Speaker 1: What's meta my verse? This is it could happen here,
Speaker 1: a podcast entirely dedicated to the metaverse, UM, which is
Speaker 1: the promise of the human future. Um On with me,
Speaker 1: as always is my co host Mark Zuckerberg. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know how talks. I'm not sure how. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know whose voice you were doing.
Speaker 1: I guess he sounds like nothing, like no one, like
Speaker 1: the absence of a soul noise when it's dial up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on inside his head in any moment
Speaker 1: when he's not actively making the Internet worse. It's just
Speaker 1: a dial tone in there. Awesome, Garrison, what are we
Speaker 1: talking about today? Well, yeah, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: the metaverse and how how it's different from what people
Speaker 1: talk about it as. And yeah, it's it's gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's it's gonna it's gonna touch on a variety of
Speaker 1: things that split up into two parts. Um. But first,
Speaker 1: I would like to paint you a picture with words,
Speaker 1: a word picture. So you're, yeah, you're walking walking through
Speaker 1: your favorite grocery store. There's you know, cards passing by,
Speaker 1: horrible horrible music playing. It's the lighting is white and
Speaker 1: and like overexposed and under exposed at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's hard, it's hard to see. And this, uh,
Speaker 1: this like a person who looks like an employee keeps
Speaker 1: keeps popping up and trying to take you to different
Speaker 1: sections of the store. You're trying to just ignore her.
Speaker 1: It's a very annoying. All you need to get is
Speaker 1: the stuff you have on a little list, and it's
Speaker 1: it's awful. Um. Eventually you get so fed up with
Speaker 1: this whole experience that you take out, You go to
Speaker 1: where the wine bottles are, you take them out, and
Speaker 1: you arrange them into a giant penis on the floor,
Speaker 1: because that's the only thing you can do because you're
Speaker 1: not actually in a store. You're in your living room
Speaker 1: and you have a horrible headset on, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to do shopping in a virtual in a virtual grocery store. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the actual kind of scope of what
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about today is virtual marketplaces and
Speaker 1: how they interact with seemingly real marketplaces. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: this is inspired by There were a couple of videos
Speaker 1: that dropped recently, one of them from I think Walmart.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk, We're gonna be We're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about it. So yeah, So a couple a couple of
Speaker 1: days after New Year, a video went viral across the
Speaker 1: social media's ranking, up over like eleven million views on
Speaker 1: Twitter um and it was titled how Walmart envisions shopping
Speaker 1: in the mold in the metaverse Now, So what followed
Speaker 1: was like two minutes of an embarrassing like VR jank,
Speaker 1: including like throwing around virtual gallons of milk from your
Speaker 1: cart into a virtual fridge many many dunks are made.
Speaker 1: Fun was had, But what few people probably realized is
Speaker 1: that like this, actually this this wasn't a Walmart metaverse
Speaker 1: test store. This was actually a five year old tech
Speaker 1: demo from before non Neil Stevenson fans even knew what
Speaker 1: the term metaverse meant. So a few years back, a
Speaker 1: tech company called a Mutual Mobile partnered with Walmart for
Speaker 1: a project set to quote reimagine retailed virtual reality. Now
Speaker 1: that sounds very fancy and important, but considering this was
Speaker 1: five years ago and you're not hearing about it until now,
Speaker 1: shows how impactful this thing actually was. The first stated
Speaker 1: goal of the tech demo, according to the mutual mobile
Speaker 1: website was to impress influencers at south By Southwest ten
Speaker 1: so you know, just like the so called metaverse is now,
Speaker 1: this was largely a promotional project um and a way
Speaker 1: to attract investors. This was this was never actually a
Speaker 1: serious thing. It's I'm gonna say it right now. South
Speaker 1: By Southwest was always one of the stupidest things in
Speaker 1: the world. Um And when it comes act, it will
Speaker 1: be still because it's stupid. It's a stupid place for
Speaker 1: the most insufferable people in the world to come and
Speaker 1: talk about technology. Some people also listen to music. That's fine,
Speaker 1: so yeah. For for the for the experience itself, they
Speaker 1: used an original Oculus rift and programmed roughly like four
Speaker 1: minute linear um expedition into a barren, hellish digital walmart
Speaker 1: where you pick up and throw it did it did
Speaker 1: sound exactly. My favorite thing about this video is they
Speaker 1: were clearly using the audio of some sort of like
Speaker 1: shooter game because it was often like things would it
Speaker 1: would sound like you were in like fucking doom going
Speaker 1: through a portal. It was extremely funny. It was bad.
