metaverse--they're all just cargo cult attempts at making the magic of the Internet happen again, but this time the game is rigged so the winners of the last land rush will still come out on top.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:30 AM on March 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
I'll paste the comment I left on the video here:
I can't believe that all the people talking about and excited about Metaverse don't seem to remember Second Life, which was (and still is) technically everything the Metaverse is said to be.
I think people are chasing virtual reality because they're looking at their watches and saying, "The internet has been around (really they mean popular but most of them don't know their net history) for about 30 years now, where is the next tech thing that will transform life, and how can I get in on its ground floor?" When the reason the internet managed to become big is because it began in academia and had valid aspects to it that people worked a long time to conceptualize nearly from scratch.
It's not like I'm immune. A long time ago I was volunteer staff in an early virtual world called WorldsAway, which was also tremendously everything like they think the Metaverse will be, just 2D, slow, and running over dial-up. I spent a number of years there before college basically forced me away from it, and probably for the best. WA had its charms, and I made some good friends there that I still have, but the reason for those probably has less to do with it being a virtual world than that it was a way to meet and talk to people, which people could already have done by that time.
posted by JHarris at 8:31 AM on March 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
I can't believe that all the people talking about and excited about Metaverse don't seem to remember Second Life, which was (and still is) technically everything the Metaverse is said to be.
I think people are chasing virtual reality because they're looking at their watches and saying, "The internet has been around (really they mean popular but most of them don't know their net history) for about 30 years now, where is the next tech thing that will transform life, and how can I get in on its ground floor?" When the reason the internet managed to become big is because it began in academia and had valid aspects to it that people worked a long time to conceptualize nearly from scratch.
It's not like I'm immune. A long time ago I was volunteer staff in an early virtual world called WorldsAway, which was also tremendously everything like they think the Metaverse will be, just 2D, slow, and running over dial-up. I spent a number of years there before college basically forced me away from it, and probably for the best. WA had its charms, and I made some good friends there that I still have, but the reason for those probably has less to do with it being a virtual world than that it was a way to meet and talk to people, which people could already have done by that time.
posted by JHarris at 8:31 AM on March 27, 2023 [14 favorites]
Not even Second Life. Remember VRML? It's HTML for virtual reality!
I even tried learning it. I bought one of those "Learn VRML in a Week" books hoping that I could get ahead of the curve when it seemed like everyone and their grandma was learning HTML. Surely virtual reality is the future!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:34 AM on March 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
I even tried learning it. I bought one of those "Learn VRML in a Week" books hoping that I could get ahead of the curve when it seemed like everyone and their grandma was learning HTML. Surely virtual reality is the future!
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:34 AM on March 27, 2023 [22 favorites]
Not even Second Life. Remember VRML? It's HTML for virtual reality!
I remember that! It really went nowhere, fast. All of my art friends were into it.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:50 AM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
I remember that! It really went nowhere, fast. All of my art friends were into it.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:50 AM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
VRML? Ah yes, Sony's Cyber Passage browser. Possibly the slowest web browser of the 1990s.
posted by meehawl at 9:13 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by meehawl at 9:13 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Decentraland’s founders stipulated that it would be overseen by a “Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” a group of Decentraland residents who would vote on management decisions.
I don't get it. People can do this by going to their local city/town/county council meetings IRL.
posted by slogger at 9:16 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
I don't get it. People can do this by going to their local city/town/county council meetings IRL.
posted by slogger at 9:16 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
On the other hand, something that did happen is that we have a lot of authoring tools for 3D worlds—I haven't actually used them, but clearly a lot of people make stuff, mostly bad, with tools from roblox to unity to godot.
There's no unified 3D space that contains all these things but there's essentially no reason to do so; what good would it do for there to be (as Dan observes) a huge wall around an area the size of Skyrim or all the combined levels of DOOM in some larger unitary 3D world? None at all.
I just can't get into the headspace of the folks who want to turn the essentially unlimited space of "all possible virtual creations" into a winner-take-all system in which there is ONE virtual world with an extremely finite amount of real estate; I mean, I understand. They're capitalists whose only models are to repeat the "successes" of colonization and want to enrich themselves by being in the ownership class. Even if it requires making something that should be effectively unbounded into something pathetically finite.
I guess the area of decentraland is approximately equivalent to 0.04 skyrims, for whatever that comparison's worth.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:17 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's no unified 3D space that contains all these things but there's essentially no reason to do so; what good would it do for there to be (as Dan observes) a huge wall around an area the size of Skyrim or all the combined levels of DOOM in some larger unitary 3D world? None at all.
I just can't get into the headspace of the folks who want to turn the essentially unlimited space of "all possible virtual creations" into a winner-take-all system in which there is ONE virtual world with an extremely finite amount of real estate; I mean, I understand. They're capitalists whose only models are to repeat the "successes" of colonization and want to enrich themselves by being in the ownership class. Even if it requires making something that should be effectively unbounded into something pathetically finite.
