Facebook Metaverse

QuickHitRecord

QuickHitRecord

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Connection is evolving and so are we. The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. Our company’s vision is to help bring the metaverse to life, so we are changing our name to reflect our commitment to this future.

The metaverse will be social. 3D spaces in the metaverse will let you socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine. Listen to Mark Zuckerberg share our vision for bringing the metaverse to life together:

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Is this the next "thing"?

My first reaction is that this is the next logical step into living fully digital (and marketable) lives. Video chat was never going to be the end of the line. If this doesn't take off, something like it probably will. The endorphin rush of being able to dial in flying dolphins or floating art or a stampede of unicorns to appear in your otherwise very ordinary walk to the grocery store via AR is going to hook a lot of people.

Curious what this will do to video though. Sure, video will always still exist, but on virtual TVs and movie theater screens? This platform does seem like a logical replacement for YouTube, with a higher level of interaction and engagement (and probably addiction). And it could in itself also be used as a vehicle to make some kind of film or series, I suppose. Someone's going to do it. The possibilities and pitfalls are kind of hard to wrap my head around at this point, but I may as well start trying.
 
Facebook having a midlife crisis I see

But I'll say this - I just got off a half-hour 16-person corporate Teams meeting. (The whole time I was thinking, "this should have been a series of targeted emails.") if your life is an endless stream of those, I could maybe see the appeal of developments like this
 
If you can't kill each other or do...other things, then I'm not sure what the point is. It's basically just a teams meeting in a 3D environment, which actually isn't that much different than setting a personalized digital background on Zoom. Perhaps there's more to it but the demonstration video didn't seem to suggest much more.

I'm with Abe on the time wasting growth of video calls with clients that could be handled over e-mail. Video chat is the new norm for a good number of clients. I generally refuse video chat or call in on video chats from my phone and don't do video, so that way I can multi-task (shop online, make lunch, clean house, etc.) while talking on the phone, which I can't do while on video chat. Particularly with these group meetings, often 80% of the discussion is information irrelevant to doing the job as a DP.

I had a client recently ask for a video chat and I told them I was available for a call, we're talking on the phone then and they ask again if I can chat on video chat, as they'd "like to get to know me." I tell them no, as I've had my time wasted too much by previous clients who wanted to video chat and didn't end up hiring me, as video chat is more time consuming. This is for a one or two day shoot; I could understand moreso if it's for a mulit-week shoot. Why does this producer need to get to know me for a one or two day shoot? She says she likes to form a personal connection with the DPs she hires. I'm not marketing my personality. Maybe she's lonely. And I get that I'm ridiculously good looking, but I ain't selling my personality like a call boy. I'm a flipping cinematographer. Hire me for cinematography, not so you can spend a day or two connecting with your new bestie that you're paying.

So there's a long awkward pause followed by more discussion of me not doing video chat and them eventually accepting I won't do video chat, after-which they then talk to me with 30 minutes of details about the shoot that I don't need to know (this is a second phone call, the last was 15 minutes of nonsense), at the end of which, they never hired me and wasted 45 minutes of my time on the phone, and didn't even have the decency to let me know the shoot wasn't happening when at the end of the call they said it likely was. Most clients I can quote and get off the phone within five minutes, but this one felt the need to go over every little detail of the shoot thinking I needed to know that in order to quote them. I didn't. And it's difficult to interrupt and tell them you don't need to know all the details. In my experience any time a client's priority is to "get to know me" for a short term shoot, they're not a good client. Gotta be careful about wasting time. These are the same type of clients who want me to act exuberantly excited about filming their boring corporate training video because they are making "art," and if they don't detect that pure unadulterated passion about their project from my laid back deadpan personality, I'm fired. Or maybe just go to call boy school and learn to seduce these lonely clients with more than just video skillz. Fortunately most clients just want to hire based on normal things like skillset, portfolio, client list, and equipment.

Perhaps I should stop saying no and just start charging for video chat meetings. That will be $250 paid in advance for a 30 minute video chat meeting. Not sure how well that will go over with freelance clients. One of my friends has been charging for video meetings with his company (jobs he's also producing) clients.
 
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Zuckerberg looks like a Nexus 6 that missed its service. These videos are a huge own goal. Terrible stuff.
 
ahalpert said:
Facebook having a midlife crisis I see

But I'll say this - I just got off a half-hour 16-person corporate Teams meeting. (The whole time I was thinking, "this should have been a series of targeted emails.") if your life is an endless stream of those, I could maybe see the appeal of developments like this
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In corporate, I've learned many employees have an average of 8-10 Teams meetings per day.

I've rarely had one that's been more useful than a series of emails, but it seems like these days people are reading less, perhaps.

mcbob said:
Whatever keeps millenials coddled at home and out of traffic is fine with me.
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This is mostly for Gen Z...some millennials are just about ready to retire, ha.

Time flies, huh?
 
really great comments down the line, but mitch gets at the essence of virtual sex being the real breakthrough application before anything else.

I do wonder if something like this might have less mental/psychological strain for boring zoom meetings. I have a spouse engrossed in a lot of that, and myself to a limited degree. Plenty of friends and family members who have complained how ineffective and taxing it is. Could a virtualized environment get people more involved collaborating with some kinds of work?

like several mentioned, I have to have a lot of phone calls that would have been way better spent as organized email exchanges with clients who want to include a lot of nonsense small talk and it is exhausting. I tend to think that this would just devolve into a lot more of that
 
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ahalpert said:
Humanity is literally doomed
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the technology on balance probably plays most to the absolute worst base instincts of people & all the cultural tendencies (in western capitalist countries at least) to atomize & be disconnected from actual human beings, encouraging a society filled with even more self-absorbed weirdos than their already is

It could also make for some really cool art projects
 
I just meant it would probably have a negative impact on the birth rate which is already in Decline. Also, what's wrong with being a weirdo?
 
Seriously though, my thoughts on why Zuckerberg is going in on the Metaverse concept is that the distanced nature of social media, where it is just text interaction devoid of subtle social cues tends to amplify people's worst instincts, and pushes discussion to extremes. When you aren't in a physical space with someone, reading their body language, eye contact and vocal intonations, you are more disconnected and feel less accountable. Add in algorithms that reward the most provocative and you end up with the nightmare that Facebook has inflicted on society. A virtual reality device that can replicate your face and eye movements into a digital avatar you engage and speak with will bring some humanity back into social media. Maybe that will fix some of the problems with social media, although it may create new ones we can't forsee. VR is probably twenty years away from being ubiquitous though so I think he's just playing a long game.
 
Yes, I can't wait to let my life slip away in a la-z-boy and vr goggles. I could get fed by iv drip and have my taste neurons stimulated while I eat virtual pizza. Sounds very humanizing and not at all like a voluntary Matrix
 
ahalpert said:
Yes, I can't wait to let my life slip away in a la-z-boy and vr goggles. I could get fed by iv drip and have my taste neurons stimulated while I eat virtual pizza. Sounds very humanizing and not at all like a voluntary Matrix
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VR gaming is actually more physically demanding than watching TV or playing 2d games. I can't do it for more than an hour or two. But, I was speaking in relative terms. Social media interaction in VR will be more humanizing than what it currently is, mostly faceless people vomiting vitriol on each other without any emotional consequence. I play this VR game Star Wars Squadrons, which in multiplayer mode you play in squads of five against other teams and communicate with each other over comms. While the novelty of the game has long worn off, I keep coming back to play because of the camaraderie and social interaction with the people I've met on there. The amount of toxicity drops when people are actually talking to each other.
 
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