Speaker 1: It sounded like hell you'll you'll pick up and throw
Speaker 1: fake wine bottles into your blue digital cart and the
Speaker 1: whole thing ends with a fake drone delivering an eight
Speaker 1: D dollar TV that you fake purchased. It's it's not great.
Speaker 1: What Mutual Mobile and Walmart were trying to do. They
Speaker 1: have a constatement on their website back from seventeen It
Speaker 1: was they said that Walmart envisioned unveiling a fully virtual
Speaker 1: shopping experience that puts shoppers inside the store without ever
Speaker 1: leaving their homes to attract customers and to spel the
Speaker 1: misconception that they're not as advanced as their more digital counterparts.
Speaker 1: Brick and mortar establishments are not only accelerating investments in
Speaker 1: areas like web and mobile, they're also exploring the very
Speaker 1: edge of emerging technology. Walmart of virtual reality is a
Speaker 1: case some point potential shoppers can virtually pick up products,
Speaker 1: read labels, talk to virtual associates, and fill their shopping carts.
Speaker 1: But the goal wasn't just to create something interactive. Walmart
Speaker 1: needed something that showed the potential of VR in retail
Speaker 1: while putting them ahead of the competition. So I mean
Speaker 1: this was like this was this was kind of ahead
Speaker 1: in some ways, but also ahead in the ways that
Speaker 1: it's kind of showing how not useful this example is
Speaker 1: so obviously like this five year old video resurface now
Speaker 1: due to Zuckerberg and Epic Games, you know, forcing an
Speaker 1: astroturfed metaverse into the cultural zeitgeist, coupled with or you know,
Speaker 1: conflation of anything VR to the legendary metaverse, right, because
Speaker 1: VR does not equal metaverse, nor is it nor is
Speaker 1: it necessarily vice versa. But now these terms are getting
Speaker 1: used so interchangeably that someone can stumble across this video
Speaker 1: and be like, oh, look at this metaverse store when like,
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's just a it's just a VR text.
Speaker 1: The metaverse in order to be like the thing that
Speaker 1: people have been imagining through cyberpunk since like the nineties,
Speaker 1: it needs to be persistent and interact directly with the
Speaker 1: real world in a number of ways, like it it's
Speaker 1: it's it's well, we'll get into we'll get into kind
Speaker 1: of what metaverse could be in the future in terms
Speaker 1: of like the it could happen here idea and then
Speaker 1: not just a metaverse, but a series of metaverse is
Speaker 1: what they could be, and how that kind of can
Speaker 1: negates the original idea of it in the first place.
Speaker 1: But um. When asked by Vice News about the resurgence
Speaker 1: of their Walmart project, Mutual Mobile replied, the vision of
Speaker 1: a virtual shopping experience we helped Walmart realize back in
Speaker 1: t seventeen stands validated in the metaverse eara of today.
Speaker 1: This whole experience has only encouraged us to keep experimenting, innovating,
Speaker 1: and leading the charge with cutting edge tech. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: considering most of the virility of this was people joking
Speaker 1: about it, I yeah, sure, okay, okay, Mutual good good
Speaker 1: luck with that. So a few days after the Walmart
Speaker 1: video went viral, rumors of another big box store going
Speaker 1: metaverse started to circulate again, accompanied by a video of
Speaker 1: a possible like three D metaverse storefront. Reports emerged, starting
Speaker 1: in India, claiming that H and M had announced that
Speaker 1: it would offer its customers a three dimensional shopping experience
Speaker 1: in its a virtual store inside the metaverse via something
Speaker 1: called Now. I don't know if it's keek City or
Speaker 1: seek City. Um, I'm not really comfortable saying either of
Speaker 1: those things because they sound weird, but I'm gonna go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with seek City. That's something. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit better. It sounds like it's a slur. I know,
Speaker 1: I know, but it sounds like it's a slur. So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say seek, but it's it's see k um.