I guess the area of decentraland is approximately equivalent to 0.04 skyrims, for whatever that comparison's worth.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:17 AM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
argh, no, I reported bad information. decentraland consists of ~90k parcels, each 16x16 meters, for a total area of about 23km2 while skyrim is estimated at about 37km2. So it's over half a skyrim.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:20 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 9:20 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ah, nostalgia, RonButNotStupid, my VRML 3D Boggle kind of worked but nobody wanted to play.
posted by clew at 9:47 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by clew at 9:47 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't get it. People can do this by going to their local city/town/county council meetings IRL.
No, see, those meetings IRL are all secretly controlled by the elitist politicians. In Decentraland, the people who bought in early have more voting power than the latecomers, so THEY'RE the elites there.
(Tongue in cheek, but the bit about Decentraland having some people with more voting power is true.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:48 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
No, see, those meetings IRL are all secretly controlled by the elitist politicians. In Decentraland, the people who bought in early have more voting power than the latecomers, so THEY'RE the elites there.
(Tongue in cheek, but the bit about Decentraland having some people with more voting power is true.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:48 AM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, yeah, it's a DAO. They're structured so those with more buy-in have more say in the matters.
What's ridiculous is this DAO isn't a part of the company that own and runs and maintains Decentraland. They are, at most, an outside advisory body with no power at all over the actual place they claim to govern.
posted by hippybear at 9:56 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
What's ridiculous is this DAO isn't a part of the company that own and runs and maintains Decentraland. They are, at most, an outside advisory body with no power at all over the actual place they claim to govern.
posted by hippybear at 9:56 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, yeah, it's a DAO. They're structured so those with more buy-in have more say in the matters.
I was making an ironic comment to slogger about how the very people who complain (incorrectly) about elitism in the IRL political process then go on to practice something much more akin to elitism in their online project.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:20 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was making an ironic comment to slogger about how the very people who complain (incorrectly) about elitism in the IRL political process then go on to practice something much more akin to elitism in their online project.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:20 AM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not even Second Life. Remember VRML? It's HTML for virtual reality!In the summer of 1995, I interviewed at the Boston Ballet for an unpaid web intern role where I asked about the project that they wanted me to work on, and they said, "we're really interested in building a virtual reality version of the Wang Center where you could, say, when you're buying a ticket, select a seat and see what the stage looked like from that seat."
"oh, cool, how much of that has been built so far?"
"oh, we thought you could do the whole thing."
in a summer, using 1995 era VRML, as an unpaid intern.*
I opted for a summer job helping a local pharmacy chain with their accounting then teaching them how to get their Accounts Receivables into a piece of software called a spreadsheet.
As much as folks like to rag on Facebook for being derivative and bringing up stuff like Second Life, I do think it's important to note that Facebook didn't invent the social network either. The software wasn't that different from Friendster or Myspace which, themselves, were arguably less feature rich than Livejournal; but Facebook learned how to monetize user data and sell ads on a social network better than any of those platforms. Innovation is rarely about original ideas.
It's about taking existing things and adding an incremental improvement to them that makes the technology adoptable by the masses. Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. He invented the carbon filament that allowed lightbulbs to run for days before burning out. Google didn't invent search, but they introduced algorithms that beat everyone else for understanding the context of your query.
AI is probably going to be more transformative than VR, but I feel like now that we've gotten AI to the point where it can credibly lie to us and hire TaskRabbits to solve captchas for it by pretending to be a blind user, AI+VR is basically the checkmate scenario where we all might as well be hooked into battery pods powering the Matrix.
(* I wish the Boston Ballet well and love their productions, but there is a small, petty part of me that enjoys buying a ticket and seeing that they still haven't solved the "let's give you an idea of what the stage looks like from your seat" problem)
posted by bl1nk at 10:46 AM on March 27, 2023 [11 favorites]
The real star of this video is his cat. What a nice kitty!
posted by zsazsa at 10:49 AM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by zsazsa at 10:49 AM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Remember Jurassic Park? My FAVORITE scene* is when the girl gets on the computer ("It's a UNIX system. I know this!") and proceeds to zoom around...folders I guess? So she can lock the doors.
Now it's 30 years later and we almost are at a point where the only science fiction in that film is that user interface.
* /hamburger
posted by nushustu at 11:01 AM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Now it's 30 years later and we almost are at a point where the only science fiction in that film is that user interface.
* /hamburger
posted by nushustu at 11:01 AM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
alas, it has fallen by lot upon me to be the one to inform you that the scene you refer to was not science fiction, but science fact.
also you still can not clone dinosaurs from DNA trapped in amber
posted by phooky at 12:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
also you still can not clone dinosaurs from DNA trapped in amber
posted by phooky at 12:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [27 favorites]
alas, it has fallen by lot upon me to be the one to inform you that the scene you refer to was not science fiction, but science fact.
