Are we sure we want the "Metaverse" to be a dominant fixture in our lives?

Yup.

Like the writer I've spent more than my fair share of my life in virtual otherworlds. But I need humans - real, living, breathing, rib-breaking humans. I'm off to a game fair today, not because I want to see all the releases - because lord knows I'll be buying them all and its not really like going to UK Games Expo or GAMA - but because the bonds of social interaction and physical interaction are important.

Dopamine. Oxytocin. Serotonin. The spikes we get from social media likes or videogames are tiny compared with what we get from exercise and human contact. Tiny little baby spikes, just enough to get us hooked on the treadmill but not enough power to self actualise.

Jack, Zuck and the tech bros are offering virtual indenture serfitude.

And with Bobby still in post, and the TTS debacle and what I see every day in world chat in MMO's? It's a hateful space, built by edgelords for edgelords.

We. Can. Do. Better.

Our survival as a species demands we do.

You only need to look at D&D in the virtual space and compare it to D&D in the physical space. It's just not the same. Was your experience of the pandemic the same as mine I wonder? Trapped in a small box with one window on the world outside, with that window being a virtual one.

Did you spend three months in lockdown thinking 'if only my life was like this all of the time'?

No. You did not.

And I fucking love virtual worlds. But sometimes you just want to hug a stranger in the street and tell them everything is going to be OK. And that 'loading virtual hug' meme?

Some techbro fucking owns that sucker as a NFT.