Meta lost $77bn on VR?

@Iwillyeah @alicemcalicepants

*whisper back*

Alice is being extremely clever.

The original launch video for Facebook's Metaverse VR idea, the one that led to them renaming themselves Meta, featured people that only existed from the waist up because legs are hard to do in VR.

"It doesn't have legs" is a casual way of saying "the idea didn't work."

@Iwillyeah @alicemcalicepants

@passenger @alicemcalicepants I seeeeee. Haha!

@alicemcalicepants

I can't wait for the top-tier jokes that will happen when the AI bubble bursts and we will find out how many billions (trillions?) were wasted there.

@alicemcalicepants

In what is dramatic about it is that the company suffered no investor anger over it.

Apparently, most of the money just disappeared, and they can’t explain where it went

@alicemcalicepants You could do standup with material this good.

@alicemcalicepants On a serious note, I’m not surprised. My kid saved up his money to buy the headset, but when he wanted to buy a game, there was some issue with his account & he couldn’t purchase it. We tried for days to fix this stupid account problem but never did, so he could only play the free or demo games. He lost interest & Meta lost money.

@alicemcalicepants

@alicemcalicepants nicely done.

@alicemcalicepants or any physical form really

@alicemcalicepants underrated toot

@alicemcalicepants wow only $77 Joels, that is some serious restraint by Mark Zuckerberg, the third dumbest rich brat in the world

@csstrowbridge @alicemcalicepants

I think it will be really hard to measure the impact. Because there are people who are leaving or have left the tech field because they are being forced to use this "AI" crap and would rather just not deal with it anymore.

Or the generation of people who didn't go into computer science because of it. There are going to be so many second-order consequences it'll be almost impossible to know the true extent of the damage for a decade or more.

@alicemcalicepants

@alicemcalicepants Big oof. They could have put all that money into A.I. instead!

laugh track

@alicemcalicepants (I haven't seen all the comments to your post, but the ones I've seen seem to have completely missed the joke, which is a pity because it was an excellent joke with a brilliant reference)

@oblomov

I'm one of those poor bastards who missed the reference and hence the joke. Please enlighten me.

EDIT: Oh. Ooooh. Ah. hehe, genious.

@alicemcalicepants

@JorisMeys @oblomov it took Meta a really long time to figure out how to put legs on avatars in the metaverse/an idea that 'doesn't have legs' is a bad one. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-quest-world-legs-avatars-mark-zuckerberg-1850787409

@alicemcalicepants @oblomov Thx! I just realized what you were playing at. Thank you for the giggles

@JorisMeys @alicemcalicepants

The characters in the Meta VR famously had no legs (in their 3D models) until very late in development, and only in some specific circumstances (random article about the topic: <https://www.pcmag.com/news/avatars-in-meta-horizons-finally-get-legs-this-time-for-real>)