Holy shit. Software devs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
posted by nushustu at 12:06 PM on March 27, 2023 [34 favorites]
Holy shit. Software devs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
posted by nushustu at 12:06 PM on March 27, 2023 [34 favorites]
I am a pretty online person. I love video games. Yet I had never heard of Decentraland.
I am gobsmacked by this video. I cannot believe how shit and terrible everything about this looks and seems to behave. This is 2023. Even games on lower end consoles from twenty years ago still look far, far better than this. The original version of World of Warcraft (2004) can be played on a potato these days and is infinitely better looking, more atmospheric and simply more engaging to look at than anything shown in this video. There are free games you can play in a browser that look and perform better than this trash.
Graphics and polygon count do not a great experience make! I completely understand that, and I agree with it to a point. But everything here is just ugly, garish and harsh. Nasty, acid, clashing colors. And the frame rate makes me motion sick. The camera control is horrifying. I cannot understand how anyone would buy into any of this outside of the developers looking to make a quick buck. I couldn't look at a screen full of this nonsense for more than an hour even if I was "earning" DecentralVirtualBucks a minute.
This is some nightmare modern world equivalent of people buying those collectible plates (sure to be valuable some day!) sold on TV back in the '70s.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:53 PM on March 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
I am gobsmacked by this video. I cannot believe how shit and terrible everything about this looks and seems to behave. This is 2023. Even games on lower end consoles from twenty years ago still look far, far better than this. The original version of World of Warcraft (2004) can be played on a potato these days and is infinitely better looking, more atmospheric and simply more engaging to look at than anything shown in this video. There are free games you can play in a browser that look and perform better than this trash.
Graphics and polygon count do not a great experience make! I completely understand that, and I agree with it to a point. But everything here is just ugly, garish and harsh. Nasty, acid, clashing colors. And the frame rate makes me motion sick. The camera control is horrifying. I cannot understand how anyone would buy into any of this outside of the developers looking to make a quick buck. I couldn't look at a screen full of this nonsense for more than an hour even if I was "earning" DecentralVirtualBucks a minute.
This is some nightmare modern world equivalent of people buying those collectible plates (sure to be valuable some day!) sold on TV back in the '70s.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:53 PM on March 27, 2023 [8 favorites]
The real star of this video is his cat. What a nice kitty!
Yep, that's Amy.
posted by Pendragon at 1:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yep, that's Amy.
posted by Pendragon at 1:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is some nightmare modern world equivalent of people buying those collectible plates (sure to be valuable some day!) sold on TV back in the '70s.
My mother bought a collective Obama plate so that's still a thing. Still much better than NFTs.
posted by juiceCake at 1:32 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
My mother bought a collective Obama plate so that's still a thing. Still much better than NFTs.
posted by juiceCake at 1:32 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
MetaFilter: I cannot believe how shit and terrible everything about this looks and seems to behave. This is 2023.
posted by hippybear at 1:38 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 1:38 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
Ah, VRML! I remember installing the Blaxxun Contact ActiveX (don't be alarmed, I *may* eventually utter a word from this millennium) control and browsing to a VRML portal which would, with a walk and a click, take you to one of dozens of worlds, each hand-crafted by a geek. The 'Contact' part of Blaxxun Contact was that it had integrated chat, so you could see and talk with whoever else was visiting that world. It didn't feel like the future exactly, but it did tickle that corner of my brainpiece that had just enjoyed Snowcrash.
The worlds were limited, but kind of vibrant, and the people visiting and chatting in them didn't seem to be <crude epithet>s. If the people in that video ever do build a metaverse, it will be a sore disappointment. The impersonal of it, the desperate of it, the web3 of it, the pretend value of it, all ravelled into a flaccid bundle of nope.
posted by BCMagee at 2:01 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
The worlds were limited, but kind of vibrant, and the people visiting and chatting in them didn't seem to be <crude epithet>s. If the people in that video ever do build a metaverse, it will be a sore disappointment. The impersonal of it, the desperate of it, the web3 of it, the pretend value of it, all ravelled into a flaccid bundle of nope.
posted by BCMagee at 2:01 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah, Decentraland is not an awful lot more advanced than the deliberately horrible VR system depicted in the last season of Community that was mostly an excuse to a) show Dean Pelton being silly at absurd expense, again, and b) introduce Keith David's character.
