| Meta Mania Facebook is facing perhaps its most intense scrutiny since founder Mark Zuckerberg was wandering the dorm halls of Harvard hoping to get a date, with the company's own leaked internal research and communications showing that it was aware that its platforms contribute to depression in teenage girls, monetize misinformation, and undermine democracy worldwide.
On Thursday, Zuckerberg announced Facebook's bold new plan to address these ills...LOL just kidding. Zuck announced that the company is changing its name to "Meta," to reflect their efforts to develop the "metaverse," an interactive online virtual reality environment.
To be clear, the Facebook platform will still be called Facebook. Meta is the rebranding they are giving to the company at large.
Zuckerberg unveiled his conception of the metaverse in a demonstration video where he walked through the virtual setting, selected an outfit for his avatar to wear, and chatted with friends. It was just as weird and awkward as you might expect.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook's attempted rebranding drew online mockery, including from other brands and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Personally, your friendly neighborhood Mediaite newsletter correspondent is a fan of the cyberpunk science fiction genre, but it should be noted that the online universes in novels like Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash or Ernest Cline's Ready Player One were created as an escape when reality became an unbearable, oppressive, violent, unstable dystopia. We'd be far more impressed with Zuck's metaverse if his company wasn't such a major contributor to screwing up things in the real world.
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