Speaker 1: So this This account on on Twitter called us seek
Speaker 1: VR shared the following from its official Twitter account, Shopping
Speaker 1: in the Metaverse with seek coin. Concept VR store, presented
Speaker 1: to H and M by Seek creates mainstream use cases
Speaker 1: for seek coin and scaling virtual reality beyond games. So
Speaker 1: I'll get into what seek is in a bit. But
Speaker 1: the report said that customers will be able to walk
Speaker 1: through the store choose the apparel they wanted to purchase
Speaker 1: in the Sikh City universe. Um. Although the clothes could
Speaker 1: only be worn in the digital environment, payment would be
Speaker 1: made with seek coin and customers could have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to order the same apparel from H and m's physical
Speaker 1: stores later. But that's you're buying two separate things. One
Speaker 1: of us the digital skin, one of its an actual,
Speaker 1: you know, real thing. Um So what a seek? Seek
Speaker 1: was launched in It's a metaverse coin pop project built
Speaker 1: on the Ethereum blockchain and their their Their goal is
Speaker 1: to connect artists, athletes, and other digital content creators directly
Speaker 1: with their fans and virtual worlds. Seeks n f T
Speaker 1: Marketplaces is designed to enable real ownership of the way
Speaker 1: in which I would actually want. That is, if it's
Speaker 1: me having a very sexual zoom chat with you know what,
Speaker 1: we don't need to garrison, please continue, okay. Quoting from
Speaker 1: siks Weubside. Seek currently offers a range of immersive ther
Speaker 1: experiences within Seek City, including theater, concert arenas, sports complex,
Speaker 1: hang out lounge, and more. There are all the things
Speaker 1: you can do in your real home, but weird and
Speaker 1: on the Internet. This is horrible, as I see a
Speaker 1: potential appeal for people who are like out in the
Speaker 1: sticks or in parts of the world where they're not
Speaker 1: they feel not like they're very politically or whatevery disconnected,
Speaker 1: which is the same thing the Internet it already does.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about being in VR will make it better.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've lived in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 1: and relied on the Internet to be social, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I would have wanted to change the Internet
Speaker 1: in for this because it sounds yeah, anyway, I'll talk.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about use cases in a sec. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so end users will be able to use Seek token
Speaker 1: to make purchases vote for content control programming. A much
Speaker 1: more after token launch, seek VR, in partnership with Universal Music,
Speaker 1: can realize live performances of world famous artists such as
Speaker 1: Bong Jovi, Lady Gaga, You Too, Sting, and many more
Speaker 1: can take place on this platform. So seek is like
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of the startup, but it's been around
Speaker 1: for a while. It's trying to do like you know,
Speaker 1: virtual venues inside the metaverse. They they do have contracts
Speaker 1: with Universal so it's it's it's a mix of trying
Speaker 1: it's it's a mix of this coin, so it's a
Speaker 1: mix of this like cryptocurrency, also trying to use the
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency in this world. They're trying to build up. UM.
Speaker 1: There their their their roadmap to Metaverse right now. First
Speaker 1: thing is like payment integration, so using seak Coin. They
Speaker 1: want sea Coin to be the coin for everything in
Speaker 1: the metaverse. They want all of the Metaverse be based
Speaker 1: off this thing that they invented called sea Coin because
Speaker 1: it will make them money. Um. Next thing they want
Speaker 1: to do is create a creator enabled ecosystem, so kind
Speaker 1: of copy the content creator thing we have right now,
Speaker 1: poured that into the metaverse. But again have everything you know,
Speaker 1: you can invest in your creators so you can vote
Speaker 1: on what they do using Sea coins and all of
Speaker 1: we talked about like the personal ownership in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: but then a lot of it. You know, they have
Speaker 1: like an n FT marketplace, Avatar marketplaces, etcetera, etcetera. But
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff is built around like concerts,
Speaker 1: you know, venues, you know, a lounge, movie theaters where
Speaker 1: you can do stuff in VR. That is like that
Speaker 1: is the main the main thing that Seek is trying
Speaker 1: to do. They do have this one one quote somewhere,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the future milestone. So after they achieve this
Speaker 1: Seek metaverse where everything is ran through Seek, all of
Speaker 1: like you know what, whether you're on Oculus, whether you're
Speaker 1: on Vibe, all of it gets run through Seeks. It's
Speaker 1: one one multiverse, sorry, one metaverse. Their their future milestones
Speaker 1: are quote a VR Space Academy. They do not do
Speaker 1: not say what that means m keek studios again kind
Speaker 1: of unclear. I'm guessing like original content. And then the
Speaker 1: last one is a blockchain metaverse alliance. Those are their
Speaker 1: those are their three big future milestones. After they get there,
Speaker 1: there what was that last one blockchain metaverse alliance. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was like in the Facebook thing, to write the
Speaker 1: idea that we're going to integrate in f t S.