Still working my way through the video, but I just wanted to pull out this:
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Still working my way through the video, but I just wanted to pull out this:
The only thing to actually do here is play one of the four variants of Breakout and feel the gnawing cold reality seep into you as you realize that Decentraland is such a monumental failure as a platform for socialization, for commerce, and for gaming that it can't even handle properly emulating Breakout, a game from 1976 that you can play on goddamn Google Images! Steve Wozniak built Breakout fifty years ago to run on 44 TTL chips and a ham sandwich and that's still somehow too demanding a gaming experience for Decentraland.*chef's kiss*
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:04 PM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
The [Facebook] software wasn't that different from Friendster or Myspace which, themselves, were arguably less feature rich than Livejournal; but Facebook learned how to monetize user data and sell ads on a social network better than any of those platforms.
Facebook hit it big first not because it sold user data (which, let's be honest, any of those sites would have done if it had gotten to the point that they had enough to sell) but because it hit critical mass faster than its competitors. The thing is, I remember reading people at the time realizing that social media would become the critical feature of the web for tons of people, and all of these sites were desperate to be the one to get there first. Then Facebook won, and what happened was what everyone expected would, all the other social media sites of the time withered up. (What people didn't foresee was the rise of alternative social media: Twitter, which is something quite different, and Instagram, which Facebook fended off by buying it.) Once Facebook became the big social media site, even Google couldn't dethrone it, and they really wanted to.
On Google, from memory, the two features they had was search that uncannily, almost magically could point you to something useful to your query, and their "Don't Be Evil" motto. Google search still works for a number of topics, but has degraded tremendously since then for many tech and pop culture searches, where SEO and paid ads will overwhelm a search. We know where "Don't Be Evil" went: 🗑️ Even though Google is still less rapacious in some ways than others, it's outright disturbing how unrelated things you do online tend to influence the ads you receive.
Graphics and polygon count do not a great experience make! I completely understand that, and I agree with it to a point. But everything here is just ugly, garish and harsh. Nasty, acid, clashing colors.
The weird thing is, that's just about the only thing about Decentraland I like. Because it looks like the Old Web, where websites were made willy-nilly by people who had no training, and were just throwing together what they wanted. That's what an open and populist medium looks like: it's ugly, like the websites of yore. I tend to mistrust the World of Warcraft approach, where everything looks artistic and choreographed.
posted by JHarris at 2:06 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Facebook hit it big first not because it sold user data (which, let's be honest, any of those sites would have done if it had gotten to the point that they had enough to sell) but because it hit critical mass faster than its competitors. The thing is, I remember reading people at the time realizing that social media would become the critical feature of the web for tons of people, and all of these sites were desperate to be the one to get there first. Then Facebook won, and what happened was what everyone expected would, all the other social media sites of the time withered up. (What people didn't foresee was the rise of alternative social media: Twitter, which is something quite different, and Instagram, which Facebook fended off by buying it.) Once Facebook became the big social media site, even Google couldn't dethrone it, and they really wanted to.
On Google, from memory, the two features they had was search that uncannily, almost magically could point you to something useful to your query, and their "Don't Be Evil" motto. Google search still works for a number of topics, but has degraded tremendously since then for many tech and pop culture searches, where SEO and paid ads will overwhelm a search. We know where "Don't Be Evil" went: 🗑️ Even though Google is still less rapacious in some ways than others, it's outright disturbing how unrelated things you do online tend to influence the ads you receive.
Graphics and polygon count do not a great experience make! I completely understand that, and I agree with it to a point. But everything here is just ugly, garish and harsh. Nasty, acid, clashing colors.
The weird thing is, that's just about the only thing about Decentraland I like. Because it looks like the Old Web, where websites were made willy-nilly by people who had no training, and were just throwing together what they wanted. That's what an open and populist medium looks like: it's ugly, like the websites of yore. I tend to mistrust the World of Warcraft approach, where everything looks artistic and choreographed.
posted by JHarris at 2:06 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
My ex was very (is still?) into SecondLife, so I dipped a toe in, and everything about it was just not what I wanted from "interaction." You are telling yourself "I'm in the same space with this person!" but in reality you are texting each other while stiff puppets you've made twitch and rotate at each other. Interaction IRL is about seeing people's facial reactions, feeling the same environment, smells, sounds, none of which virtual worlds can do. It somehow feels *less* intimate than just sending an IM. With the exception of occasionally stumbling on people's avatars doing sex-pantomimes, or having random people try to interact with you, which wasn't really an improvement.
posted by emjaybee at 2:10 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 2:10 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
alas, it has fallen by lot upon me to be the one to inform you that the scene you refer to was not science fiction, but science fact.
Holy shit. Software devs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Working theory: much like all evolutionary paths eventually converge on crabs, so to do all software projects eventually converge on virtual reality. Just... really, really shitty virtual reality.
LifeSoftware, uh, finds a way.
posted by Mayor West at 2:12 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Holy shit. Software devs were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Working theory: much like all evolutionary paths eventually converge on crabs, so to do all software projects eventually converge on virtual reality. Just... really, really shitty virtual reality.
posted by Mayor West at 2:12 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
And yep, my first HTML book (circa 1996) had a couple chapters on then-nascent wunder-tech VRML. It was presented at the end, in breathless tones, framed as "you can go and learn all this HTML stuff, I guess, but it's all gonna be moot in a few years when this amazing technology rules the internet."
