[flxy]

To offer an additional perspective:

A far less monetized and more user content focused version of "the Metaverse" already exists: VRChat. It's been around since before Covid and it is still around. Granted, yes, it is still mostly a niche hobby for some very dedicated people, not all of whom even use VR, but it exists. I think the people who would have been interested in Meta's product looked at it and thought "But we already have a less crappy version of this that's not tied to a questionable company." Especially since Meta's handling of Oculus has been far from great (i.e. requiring a Facebook/Meta account just to use any headset, as opposed to the separate account like before).

But as I said, it's still fairly niche and mostly serves as an escape for people. I think slapping the whole "buy in-world items with crypto" thing on top of that just made the target group even smaller than before. It just felt like jumping onto any tech buzz words to broaden appeal, when it actually caused the opposite. For all the data they're supposed to have, that was poor decision making imo.