Speaker 1: But it was also clearly just like they tossed that
Speaker 1: in there on the Facebook one, there was no evidence
Speaker 1: they thought seriously about n f t S or blockchain.
Speaker 1: It was just had gotten big while they were preparing
Speaker 1: the things, so they tossed them in there. Um. I
Speaker 1: I get the idea, right, Like the thing that they
Speaker 1: keep pitching with this is that you'll be able to
Speaker 1: have an item in one game that is yours, the
Speaker 1: company doesn't own it, you can take it to other games,
Speaker 1: which anyone who makes games will tell you was fucking nonsense.
Speaker 1: It's something like that might be vaguely possible in a
Speaker 1: metaverse where everything was forced to use the same engine,
Speaker 1: um and all, everyone was also forced to abide by
Speaker 1: a bunch of strict rules by Facebook. Um that also,
Speaker 1: that's probably violating antitrust laws. Um and also it seems
Speaker 1: like a ridiculously Sisiphisian task with no real benefit. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's going to do it, but I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that's what they're referring to when they want to jam
Speaker 1: the blockchain up in the fucking metaverse, Like what else
Speaker 1: could it plain? The blockchain metaverse alliance, all of the
Speaker 1: blockchains the metaverse is gonna align into. Yeah, like they
Speaker 1: don't want to put all of the metaverse wear this
Speaker 1: shirt in the metaverse. So, just like the real world,
Speaker 1: the freedom, the freedom of the internet catch you feel.
Speaker 1: It's the ever expanding possibilities. I do love because they
Speaker 1: keep talking about within the context of metaverse games like
Speaker 1: you'll get to unlock a character that's just yours and
Speaker 1: nobody else can play it, and they'll have special abilities
Speaker 1: that means he wins all the time. It's like, why
Speaker 1: would people play that game? I think it was Business
Speaker 1: Insiders someone's article talking about how neat it would be
Speaker 1: for games to work this way, and like, think of
Speaker 1: all the money you'd make people wanting to watch your
Speaker 1: character wins. People don't want to just like watch a
Speaker 1: guy who's structurally unable to lose because he he bought
Speaker 1: the right character in a racing game win every race.
Speaker 1: That's not no one's going to pay to watch that.
Speaker 1: Do you understand what people watch races for? Like anyway,
Speaker 1: let's hear from our good friends at our products and
Speaker 1: services before we come back and talk more about seek coins.
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know sa M all right, we
Speaker 1: are back. So sea coins virtual reality spaces run on
Speaker 1: smart contracts through the through the Bayans smart chain and
Speaker 1: there they're they're run the run through the Ethereum blockchain. UM.
Speaker 1: So the the there's about seven and seven four millions
Speaker 1: seek coins and supply. The maximum supply capacity is capped
Speaker 1: at one billion coins. Uh. Sea coins peaked at one
Speaker 1: one dollar and sixteen cents a year ago after launching
Speaker 1: it and around four cents um. They're currently being traded
Speaker 1: for around sixty cents. So that's that's what actual sea
Speaker 1: coins doing. Like like like people do use this, just
Speaker 1: not many people like they They do have these contracts
Speaker 1: with with with Universal Music UM. But for this H
Speaker 1: and M thing, I I never heard of seek coins.