Then-12-year-old me kicked the tires, realized it was nigh-impossible to get your own VRML rig running even on localhost, much less exposed to the world over 56K dialup, shrugged, and bought a PHP book instead.
Probably the vaporware VR path would have been less painful, on net, than the PHP one, but I wasn't considering the 20-year impact at the time
posted by Mayor West at 2:17 PM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Then-12-year-old me kicked the tires, realized it was nigh-impossible to get your own VRML rig running even on localhost, much less exposed to the world over 56K dialup, shrugged, and bought a PHP book instead.
Probably the vaporware VR path would have been less painful, on net, than the PHP one, but I wasn't considering the 20-year impact at the time
posted by Mayor West at 2:17 PM on March 27, 2023 [5 favorites]
Favourite moment of the video so far..
"...It's not a new thing"
*tosses plush*
Kitty who has thus far been uninterested and above the whole endeavor wakes up to check things out.
posted by cirhosis at 3:23 PM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
"...It's not a new thing"
*tosses plush*
Kitty who has thus far been uninterested and above the whole endeavor wakes up to check things out.
posted by cirhosis at 3:23 PM on March 27, 2023 [16 favorites]
Because it looks like the Old Web, where websites were made willy-nilly by people who had no training, and were just throwing together what they wanted. That's what an open and populist medium looks like: it's ugly, like the websites of yore.
I think your metrics here might be out of whack, because Decentraland is neither "open" nor "populist". Decentraland is ugly because making something appealing is not the point, but neither is free expression or a low barrier to entry. The point is the shared delusion.
posted by Merus at 4:40 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think your metrics here might be out of whack, because Decentraland is neither "open" nor "populist". Decentraland is ugly because making something appealing is not the point, but neither is free expression or a low barrier to entry. The point is the shared delusion.
posted by Merus at 4:40 PM on March 27, 2023 [3 favorites]
I worked for a small, private university here in CA, at one of their subsidiary campuses. One day, one of the IT people from the main campus came to show us the new, exciting breakthrough that was coming. They had spent bucks (I assume a load of bucks) to have someone create a 3D model of most of the main campus in Secondlife. He was really excited about this. He popped up his truly non IRL avatar, and started walking from a dorm to the library. He went through some doors, entered a room to check the card catalogs. Being a smart ass, I asked him why any one would go through all the keystrokes and time on their computer to look for a book at the library, instead of just going to library webpage and looking up the book… Maintaining his excited face, he said something like, “This is NEW! Virtual reality! The students will love this! They can meet in the virtual campus! They can go to class in the virtual campus!” Though I worked there for many more years, I never heard about this again. I think people really need to learn what “virtual” really means.
Meanwhile, the domain discussed in this video is just a scam, now almost a synonym for the internet.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:33 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Meanwhile, the domain discussed in this video is just a scam, now almost a synonym for the internet.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:33 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Speaking of VRML-esque nostalgia, I remember being enthralled by Bumptop, which was basically a file system with a physics engine. The guy gave a TED Talk about it (as was the style at the time) and I remember thinking this is the Jurassic Park "This is UNIX" thing that's going to make computing cool.
It never went anywhere, and thinking on it now: yeah, that system would be a pain to use. Complete style over substance.
I miss being young.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:37 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
It never went anywhere, and thinking on it now: yeah, that system would be a pain to use. Complete style over substance.
I miss being young.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:37 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
Re: Decentraland's aesthetics (or rather lack of them), and it not being open or populist, yeah I know. Its chaotic appearance reminds me of Geocities and Second Life though. I kind of want to explore it a bit just to soak up the dumb.
posted by JHarris at 6:38 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 6:38 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
I only made it roughly 1/4 through the video, but does he ever explain where the billion dollar valuation comes from? I can think of three broad options:
1) 100k true believers put in 10k each in this travesty instead of their underfunded savings, probably during the first land rush
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
posted by Prof. Danger at 6:44 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
1) 100k true believers put in 10k each in this travesty instead of their underfunded savings, probably during the first land rush
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
posted by Prof. Danger at 6:44 PM on March 27, 2023 [1 favorite]
In r/Buttcoin/'s thread on the video, people making the point that VRchat exists, works, and has a community:
VRchat is unironically better than all of the metaverse projects, including Facebook's metaverseposted by sebastienbailard at 6:56 PM on March 27, 2023 [9 favorites]
It's the BIGGEST red flag I found when metaverse hype started. The fact that everything that metaverses promise is ALREADY available in a FREE game was never mentioned. The only people who talked about metaverses were business bros, crypto bros, and everyday people who never had any interest (and probably never will) in the idea of a VR world. Actual gamers, even those whose knowledge of virtual worlds ended in the second life era (which was like 90% of them), knew that every metaverse projects looked like shit.
