Escapism and the metaverse

Hi friends,

Lately I’ve been thinking about escapism and the metaverse.

Last summer, Facebook announced its decision to rebrand as Meta and focus on “the Metaverse,” a form of virtual reality that can replicate much of the features of physical reality (but better, in a more monetizable way). In the announcement video, Zuckerberg talks a lot about “presence” and “shared sense of space” when describing his vision for the metaverse:

“We believe the metaverse will the successor to the mobile internet. We’ll be able to feel present, like we’re right there with people, no matter how far apart we actually are… When I send my parents a video of my kids, they’ll feel like they’re in the moment with us, not peering in through a little window. When you play a game with friends, you’ll feel like you’re right there together in a different world, not just on your computer by yourself. And when you’re in a meeting in the metaverse, it’ll feel like you’re right in the room together, making eye contact, having a shared sense of space, and not looking at a grid of faces on a screen.”

For a while I couldn’t imagine how the metaverse as envisioned by Meta/Facebook could ever be successful. Physical reality is too appealing to want to spend all of our time in virtual reality. So much time and effort would have to go into developing technology that would make the virtual world more like physical reality, but we already have a real, physical world that doesn’t require resources to enhance its realness. Why go to such lengths to recreate something that already exists?

The motivation behind the creation of the metaverse makes more sense when we think not about what consumers want, but what the market requires. Capitalism is positioned on unabated growth, and the physical world is at the edge of accumulation. Public spaces and wilderness are shrinking, becoming increasingly enclosed and privatized. But virtual real estate and assets are unlimited.

Katherine Cross writes in WIRED:

“So as capitalism consumes ever more of the world’s tangible resources, which are inherently finite, a need for intangible goods rises in the quest to create new markets. The best part is that, unlike oil, lithium, or coltan, intangible goods are seemingly inexhaustible.

Every iPhone produced has a base cost in resource extraction, parts, and labor. But imagine an online game that sells a magic unicorn mount for $4.99. Think of the labor that went into its production: There had to be an artist/designer, a programmer, and a 3D modeler involved, and so on. Real work was done. But once the asset is created, our digital unicorn is infinitely reproducible for next to nothing.”

Just as NFTs were created to give people something to buy with cryptocurrency, the metaverse is being created to give companies more ways to commodify reality. In the metaverse, there is the potential for every transaction to be monetized and surveilled.

So the impetus to create the metaverse arises from the need to create new markets. But what would compel us to participate in the metaverse?

One possibility is that our current physical reality becomes truly uninhabitable.

The idea that virtual reality can be used to escape the real world is not a new one. In 2008 sci-fi novel Ready Player One, people spend most of their waking hours in a virtual reality setting called the OASIS, as the real world is plagued by problems related to climate change and economic collapse. Public schools are overcrowded and underfunded, so virtual OASIS schools are presented as cost-efficient alternatives. Travel is prohibitively expensive for most people, but you can traverse the universe (for a price) in the OASIS. While the physical world crumbles, the digital world is a safe haven, accessible to anyone with an OASIS headset and an internet connection.

COVID-19 accelerated a trend that had already begun long ago—the accumulation of capital. While over half a billion people have been pushed into extreme poverty since the start of the pandemic, billionaires in the U.S. have added $1.2 trillion to their net worths in the last two years. Much of this accumulated capital has been invested in entertainment (think Marvel movies and triple-A game titles), which can offer high returns, even in the midst of a recession.

It makes sense that people would turn to escapism in times of economic crisis. Hollywood thrived and entered its “golden age” during the Great Depression. IGN described 2008, year of the global financial crisis, as “one of the biggest years ever for movies.” COVID-19, too, has overseen a rise in entertainment spending. While entertainment industry revenue in 2020 fell 20%, Netflix saw a 60% increase in its stock value in 2020 and an 11% increase in 2021. Time spent on gaming during COVID-19 increased around the world. In 2021, consumer spending on entertainment recovered, reaching $99.7 billion and nearly matching pre-pandemic spending levels. And it’s not just adults—in 2020, 75% of US kids ages 9 to 12 played Roblox.