Speaker 1: Um So, two days after the rumors began circulating that
Speaker 1: H and M was, you know, partnering with seek, H
Speaker 1: and M said nope, we did not, we are We're
Speaker 1: not doing this, but they did not close the door
Speaker 1: in future possibilities. They said, uh, we we we like
Speaker 1: to we'd like to confirm that H and M is
Speaker 1: not is not opening a store in the metaverse at
Speaker 1: this time. We're also not collaborating with Seek. So the
Speaker 1: official Twitter account for Seek subsequently clarified later on that
Speaker 1: the store that they were doing was just a concept
Speaker 1: that was presented to H and M and not a
Speaker 1: not a launching virtual store yet. Um, but they do
Speaker 1: they do say that they're in discussions with H and
Speaker 1: M to make this a reality, but it's not a
Speaker 1: reality as of now. So this this kind of begs
Speaker 1: the question, like, what about a three D digital space
Speaker 1: is superior to a two D digital space for simple
Speaker 1: tasks like shopping online. So once you start, you know,
Speaker 1: unfolding questions like this about the Internet metaverse a r VR,
Speaker 1: you there are more the conternal sides to this than
Speaker 1: you would have initially estimated. Um. But first off, before
Speaker 1: we kind of have this discussion, we should split this
Speaker 1: into two categories. One for shopping for like real physical
Speaker 1: items that you plan on like receiving in person, and
Speaker 1: then digital items that don't physically exist and are just
Speaker 1: just on your computer and monitor. So obviously, like there's
Speaker 1: no clear advantage in most cases to traversing an isolated
Speaker 1: virtual environment in order to order food as opposed to
Speaker 1: just scrolling through a web page. Um. But once you
Speaker 1: expand out of the confines of VRS sensory deprivation three
Speaker 1: three D technology in a r SO augmented reality does
Speaker 1: actually have some USEUL prospects, including some that are already
Speaker 1: in use. Um. Amazon and Ikea, for example, have options
Speaker 1: on their perspective websites and apps that can like project
Speaker 1: furniture options into your living space, so you can that
Speaker 1: has some future I think, yeah, yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: currently this is being done on your phone screen, but
Speaker 1: in a R glasses application of this actually serve its
Speaker 1: purpose quite well, something that people would want. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the phone screen version is pretty meatdiocre. And these are
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the thing the place where at
Speaker 1: I we make fun of this stuff a lot because
Speaker 1: most of its nonsense. There are there are really there's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential in some of these ideas, but
Speaker 1: there's their potential for like and the same level that
Speaker 1: the air fryer has potential where it's like a thing
Speaker 1: a bunch of people will buy, but it's not. None
Speaker 1: of this yet is stuff that's going to completely change, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might get a few million people to to get
Speaker 1: these glasses and or this app made these glasses for
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. But who would use this this
Speaker 1: app to like help plan out how they're setting up
Speaker 1: their houses. You might get a few million people who
Speaker 1: do that. It's not going to be like an iPod
Speaker 1: or an iPhone or or like Facebook that no one's
Speaker 1: had figured that out yet. There's there's some neat products
Speaker 1: that are going to be valuable, but we're still on
Speaker 1: the stage where nobody's under nobody's figured out fundamentally what
Speaker 1: people want from this as opposed through like tiny specific
Speaker 1: needs in the same way that like there was a
Speaker 1: number of futurists who quite add accurately figured out with
Speaker 1: a smartphone, like, oh, people want a thing that will
Speaker 1: give them access to all of the knowledge and ideas
Speaker 1: in the world and also let them yell at anybody
Speaker 1: anytime they want. Like, that's something that is going to
Speaker 1: be incredibly successful, and it has and it's changed the
Speaker 1: entire world. Zuckerberger was like, people want to be able
Speaker 1: to be racist faster, and by god, we wanted it,
Speaker 1: and and that was huge. Um, I don't like these
Speaker 1: are it's a good idea, like Yeah, let people scope
Speaker 1: out how their room is going to look when they're
Speaker 1: shopping or whatever through a r But we haven't yet
Speaker 1: hit that this is going to change the world, because
Speaker 1: being slightly better at using Ikea will not change the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think as an avid air fryer hater, I do
Speaker 1: think comparing metaverse to the air fryer is actually which
Speaker 1: I love to say to Garrison. I know Garrison hates
Speaker 1: it when I use the air fryer. I love my
Speaker 1: air fire mhm anti air frier action is my new tattoo.
Speaker 1: They screech like the person at the end of Invasion
Speaker 1: of the Body. They do. But my goodness, do they
Speaker 1: cook my food faster frate with the air Wow? Almost
Speaker 1: like it's impossible anyway. UM Mutual Mobiles digital marketing shategists
Speaker 1: talked with Vice after the Walrut video went viral, and
Speaker 1: he explained that like the demo was made to show
Speaker 1: the potential of virtual reality and shopping experiences that they
Speaker 1: can have for you know, different people, UM, including its
Speaker 1: ability to connect like elderly people or people with disabilities
Speaker 1: to a shopping experience from the comfort of their own home,
Speaker 1: something that he thinks might even be you know, attractive
Speaker 1: to people who have been through several rounds of COVID quarantine.