VRChat was completely absent from the discussion because nobody talking about metaverses actually have any clue about virtual worlds, or more importantly, don't give a single fuck about virtual worlds beyond their ability to make money. NOBODY was in it for the tech.
In short, metaverse is a scam that's only talked about by business bros, whereas ACTUAL virtual world enthusiasts have been enjoying full VR virtual worlds years before meta even became a thing, and for FREE.
Yeah, a bunch of furries I know are into VRchat. I utterly lack any of the tech required, but they seem to be enjoying themselves. They have dances and hang out and other things.
posted by hippybear at 7:19 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:19 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
Metafilter: stiff puppets you've made twitch and rotate at each other
posted by genpfault at 8:10 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by genpfault at 8:10 PM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]
Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” a group of Decentraland residents who would vote on management decisions
So, like a centralised authority, then?
posted by dg at 8:51 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
So, like a centralised authority, then?
posted by dg at 8:51 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I don't think Olson talks about it in the video, but he's surely aware that the virtual worlds that already exist are miles better than Decentraland - he has a tweet where he points out that a lot of the hype is based on steadfastly ignoring that the exciting stuff they're promising like virtual weddings is possible today, and has been possible for decades. When you're asking "why should I do it in Decentraland, when these virtual worlds already exist and are better than what you're offering" they don't have an answer. Their pitch is "you can buy land and sell to someone else!" but at no point is there someone who is happy to be there to be there.
I went to a virtual wedding in Final Fantasy XIV last Friday! We dressed up in finery and put on bunny ears at the request of the brides, and I got a little demon in a box. It's fun to just be there, in part because a lot of effort has gone into making just hanging out an appealing prospect, but also because I can, with the same character, go and fight a giant tree that scatters acorns that contain bulls.
posted by Merus at 9:27 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
I went to a virtual wedding in Final Fantasy XIV last Friday! We dressed up in finery and put on bunny ears at the request of the brides, and I got a little demon in a box. It's fun to just be there, in part because a lot of effort has gone into making just hanging out an appealing prospect, but also because I can, with the same character, go and fight a giant tree that scatters acorns that contain bulls.
posted by Merus at 9:27 PM on March 27, 2023 [7 favorites]
1) 100k true believers put in 10k each in this travesty instead of their underfunded savings, probably during the first land rush
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
You forgot about option 4: "let's just say it's worth a billion dollars just because! woooooooo"
posted by mightygodking at 9:33 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
You forgot about option 4: "let's just say it's worth a billion dollars just because! woooooooo"
posted by mightygodking at 9:33 PM on March 27, 2023 [4 favorites]
> Yet I had never heard of Decentraland.
It's crashing both FF and Chrome for me. Which, given the criticism above, I'm rather happy about tbh.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:40 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's crashing both FF and Chrome for me. Which, given the criticism above, I'm rather happy about tbh.
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 3:40 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
I only made it roughly 1/4 through the video, but does he ever explain where the billion dollar valuation comes from? I can think of three broad options:
1) 100k true believers put in 10k each in this travesty instead of their underfunded savings, probably during the first land rush
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
It's #3. Oh, man, is it ever #3. He addresses it maybe 3/4 of the way through, real quick, because even though it's a total scam, it's only like 19th on the list of scams they're pulling. (Nothing screams "this is a legitimate business, worth lots of real dollars" like a bespoke private cryptocurrency that you use to prop up your own market cap.)
posted by Mayor West at 4:59 AM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
1) 100k true believers put in 10k each in this travesty instead of their underfunded savings, probably during the first land rush
2) During the days of low interest, some venture capitalists put in a ton of cash as part of their 'high risk, high reward' portfolio
3) It's some bullshit extrapolation. Such as 1% of the land has been sold for $10 million, so 100% would be a billion. Or the cryptocurrency equivalent.
Please tell me it is option 3.
It's #3. Oh, man, is it ever #3. He addresses it maybe 3/4 of the way through, real quick, because even though it's a total scam, it's only like 19th on the list of scams they're pulling. (Nothing screams "this is a legitimate business, worth lots of real dollars" like a bespoke private cryptocurrency that you use to prop up your own market cap.)
posted by Mayor West at 4:59 AM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's also interesting how much neokayfabe intersects with this.
