When you get neither what you want or what you need?
Where do you go after that moment when you've reached the end of your rope, look around and realise that you're alone? That there's no one beside you and nothing ahead of you; and no one to hear when you scream against the placid walls of your own maddening isolation and despair? How do you go on when everything you've worked towards for so long, and dedicated so much towards, ends up leading you nowhere but to the tattered barriers of the 'dead-end road'? What do you do when you're truly broken, utterly and completely, and are resigned to little else but headless flittering and idiotic gawping desperate for some sort of release from the bars of your own shuttered mind; whether that be from the indescribable and invisible myth called 'Salvation' or the comforting embrace of endless and final annihilation? What do you- wait, I think I was supposed to be talking about Facebook but ended up doing a stream of conscious instead. Yeah, forget all that and apply it to the Facebook/Meta situation instead; it's actually quite analogous!
Meta is not a company I expected to become a regular on this blog, indeed I thought the world of social media would be like oil to my water... totally insoluble. But here I am, somehow talking about the machinations of a 'Social media conglomerate mega corporation' who once made the shockingly bizarre move to die at the feet of the games industry, whilst thrashing and chucking several billions worth down the drain in an insane death dance of mortifying connotations. I think it's fair to say that no single company has thrown itself so neatly out of it's comfortzone and into the fire, and if the world of tech entrepreneurs was ever at risk of becoming too risqué, Mark Zukcerberg has effectively slapped that industry back in line with his glorious and fascinating self immolation act.
And like a flame-struck moth dancing to the rhythm of it's fiery master, I surrender myself to the carnage everytime I see it. How can I not? Meta's downfall is totally fascinating, both in the way it seems both so predictable and oddly earnest on the behalf of people who aren't all Mark! Yes, there are living blood people inside of Meta who somehow believe that the Metaverse future hill which Mark is dying on has genuine potential if only their robotic ruler will reveal it's granduer to the world. Even the lead in charge of those metaverse ambitions, who recently quit, did so for the mismanagement of the project which led to billions in wasted production funds, rather than for the sheer insanity of the idea. Which to me only means one thing: Mark has a true vision for his proposed platform that he is stubbornly hiding from the world. Either that or he's created a mind-washing cult of personality around himself to beguile and befuddle his employees.
I simply need explained to me what on earth is so very interesting about the idea of an interconnected marketplace where brands struggle over each other for virtual space that they can trap people around. Isn't that just a VR version of the Internet that we already have? Why add extra steps? In this world that trends ever closer to easier methods of interaction, Mark is the only tech industry leader trying to make everyone's lives markedly harder. It's like this man heard the 'Arsenal Gear' speech at the of Metal Gear Solid 2 and suddenly decided to make his entire life trajectory based off of the video game chat wherein the AI man predicted fake news through the democratization of knowledge. I love a good Kojima plotline as much as the next guy, but there are limits one needs to stop at when it comes to assimilating products into their own daily life and identity.
What repeatedly astounds me about Meta's trajectory is the unending consistency with which the company always does the wrong thing to be either profitable or popular in an industry that lives and dies with the popularity contest of it's users. Meta should know that a social platform needs to make it's users feel at home, else they'll jump ship to the next big thing as what literally happened with Facebook. And yet you've got the brand new CTO doing the unspeakable and actually burning one of the few communities that Meta actually did manage to build under some hypothetical pursuit of a greater reward down the line. I mean at this point you have to ask whether or not these people are operating under the gaze of some sort of backwards doomsday clock which is going to give them a reverse Uno card if they just do one more blatantly stupid move.
I am, of course talking, about Andy Bosworth and his absolute dead-set march towards the position of being 'unequivocal villain.' If you saw Puss In Boots, consider Andy the real-life equivalent of Jack Horner: an irredeemable monster and proud of it. Echo VR is perhaps the only 'game' under the META umbrella of products that has seen any sort of traction. People seemed to think it fun enough not only to form a community around, but to even create E-Sports events venerating and celebrating the game. The Dev team behind it were pretty much only keeping the game running at this point, all of the hype behind what they originally created found fuel in the love of the community, and what a community it was! Tens of thousands of players treating a VR game like an actually serious gaming endeavour- that could be the start of an actual movement over at the META offices!
And it's gone. Yes, Andy swooped in and slapped the 'cancel' hammer on Echo VR for the most 'I don't get the position I've been given' reason of all time. In a self-recorded video he willingly posted on the Internet, so that all the world can see his gormless face in the flesh, Bosworth announced that the game "Dwindled." But he didn't stop there. "It's user base is loyal as all get-out, but it's small. Measured in, you know, the low ten thousands" He'd rather direct those resources to the "Tens of millions of people that are now in VR." Now sure, if you share the same level level of mental acuity as a particularly ripe walnut than perhaps this logic makes sense to you. If not, well then, you might strike your own head in sheer exasperation and ask why in the right mind a struggling VR platform would bereave tens of thousands of loyal players on a low-maintenance game for the sake of assimilating an entire world of potential consumers within a single mega-project. I don't even think this is terminal 'marketing brain' fogging the man's brain, because even marketers understand the value of a varied offering of experience where possible- I genuinely this Andy is just clueless.
Of course, I haven't just given Andy the title of 'self-destructive troll' for just one of his bad calls. Despite having a history of working with Facebook, Bosworth went so far as to lambast the 'philanthropic' nature of META as a distraction to it's plans. Yes, Facebook/META which is famously complicit in some of the most horrible crimes known to man, (and that is no exaggeration: Look up Facebook and Myanmar) apparently shouldn't perform the bare basic minimum to keep their own staff able to sleep at night. No, Andy is terrified of Zuckerberg losing his edge and going off to start his own 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation' or whatever bogeyman these corporate ghouls suffer sleep-paralysis threating over. It almost feels like Bosworth is a literal scrooge set-up to absorb all the disparagement that should be heading META's way.
META is sliding down a fiery pit to hell in the manner that I think all the world is happy to celebrate, but watching the billions of revenue crackle and fizzle into charred nothing in the ashy decent genuinely hurts my soul to watch. In some ways, it's like watching a great greek titan, who's back seemingly held up all the world, torn away from his task only to realise the new age has totally circumvented his one role in life and thus he has been left bereft and without purpose. The social media space has forsaken them, the Metaverse concept has been co-opted by every other WEB3 grifter across the Internet and the Facebook users of today can't even spread a good conspiracy to save their life. They're a washed up, worn-out, geriatric, slum house rehab clinic frequented only the passing brand accounts and soul-rotted octogenarians who only stick around to have a safe echo-chamber they can call their own. Maybe that level of obstinate despondency is simply the vibe that Andy B is trying to cultivate- play to your audience, why don't ya?
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