The Eighty Billion Dollar Ghost Town
Well, it finally happened. The big shots over at 'The Meta' have admitted what any guy with a lawn and a sense of smell knew years ago: the Metaverse was a giant, steaming heap of digital nonsense. Marky Zuck, a fella who looks like he's never actually tasted a ham sandwich without checking a spreadsheet first, decided to bet the farm on a cartoon world where nobody has legs. He spent eighty billion dollars. Let that sink in. You could buy every Cadillac ever made for that kind of scratch, and you'd still have enough left over to keep the local VFW in beer for the next millennium.
I remember when my grandson tried to show me his 'avatar.' I told him, 'Son, if I wanted to look like a poorly drawn cereal mascot, I'd just look in the mirror after a long weekend at the lake.' But no, these tech geniuses thought we'd all want to strap a plastic brick to our faces and pretend to work in a digital office. I already spent forty years in a real office, and the only thing I wanted to do was leave. Why would I want to go back there in a pair of goggles that make me feel like I'm about to tip over?
Legless and Brainless
The worst part is the waste. Eighty billion! That's billion with a 'B.' They laid off thousands of hard-working people because the bosses were too busy playing make-believe in a world that looks like a cheap knock-off of those bowling alley animations that play when you get a gutter ball. Horizon Worlds? More like Horizon-Nobody-Home. I've seen more life in a bowl of cold oatmeal than I saw in those virtual plazas. They built a mall where nobody can buy anything and a park where you can't even sit on a real bench.
And the avatars! For the longest time, they didn't even have legs. Just floating torsos bobbing around like apples in a bucket. If I'm going to spend my golden years in a computer, I at least want my knees to work, even if they are made of pixels. It's the height of arrogance to think you can replace the Great Outdoors with a flickering screen and some loud-mouthed kids screaming in your ear about 'crypto' and 'NFTs.' I don't know what an NFT is, and at this point, I'm too afraid to ask.
Real Life Still Exists, Kids
Now they're pivoting to 'Artificial Intelligence.' Here we go again. First it was the information superhighway, then it was the cloud, then the metaverse, and now the computers are going to do our thinking for us. Well, if they think as well as the Metaverse worked, we've got nothing to worry about. My computer can't even figure out how to connect to the printer without me having to perform a ritual sacrifice. I'm not worried about a robot taking my job; I'm worried about a robot trying to sell me a virtual hat for twenty bucks.
We used to build things in this country. Bridges, cars, skyscrapers. Now we build 'digital environments' that get deleted the moment the stock price dips. It's a crying shame. All that talent and all that money, and we ended up with a dumpster fire that you can't even roast a real marshmallow over. If Mark wants to see a real 'social network,' he should come down to the diner on a Tuesday morning. We've got coffee, we've got legs, and we don't need a headset to tell each other we're full of it.
Conclusion
So, rest in peace, Metaverse. You won't be missed by me, and you certainly won't be missed by the folks who lost their shirts on 'virtual real estate.' I'm going to go outside now, sit on my porch, and look at a tree. A real tree. It's got high resolution, a great frame rate, and best of all, it didn't cost eighty billion dollars to load. Cheers to reality, folks. It's still the best game in town.