There's never going to be a spontaneous mass adoption event if people don't fully commit to the hype and beliiiiiiiiiivvveeeeee their own lies hard enough. Those bros talking about the theater are fully aware of how crap it is, but they keep pouring on the hyperbole in hope that with enough hype they can forcibly make their cruddy VR future happen anyway and become fabulously rich for owning land in what's sure to be the digital Manhattan.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:57 AM on March 28, 2023
There's never going to be a spontaneous mass adoption event if people don't fully commit to the hype and beliiiiiiiiiivvveeeeee their own lies hard enough. Those bros talking about the theater are fully aware of how crap it is, but they keep pouring on the hyperbole in hope that with enough hype they can forcibly make their cruddy VR future happen anyway and become fabulously rich for owning land in what's sure to be the digital Manhattan.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:57 AM on March 28, 2023
The enclosures act for pre-scorched non-existent earth
posted by davemee at 6:27 AM on March 28, 2023
posted by davemee at 6:27 AM on March 28, 2023
It's #3. Oh, man, is it ever #3. He addresses it maybe 3/4 of the way through, real quick, because even though it's a total scam, it's only like 19th on the list of scams they're pulling. (Nothing screams "this is a legitimate business, worth lots of real dollars" like a bespoke private cryptocurrency that you use to prop up your own market cap.)
Yeah, it’s the typical cryptocurrency shell game of claiming a token is worth x because it’s backed by y tokens valued (by whom?) at z, then usually doing some really dumb math involving limitless growth or ignoring that, if you sell anything, the remaining tokens drop in value or something similar. It’s sometimes really hard to tell where scamming begins and “optimistic guesses backed by ignorance of finance, history, and law” ends. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter all that much because the “stay away” strategy works for all of it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:05 AM on March 28, 2023
Yeah, it’s the typical cryptocurrency shell game of claiming a token is worth x because it’s backed by y tokens valued (by whom?) at z, then usually doing some really dumb math involving limitless growth or ignoring that, if you sell anything, the remaining tokens drop in value or something similar. It’s sometimes really hard to tell where scamming begins and “optimistic guesses backed by ignorance of finance, history, and law” ends. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter all that much because the “stay away” strategy works for all of it.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:05 AM on March 28, 2023
HOA + DOA = DAO
posted by flabdablet at 7:21 AM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 7:21 AM on March 28, 2023 [4 favorites]
what good would it do for there to be (as Dan observes) a huge wall around an area the size of Skyrim or all the combined levels of DOOM in some larger unitary 3D world? None at all.
The entire point of VR is that it's implemented as software, and needs to nod only just hard enough in the direction of real-world physics and geometry to avoid actual motion sickness.
There is no reason at all why every building in an encompassing virtual 3D world should not be a Tardis. We're even used to this, to some extent, with existing file browsers: a folder icon typically gives the user no clue at all about how much structure and/or stuff hides within it and I can see no reason why VR buildings should be any different.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
The entire point of VR is that it's implemented as software, and needs to nod only just hard enough in the direction of real-world physics and geometry to avoid actual motion sickness.
There is no reason at all why every building in an encompassing virtual 3D world should not be a Tardis. We're even used to this, to some extent, with existing file browsers: a folder icon typically gives the user no clue at all about how much structure and/or stuff hides within it and I can see no reason why VR buildings should be any different.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it’s the typical cryptocurrency shell game of claiming a token is worth x because it’s backed by y tokens valued (by whom?) at z,
Well, of course--if I have 10,000 tokens, and I manage to sell one of them for $100, then obviously I have a million dollars' worth of them. That's just simple math. Markets aren't a thing, liquidity is a liberal myth, there's no such thing as deflationary pressure, and I'm a little teapot.
posted by Mayor West at 7:53 AM on March 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
Well, of course--if I have 10,000 tokens, and I manage to sell one of them for $100, then obviously I have a million dollars' worth of them. That's just simple math. Markets aren't a thing, liquidity is a liberal myth, there's no such thing as deflationary pressure, and I'm a little teapot.
posted by Mayor West at 7:53 AM on March 28, 2023 [6 favorites]
What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?
Old articles about The Sims/Second Life/Mindcraft asked that question of users who built stuff in those "worlds". The cherry picked takes had 'I can't afford a home in the real world so this place lets me build something I will never have.'. The virtual world - most give a reward hit in a shorter timeframe and in many cases just by putting in JUST the time.
The 'real world effort' take is what Andrew Tate and others say to then sell people on a grind mindset side hustle.
The real world needs a refined skill set and the willingness to try applying that skillset if the opportunity arises. For many, the time (and money) it takes to refine a skillset exceeds what they have to give on the day to day. Commute+job+other adulting leaves how much left over to work on refining a skillset?
posted by rough ashlar at 9:25 AM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Old articles about The Sims/Second Life/Mindcraft asked that question of users who built stuff in those "worlds". The cherry picked takes had 'I can't afford a home in the real world so this place lets me build something I will never have.'. The virtual world - most give a reward hit in a shorter timeframe and in many cases just by putting in JUST the time.
The 'real world effort' take is what Andrew Tate and others say to then sell people on a grind mindset side hustle.
