Mark Zuckerberg looked at the burning pile of money formerly known as Facebook's stock price and decided the real problem was that we weren't spending enough time as legless cartoon avatars.
In a move that analysts are calling "bold" and "insane" depending on how much they're getting paid to say it, Meta has doubled down on the metaverse—a place where you can attend a virtual meeting that could have been an email, but now your coworker has a floating torso and no explanation for it.
Nobody was sitting around in 2021 thinking, "You know what my life is missing?
A worse version of a Zoom call where I have to render my own legs." And yet, here we are.
Meta's Reality Labs division has now lost tens of billions of dollars, which is the kind of number that stops being money and starts being a rounding error in the national debt.
The pitch, as far as anyone can tell, is that one day we'll all live, work, and shop in a persistent virtual world.
Which is basically Second Life with a better marketing budget and a CEO who won't stop talking about it.
It peaked in 2007 and even it figured out that people mostly wanted to build weird houses and avoid their real responsibilities, not attend branded experiences.
Meanwhile, the actual product—the Horizon Worlds app—has been described generously as "a place." Users have complained about bugs, empty servers, and the general vibe of a mall food court at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday.
Meta responded by adding more avatar customization options and a feature that lets you do the Macarena.
Here's the thing that makes this whole saga so deliciously absurd: Meta is chasing a future that its own users keep telling it they don't want.
The company renamed itself from Facebook to Meta in a move that fooled absolutely no one, then proceeded to watch its core business get eaten alive by TikTok while it poured billions into a digital theme park with no rides.
And still, Zuckerberg keeps showing up to earnings calls like a guy who's three years deep into a pyramid scheme and just needs one more recruit to make it all back.
To be fair, the metaverse might eventually be something.
But there's a difference between "this technology is early" and "this technology is a solution in search of a problem while the CEO uses it to avoid admitting he bet wrong." Meta is firmly in the second camp, and no amount of virtual legs is going to change that.
If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a trillion-dollar company lights money on fire and calls it innovation, open Horizon Worlds.
But hey—at least your avatar can wave. **The Verdict:** Meta is currently that friend who won't stop talking about their crypto portfolio at a dinner party.
Final Thoughts
And the host is quietly wondering when it's socially acceptable to leave.