Speaker 1: And I can kind of understand this last argument. During
Speaker 1: early quarantine, I definitely used my VR headset more often
Speaker 1: than I had before. Um And with our alienated capitalist world,
Speaker 1: I can see the use of walking around a digital
Speaker 1: store if you're stuck at home, um, due to something
Speaker 1: like a plague, or if you know, if you have
Speaker 1: a physical or mental reason that makes you know, going
Speaker 1: to a story difficult, because but like it's yes, this
Speaker 1: this can help that, but also this is always it's
Speaker 1: very religed on how these types of stores are set
Speaker 1: up and how these stories like affect your brain. It's
Speaker 1: like a big part of going to the grocery store
Speaker 1: what it's designed to do. Let's make it so that
Speaker 1: we're not just following a shopping list. There's like a
Speaker 1: structured joy of discovery. Everything about the design to the
Speaker 1: store is to get you to buy things you didn't
Speaker 1: think you needed before you walked in. And we're trained
Speaker 1: from birth to like to find this process pleasurable. So
Speaker 1: in that way, walking around a VR like wal Mart
Speaker 1: or H and M might actually make some people happy.
Speaker 1: Despite that being sad and dystopian if you stop and
Speaker 1: think about it, right, like, because that's that's actually like
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very capitalist thing. But it does
Speaker 1: make us happy because that's that's what we've been trained
Speaker 1: to do since we're babies. So that there's there is
Speaker 1: that side of it for in terms of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see if I really don't want to leave
Speaker 1: the house, but I want to get the experience of
Speaker 1: walking through a place, maybe I will walk through a
Speaker 1: target to get groceries. I don't know as some people
Speaker 1: maybe it might do that, but otherwise, you know, it's
Speaker 1: much It is much simpler and easier to just scroll
Speaker 1: through a two D thing on a web page and
Speaker 1: and and and and do the things you need. That's
Speaker 1: the thing. Like it's like, yeah, I mean absolutely because
Speaker 1: I I when I was making fun of one of
Speaker 1: these videos, somebody like called it out as being able
Speaker 1: list and was like fixing all the uses this as
Speaker 1: for a disabled person if they can use this, they
Speaker 1: can use Amazon. And like as a person who sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't shop for groceries at Amazon, but I've shop
Speaker 1: for groceries online. It's fine. The it's it's it's everything
Speaker 1: it needs to be. You can get your groceries online,
Speaker 1: and the metaverse is just going to make it like
Speaker 1: weird and off putting and unnecessarily complicated, because at the moment,
Speaker 1: I can get groceries with my own while I'm like
Speaker 1: jogging um or as I'm like sitting in traffic, or
Speaker 1: like while I'm on a zoom call listening to Garrison
Speaker 1: talk about the metaverse as opposed to putting on a
Speaker 1: headset and like doing the same thing basically as driving there,
Speaker 1: but more expensively. Anyway, are your shopping right now? I
Speaker 1: am ordering se cans of zvia and forty pounds of
Speaker 1: raw beef, normal week's worth of food for me, And
Speaker 1: that's literally like two days for him. See but Robert,
Speaker 1: you could be doing this while wearing a bucket on
Speaker 1: your head and walking around a fake store. I could
Speaker 1: wear a bucket on my head to the real store.
Speaker 1: They can't stop me. I usually wear a bathrobe. This
Speaker 1: is the first half where it's like, you know, buying
Speaker 1: actual physical items you planned to receive in stores, you know, furniture.