The real world needs a refined skill set and the willingness to try applying that skillset if the opportunity arises. For many, the time (and money) it takes to refine a skillset exceeds what they have to give on the day to day. Commute+job+other adulting leaves how much left over to work on refining a skillset?
posted by rough ashlar at 9:25 AM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Maybe it works with real real estate? No! A mall that never lived!
posted by clew at 9:36 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 9:36 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
One of the things that makes me saddest about the people who are trying to get into Decentraland: that's a whole lot of energy trying to build and grow a thing that doesn't exist anywhere but online. What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?My kindest take is that people building stuff in Dencentraland is not that different from people who build elaborate house mods for Skyrim or the act of creating and destroying a sand mandala. Yes, the thing only exists for a limited audience. Yes, doing it in Decentraland means participating in this weird property scheme that is rooted in grift and corruption, but if the creator finds actual joy in the process of creation then maybe that's still a valuable moral outcome? If they did it in the real world they'd probably be building model trainsets or knitting or amassing a collection of Legos.
My less charitable take is that if Decentraland didn't exist, its core audience would partake in Web3, Cutco knife selling, Amway, or other pyramid/multi-level marketing schemes and adjacent to them are cults preaching some form of enlightenment or salvation in return for labor.
There's a core demographic of the population who can motivate themselves to put in a lot of work in exchange for a fancy enough dream, and there's a demographic of the population who are willing to exploit that motivation by spinning a compelling dream for them, and so one will always be fodder for the other; and that's a perception that I'm not super happy about having in my head.
posted by bl1nk at 10:53 AM on March 28, 2023 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: can be played on a potato these days and is infinitely better looking
MetaFilter: the point is the shared delusion
(Ima lie down now)
posted by chavenet at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: the point is the shared delusion
(Ima lie down now)
posted by chavenet at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I watched a bit of this, and Catherynne Valente's Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things (posted here) came to mind.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:49 PM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Pronoiac at 12:49 PM on March 28, 2023 [5 favorites]
They're structured so those with more buy-in have more say in the matters.
Which is pretty much tech-bro libertarianism in a nutshell.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:55 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Which is pretty much tech-bro libertarianism in a nutshell.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:55 PM on March 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?
I mean, we could have a whole thread about real world murderers who are in the real estate business. Especially the plantation salesmen who are in the industrial real estate business
posted by eustatic at 5:18 AM on March 29, 2023
I mean, we could have a whole thread about real world murderers who are in the real estate business. Especially the plantation salesmen who are in the industrial real estate business
posted by eustatic at 5:18 AM on March 29, 2023
My Metaverse is my regular Sunday afternoon Walk About Minigolf VR session with my siblings who all live far away. Nothing in Decentraland looks even 1% as polished.
posted by 3j0hn at 7:59 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by 3j0hn at 7:59 AM on March 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
> What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?
Old articles about The Sims/Second Life/Mindcraft asked that question of users who built stuff in those "worlds". The cherry picked takes had 'I can't afford a home in the real world so this place lets me build something I will never have.'. The virtual world - most give a reward hit in a shorter timeframe and in many cases just by putting in JUST the time.
Apples and oranges - The Sims and Minecraft are honest about the fact that they're games, and are just pretend - while this is trying to get people to buy in on something that would be "real".
(I don't know enough/can't be arsed enough to find out about Second Life, but I vaguely remember that being pitched as a game-like thing as well.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:04 AM on March 29, 2023
Old articles about The Sims/Second Life/Mindcraft asked that question of users who built stuff in those "worlds". The cherry picked takes had 'I can't afford a home in the real world so this place lets me build something I will never have.'. The virtual world - most give a reward hit in a shorter timeframe and in many cases just by putting in JUST the time.
Apples and oranges - The Sims and Minecraft are honest about the fact that they're games, and are just pretend - while this is trying to get people to buy in on something that would be "real".
(I don't know enough/can't be arsed enough to find out about Second Life, but I vaguely remember that being pitched as a game-like thing as well.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:04 AM on March 29, 2023
Here I was hoping it was a video about Bohemians squatting in a shuttered shopping mall.
That's the future I still want to see.
posted by ocschwar at 2:07 PM on March 30, 2023
That's the future I still want to see.
posted by ocschwar at 2:07 PM on March 30, 2023
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
One of the things that makes me saddest about the people who are trying to get into Decentraland: that's a whole lot of energy trying to build and grow a thing that doesn't exist anywhere but online. What might have come of that energy if they'd chosen to apply it to things in the real world instead?
As for Olson himself: one of my favorite works of his, something I've gone back to on repeat occasions, is his two-part takedown of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle. The videos are WAY shorter - each video is only about 15 minutes - and this may be a good taste of his style. (They're older videos, back from when he used a cardboard puppet in several scenes as an author avatar; but that's the only stylistic difference.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:36 AM on March 27, 2023 [2 favorites]