I don't know who needs to hear this, but the Metaverse is literally just The Sims with a helmet. The only reason FB cares about it is it's a place to sell advertising. But nobody wants it. We wanted Facebook because we could be voyeurs, shout into the void, and receive little hits of dopamine from "likes". But who wants to be a voyeur of virtual people? People who play The Sims, that's who. I don't think The Sims will make billions of dollars, with or without a helmet.
I've heard people make the case that MMOs were VR and Social Media combined, before Facebook etc existed. And I think it's true. I would log on to chat (FFXI in my case) with friends. We would occupy a shared space. People still run nightclubs and do other roleplaying in virtual spaces in these games.
The only thing really missing is the helmet but as far as occupying a virtual world, it's closer than anything else has been in terms of providing what people actually want.
