245 - Meta Horizon Worlds and the Death of the Metaverse

Herms; those statues are called herms and date from like the greek dark ages as boundary markers; the desecration of these are what alcibiades gets accused of doing

"yeah she got real physical" absolutely killed me lol

If you are thinking about getting into a VR platform or world, see what the furry community thinks of it. If the furry community does not use it, it does not have the mandate of heaven, it will wither and fail.

I am once again recommending the book Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It is an amazing look into Facebook and Mark and everyone, and it is well written. The author seems like the kind of person that optimism made dumb, but I believe her in the ways I wouldn't others.

Palmer Lucky; another soleless tech guy

No one has mentioned Walkabout minigolf and that makes me sad bc it's soooo fun. I have an oculus just for that and Beat Saber.

All the talk of virtual reality estate but no mention of the housing crisis in FINAL FANTASY XIV OF ALL PLACES I feel like FFXIV has passed its previous hype until we get the Switch 2 release but would be a fascinating episode

I can’t believe you referenced my favorite “THEN I DON’T NEED A JACKET” meme.

Commenting to say how much I appreciate the "THEY'RE GONE! (minor key So Long Farewell)" bit. That moment in the movie has stuck in my brain since I was a child.

This was so good. You will never get my ass in a vr headset

It is HEARTBREAKING that the "steamboat willie" joke didn't get its flowers

I think that wasn't coming through about that internal memo is that "growth" is a euphemism for the various dark arts engagement farming psyops that they were getting in trouble for at the time

@1:31:20 - I mean, yeah. People like me have been pointing this out since the Wii released back in 2007. Motion controls, with only a handful of exceptions like shooter games, suck to use. Even then, a mouse is as persisce as a Wii remote with way less hassle. I've honestly never gotten the point of VR and motion controls, and I grew up with a Wii. It's always seemed like a pointless gimick.

Space Pirate Trainer is like space invaders in 3d. It's actually not bad, but it's not deep. I do it sometimes, but it's like very much as deep as space invaders.

One of my favorite read downs of that image of VR Zuck was that it looked like the cover of some Wii shovelware called World Baby.

Now Bos, I can get into

I loved the boys breaking into Age of Empires sound effects so much!

Werner Herzog should've directed The Social Network

I can confirm that Space Pirate Trainer is real, I have played it, it’s also not very good and basically just a tech demo (it’s feels a bit like playing the tutorial for a proper game that never starts.)

I love sweet baby rays for its interoperability with many different meat fibers.

DisneyQuest in Chicago was awesome

Re: the knick's. I'm a west coaster who visited NYC for the first time with my husband last weekend. It was incredible to accidentally time it when the city was abuzz with anticipation, we litterally flew home the morning after they won game 5. The reason we were visiting was to see Chess and Death Becomes Her, which were both great. Thanks for the great episode on Chess that helped give me so much context. Much love from washington!

*Me doing the Leo point when Brian mentions Edwin Land & how he influenced Jobs & the keynote announcement*

I got an Oculus Go from a sister for Christmas a few years ago. Even then it was entirely full of abandoned apps and games. A few were decent, most were terrible. The best use I found was a way to play videos off my pc using an application basically using it as a giant screen. Also it has effectively free YouTube premium.

Oculus RENT (Apologies if they made this joke, I've only just started the epside)

I feel like Zuck has a similar presenting style/charisma level to Mr. Beast Edit: just got to the point where AJ says this exact thing haha

Astrophysics Grandma wasn't being hyperbolic, but hypergolic.

Palmer Luckey is not cool.

Palmer lucky is the video game version of Palmer Rocky

As someone who still pops into EverQuest, that was my first reaction: why is this worse and less immersive than MMORPG graphics from 2000?

I was a developer on a collaboration app with positional audio, breakout rooms, and no damn headset. That was a primary value add (value subtraction?). Sony used us for a big presentation Then everyone decided the pandemic was over, all the small video conference apps lost funding, and we didn’t even get sold for parts. I guess that’s one place Meta beat us.

I read an article on Rock Paper Shotgun about using Red Dead Online as an alternative to zoom calls and I would much rather do that than enter the Zuckerverse

It always makes me sad there’s like two other people I know of with the first name Palmer, and one is a monster. 😑

to be fair quantum computing is “real”, it’s just an entirely different technology that is so far removed from conventional computing that it’ll never really be applicable to things at a consumer level. it’s great for insanely fast processing and calculations for huge datasets, but we’re not gonna get quantum vr headsets or laptops ever.

palmer luckey’s wikipedia page is quite a trip

A very good episode. I really enjoy the deep dives into Facebook/Zuckerberg because it is just a fascinating subject that even though I was alive through it, I just didn't interact with it at all.

The discussion of roller coaster simulators reminds me of when I went to Orlando for a middle school math competition and we got to be at Epcot for the debut of a new VR roller coaster simulator called The Sum Of All Thrills. Much like the math competition, it was sponsored by...Raytheon. (I think it closed a few years later and I have never heard anyone talk about it lmao)

Warning about the interstitial skit - I had to skip over it because of the disgusting swallows and lip smacks he's doing as part of the zuck impression

The game Brian mentioned in the opening is most likely Beachhead 2000

During the Sweet Baby Ray's clip, I said to myself, "Stubbs is so much better." So AJ is right, as he usually is.

You can't convince me that Mark Zuckerberg isn't a lizard person.

Dammit Zuckerman, you promised me there'd be legs on my desk by Monday, and what day is it and where are the legs???

Impossible Dream is so good. Had to pause and go listen to it again

Oh boy schadenfreude! My favorite form of content!

RC Cola taking flak this episode

The new Sorkin movie BETTER fucking feature Jeremy Strong going full Frank Booth about Sweet Baby Ray’s

Jarvis mentioned. It’s worth saying he used to work as a dev for Patreon before going over to YouTube I think from things he’s said publicly it was largely due to getting burnt out on the weird Californian whiteboy tech culture.

hey all - i noticed a glitch in the initial upload that resulted in the back half of the episode being silent for some reason. this should be fixed now, but if you downloaded the episode right when it was released you might have to clear your cache and redownload. sorry!

3 hour episode and its ony Birthday???