Speaker 1: It's actually kind of makes sense. Uh. Food, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit iffy. The only kind of consideration there is
Speaker 1: If people want the mental effect of walking around a store,
Speaker 1: if they find that pleasurable, then it's a thing. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's way more efficient to just scroll through
Speaker 1: your phone. Um As for the other side buying virtual items,
Speaker 1: whether they be you know, n f T S video
Speaker 1: game skins or super special exclusive VR hangout rooms, I
Speaker 1: don't give a funk how this works. If you want
Speaker 1: to walk around a VR vault about your VR art
Speaker 1: and your VR clothes, knock yourself out. I buy Sonic
Speaker 1: the Hedgehog games. We all have our weird things we
Speaker 1: do that don't make any sense. Yeah, if that's if
Speaker 1: these parcery stores are just gonna be like the seven
Speaker 1: weirdest people in the country masturbannings, they buy wine. And
Speaker 1: that's the thing, Robert I was when I was when
Speaker 1: I was doing the digital picture. At the beginning, I
Speaker 1: had two scenarios, one where you align the bottles into
Speaker 1: a deck. The other one I was gonna say, you
Speaker 1: take off your pants and start masturbating, and I decided
Speaker 1: not to do that one. So I'm happy that it
Speaker 1: was because because yeah, that is the actual use case
Speaker 1: for this, is that someone people are gonna be walking
Speaker 1: around these fake Walmarts just all cherking off. That's what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen there. They're gonna have this animation of a real,
Speaker 1: real female employee of theirs who like pops up when
Speaker 1: you do something you're not supposed to do and explain
Speaker 1: something to you. And it's going to be impossible to
Speaker 1: remove initially, and people are going to turn it into
Speaker 1: a whole weird, horny thing, and like they will appear
Speaker 1: in all these circumstances, it's gonna go. It's going to
Speaker 1: be the only thing that goes viral, Like it's gonna
Speaker 1: be the only thing people remember five years later about
Speaker 1: the first of these This is I'm gonna start go
Speaker 1: back to this towards the end of part two, But
Speaker 1: this is the actual way to handle the metaverse, because
Speaker 1: we're gonna this this thing is going to be forced
Speaker 1: on us one way or another. We're gonna have a
Speaker 1: form of it, and honestly, the best thing we can
Speaker 1: do with it is either ignore it, ignore it, or
Speaker 1: maybe more attractively, is to funk with it. Like that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the thing that's gonna be the thing to do.
Speaker 1: There was an acule a few days ago that the
Speaker 1: headline is Final Fantasy porn interrupts a Allian Senate zoom event.
Speaker 1: Someone someone joined it and started playing poured from Final
Speaker 1: Fantasy seven, Like this is to do This is the
Speaker 1: way that we need to do it. If there's gonna
Speaker 1: be dumbmass like meetings on the Zuckerberg metaverse, people need
Speaker 1: to go in and make it weirdly horny. Yeah, Garrison,
Speaker 1: I could not agree more that that's the what you
Speaker 1: need to do, citizens of the Internet is look up
Speaker 1: something awful habo h A B b O hotel. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of ship that we need to be doing.
Speaker 1: In fucking um. In in the there was basically a
Speaker 1: children's video game was an early kids MMO and a
Speaker 1: bunch of weird adults and something awful decided to create
Speaker 1: an unsettling cult of people who all looked identical and
Speaker 1: marched around doing all of these weird, unsettling things in
Speaker 1: a children's game. It was very fun um like or
Speaker 1: or like in a in Second life when it was
Speaker 1: the new big sexy thing. There is this very self
Speaker 1: important tech writer, investor type person who was doing a
Speaker 1: Q and A and people just like animated thousands of
Speaker 1: floating penises going around this is, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: the thing. This is what you're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: because in order, because if it's gonna be this horrible
Speaker 1: corporate hell, the only way to do it, the only
Speaker 1: way to deal with that is to make it unusable
Speaker 1: for everybody so that so that it doesn't get used.
Speaker 1: And the way to do that is by putting dicks
Speaker 1: everywhere dicks, andwhe ever decides to do a multiverse presentation,
Speaker 1: or if one party or another has had decides to
Speaker 1: a multiverse debate, it is everyone's moral responsibility, civic civic duty.
Speaker 1: This goes beyond civic. This is as a citizen of
Speaker 1: the human race. You know, as a member of this species,
Speaker 1: you have to try to find a way to funk
Speaker 1: it up for them. Something could be more important. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So if if you're buying digital items, do you never
Speaker 1: plant everything even person, I don't care how you do it.
Speaker 1: Knock yourself out. We all have our weird things. I
Speaker 1: b saw like DLCs, people do World of Warcraft. If
Speaker 1: you want to get of art piece, you can only
Speaker 1: hang in your digital room. That sounds miserable, but have fun.
