[littlestymaar]

But we don't actually want big corps to take swings to build the torment nexus.

There's a wide consensus that this kind of tech is going to have a negative effect on society and how humans interact with each other, but there's also this myth that this is inevitable and that we just have to accept it.

But it's not reality: there's no reason for it to be inevitable, and it's just that the most wealthy companies are pushing it hard, because they see it as a big money maker.

[andsoitis]

People buy these products. People use these products.

[littlestymaar]

Well for VR headsets people actually don't buy these products. And we now have 2 of the biggest companies in the world who have each burned a dozen billion trying to make it happens.

Also, even if people did this isn't a argument either: people do buy Fentanyl, and that's not a good justification for inventing it.

[Tarq0n]

The meta quest headsets have sold somewhere between 15 and 20 million units, that's a respectable game console.

[asadotzler]

tens of billions of dollars and ten years of effort for fewer than ten million monthly active Quest users. it's a joke.

[littlestymaar]

Ah yeah, the most hyped device since the Game Boy selling out like the Wii U is the canonical definition of success.

Worse than that, even people who bought it aren't actually using it. No wonder why Meta's VR division operational losses are higher than their turnover…

[Tarq0n]

That's moving the goalposts. Your claim was that these products don't have a market, they do.

[littlestymaar]

Nope, you are: I never said the consumer base size is strictly zero, what I'm saying is that it's not the market driving the pursuit of this technology (as can be seen by the low traction compared to the enormous expanses it incurs on Facebook and Apple) but the ideology of technological inevitability, and the desire of the big corporations to create a new market from scratch in opposition to consumers preference (who aren't really interested).

But there is “no market” in the sense that it's just a heavily subsidized product (except the subsidies come from private companies and not from the public sector) and if it wasn't driven by this multi billion yearly subsidies, the product would not even exist.