VR and virtual worlds have been explored for decades, both in fiction and in the real world. The issue has always been that the target market is small. I don't know how Meta does market study, but the conclusion was already foreseen.
But the realm of what you can do with a computer is huge and working on the web is a very small part of it. Some other interesting part (for me) are OS development, network communication, computer architecture, embedded hardware and programming languages.
I am not Meta, neither are you, nor are we doing things on their level. You can just build small things for you and your friends that fits your specific usecase that other tools do not fit yet, it doesn't need to be a world changing idea.
Look at how Meta's "ideas" turn out.
VR and metaverse surely sound like interesting stuff. Right? Right???