Speaker 1: I I used the internet to order very off putting
Speaker 1: Danish cheese product. Oh yeah, that did happen. That was
Speaker 1: off putting. It was weird. It was like you tried
Speaker 1: to trick yourself into liking it when you were eating it.
Speaker 1: Though I we I don't remember not liking it because
Speaker 1: I hated it amount. But I've had the second cube
Speaker 1: sitting around and I've had no desired to open desired.
Speaker 1: Yeah anyway, so I did not like it. I just
Speaker 1: I don't know that I ever want to eat it again.
Speaker 1: Quality audio content. So here's the thing. I have not
Speaker 1: actually been talking about the metaverse. Nothing I've mentioned thus
Speaker 1: far actually is the metaverse and doesn't have really anything
Speaker 1: to do with the metaverse besides the technology of a
Speaker 1: VR and a R. You know. It turns out companies
Speaker 1: like Facebook, Epic, Microsoft, Invalve, the way they talk about
Speaker 1: the metaverse is kind of all a big lie. Like
Speaker 1: if it's not metaverse, it's a it's an astros turf
Speaker 1: top down marketing scheme to turn more of you into
Speaker 1: data and to create and to create vinyl marketing like
Speaker 1: that's instant instead of an interconnected solution to the alienated
Speaker 1: bubbles of Web two, it's just a social media network
Speaker 1: that encompasses all of your vision and encourages even more
Speaker 1: digital alienation and less in person socialization. Kids, you know
Speaker 1: the worst stuff about the internet. What if it was
Speaker 1: the only thing about the Internet. What if it was
Speaker 1: encompanying everything you see instead of just a computer screen.
Speaker 1: And so all of the gaming CEOs who were talking
Speaker 1: about the promise of n f T s and like,
Speaker 1: I think it was the one of the guys who
Speaker 1: runs read and I think it might have been Alexis
Speaker 1: so haney In or whatever their name is who said that,
Speaker 1: like in five years of games will be n f
Speaker 1: T based because people don't like wasting their time and
Speaker 1: not getting compensated for it. Like, do you know what
Speaker 1: it games is? That's not what people. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk more about metaverse as big tech or
Speaker 1: just bigger tech in part two. But this this, this,
Speaker 1: this will be wrapping up part one of the digital storefronts,
Speaker 1: and then we'll get into some more kind of applications
Speaker 1: of this and how we're actually seeing it in the
Speaker 1: second half. So, Robert, do you wanna do you want
Speaker 1: to go buy a virtual uh block of Danish cheese? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I did when I was hanging out on top of
Speaker 1: the mountain. The other day, I ran into a guy
Speaker 1: flying some drones, which I normally don't like. But this
Speaker 1: guy had a VR control rig for his very nice drones.
Speaker 1: That's those are dope. I might, I might get into
Speaker 1: that ship. Uh, but no, I have no desire to shop.
Speaker 1: I like going to the grocery store, um as, I
Speaker 1: do as much of my shopping that way as possible
Speaker 1: because it's soothing and uh nice, and I think very
Speaker 1: human to go be around other people to get food.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the thing, you know, and things like
Speaker 1: the pandemic where that it comes harder. I think that
Speaker 1: is where the use cases for the digital stores actually
Speaker 1: come in, Like theoretically, but we've never you've never seen
Speaker 1: them that feeling that's soothing, which it all just looks
Speaker 1: deeply off putting. It all. It's the problem is that
Speaker 1: it's it's stuck. It's stuck in the uncanny valley. So
Speaker 1: it's not pleasurable to be in those digital spaces because
Speaker 1: you're even though it's being marketed as a solution to alienation,
Speaker 1: it's just more alienating because it's because it's it's like
Speaker 1: very clearly exposing the alienation that we try to avoid. UM,
Speaker 1: So it falls right in the middle of the uncanny
Speaker 1: valley and it's not pleasant, but we we we we
Speaker 1: We will talk more about that in part two. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to follow the show on the social
Speaker 1: media's that is cool Zone Media and Happen Here pod.
Speaker 1: You can keep up with my tweets when I I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know what I do on Twitter anymore,
Speaker 1: but that's hungry about tie. And you can harass Robert
Speaker 1: Evans at I read Okay, that's the show. Do it
Speaker 1: do it? Are all kill? It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of pool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: the Cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: for listening.