What makes the metaverse distinct from other forms of entertainment is that it is envisioned not just as a place to spend our limited leisure time, but a place where we can spend as much time as possible—whether working, socializing or playing—without worrying about physical conditions like, say, a global pandemic. With COVID-19 we spent more time online as going outside became unsafe. And with this increased time spent online came, for many, an increased sense of digital identity. Although clothing sales declined in 2020, virtual clothing sales increased. Nike recently purchased RTFKT Studios, which in 2021 sold 631 pairs of virtual sneakers, generating $3.1 million in under five minutes. Entertainment may be recession-proof, but the metaverse will be pandemic-proof.

In Zuckerberg’s announcement, he says, “This isn’t about spending more time on screens. It’s about making the time that we already spend better.” He’s right, in a way—the metaverse isn’t simply about spending more time on screens, it’s about blurring the line between the digital and the physical, making you forget that you’re in front of a screen at all.

But the ultimate goal is still to increase our time in the metaverse, whether that means being in front of a screen or existing in layers of augmented reality. The more time we spend in the metaverse, the more real it becomes. The more real it is, the more likely we are to spend money on it. The new frontier is not pixels, but users’ time and attention.

From a Washington Post article on the proliferation of sprawling open-world games:

Chris Plante, the editor in chief and co-founder of the gaming and entertainment site Polygon, said studios originally set out to create immersive worlds that “feel alive.”

“Now we have games where the studios realize it’s less about the game, from a creative vision,” Plante said. “And more of a: ‘How do we, as a company, control your time?’ ”

All of this is because the more time someone spends within a game’s world, the more likely they’ll be to spend money in that game, said Brendan Keogh, a researcher at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. The largest game publishers aren’t interested in just selling copies of the games, Keogh said. Instead, these massive studios are interested in holding players’ attention — the one commodity valued by every entertainment empire from Disney to Netflix.

By no means am I immune to escapism through virtual reality. So far I’ve logged over 100 hours playing Cyberpunk 2077 and spent more on games in the past three years than ever before. I’m not saying that escapism is inherently bad—we need something to help us get through difficult times. But we must keep in mind that escapism is a short term solution—after re-emerging from virtual reality, we still have to confront our physical reality. And we must keep in mind that both of these realities have been shaped by capitalism—there is no real escape.

Billionaires and tech companies are cynical. They are assuming that escapism and greed will power the metaverse; if we’re going to try to escape the hellscape that we have inherited as a result of capitalism, they want to make sure that we go to a place of their own design. They believe that escape is inevitable as the only viable solution, hence their investment in initiatives that aim to protect themselves from the consequences of climate change, rather than actually reduce emissions (e.g. billionaires building doomsday bunkers in anticipation of climate-related societal breakdown, investors pouring $14.5 billion into space infrastructure in 2021). While technology isn’t yet sophisticated enough and our physical reality (maybe) not yet devastating enough to make us want to retreat into the metaverse, they believe it will only be a matter of time until we get to that point. In fact, they’re counting on it.

Imagine their surprise if we stick around and fight.

Thanks for reading! Some post-scripts:

• Now that COVID-19 is “over,” the eviction moratorium has ended, rents are rising, and homeless New Yorkers have been targeted by the rounds of encampment sweeps. New Yorkers, please urge your representatives to support the Good Cause Eviction bill, which would make it more difficult for landlords to raise rent and evict tenants.

• Texas woman Lizelle Herrera was recently arrested for “self-induced abortion” and charged with murder. Please consider donating to her legal defense and economic relief fund, which was organized by Frontera Fund.

• For more reading on the metaverse, crypto, NFTs and web3, check out Web3 is going just great, a compilation of web3-related news created by Molly White.