So, I’m watching another billionaire in a quarter-zip sweater stand on a sterile, white stage, gesturing at a giant screen behind him. The screen shows a cartoon version of himself, with better hair, high-fiving a dragon in some neon-drenched digital city. The audience, a mix of tech journalists who’ve been flown in on the company’s dime and true-believer employees, claps like they’ve just witnessed the second coming.
And me? I’m just sitting here, watching the livestream from my cluttered desk, with the distinct feeling that I’m being sold a timeshare on a planet I have no interest in visiting.
This is the "future" they keep shoving down our throats. A future of endless virtual meetings where we’re represented by legless, bobble-headed avatars. A future where we "own" digital sneakers for a digital self that can’t actually run anywhere. A future where the most profound human experiences—community, friendship, discovery—are mediated through a headset that’ll be obsolete in 18 months.
Give me a break.
The Shiny New Prison
Let's get one thing straight. Every time a tech CEO uses the word "community," what they really mean is "captive audience." When they say "decentralized," they mean "a dozen different companies will get a cut instead of just one." And when they promise "empowerment," they mean they're empowering you to spend real money on their fake crap.
This whole grand vision is a solution in search of a problem nobody actually has. Do you know anyone, a real person who doesn't work in marketing for a VR company, who has ever said, "You know what I miss? The feeling of putting on a heavy, sweaty headset to sit in a virtual conference room that looks like a rejected set from Tron"? Me neither.
They're building a digital theme park. That’s the best analogy I can come up with. It's a place that looks incredible from the brochure, all bright colors and smiling faces. But once you're inside, you realize the walls are high, the exits are hidden, and every single thing, from the virtual churros to the digital t-shirts, costs you something. It’s designed for maximum engagement and maximum extraction. It’s a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of an idea, gift-wrapped in utopian nonsense.
Are we really so desperate for an escape that we’re willing to trade the messiness of the real world for the sterile, pre-packaged perfection of a corporate-owned one?
It's Not About You, It's About Them
I’m tired of pretending this is for our benefit. This ain't progress; it's a land grab. The last unclaimed territory isn't some distant continent; it's the space between your ears. It’s your attention, your social connections, your very perception of reality. And they want to own it. All of it.
Think about the data. We already freak out when our phone listens to us and serves up an ad for something we just talked about. Now imagine a world where a company logs not just what you say, but where you look. How long your gaze lingers on a particular brand of virtual soda. The subtle hesitation in your voice when you greet a digital colleague. This isn't just targeted advertising; it's the wholesale commodification of the human soul. They promise a world of infinite possibility, but what they're building is a world of infinite surveillance, and we're just...
It’s like that one time I looked up a specific brand of dog food for a friend and for the next six months, the internet treated me like I was personally responsible for the global canine kibble supply chain. Now, imagine that level of invasive marketing, but it’s literally painted on the walls of your virtual house. Offcourse, they'll call it "personalized content." They always do.
What happens when your "digital citizenship" is tied to your compliance? When getting kicked out of the dominant virtual world means losing your job, your friends, and your digital assets? It’s a feudal system with better graphics. A company town where the company owns the very air you breathe, or at least the pixels that represent it.
The Uncomfortable Truth We're Ignoring
And here’s the part that really gets me. The part that keeps me up at night. It’s not just that they're building this digital cage. It’s that we seem so eager to walk right into it.
We line up for the new hardware. We parrot the marketing buzzwords. We get excited about digital concerts and virtual real estate, ignoring the fact that we're essentially paying rent to a landlord who can change the laws of physics on a whim.
Maybe I’m the crazy one here. Maybe I’m just an old man yelling at a cloud, unable to see the beauty in a world where you never have to leave your couch again. Perhaps the next generation, raised on TikTok and Roblox, sees this as a natural evolution. Maybe the desire for genuine, unscripted, and sometimes awkward human interaction is a bug, not a feature.
But I don't think so. I think we’re being sold a fantasy because our reality is becoming increasingly difficult. It's easier to sell someone a virtual paradise when the world outside their window is on fire, both literally and figuratively. It's a digital opiate for the masses, and the dealers are the richest people in human history.
What are we losing in this trade? We’re losing serendipity—bumping into an old friend on the street. We’re losing the texture of real life—the smell of rain on hot asphalt, the feeling of a real handshake, the shared silence with someone you love in the same room. We’re trading the infinite complexity of reality for a simplified, gamified, and ultimately controlled version of it. And I have to ask, is that a world worth living in?
So, We're Just Doing This, Huh?
Let’s just call it what it is. It's a grift. A massive, multi-trillion-dollar grift designed to turn the last free-range parts of human life—our relationships, our identities, our imaginations—into a subscription service. It’s the ultimate walled garden, and they’re not just trying to sell you the apples; they’re trying to sell you the concept of fruit itself. And the most terrifying part of it all? It's probably going to work.
