Engaged in some pointless browsing of YouTube videos earlier today, I was struck by the number that enjoy pointing out major failures, ranging from individuals screwing up at the personal level to corporations getting it wrong on a scale that can transcend all reasonable sense of value. I suppose there's a sardonic comfort to be gained from the realisation that others are, astonishingly, even more idiotic than oneself, but it's also more than a bit depressing to be given a handle on how much we are able to waste of our resources.
Prominent in my earlier viewing were videos detailing the catastrophic demise of what was known as the metaverse. Funnily enough this sad tale was something I had some awareness of. I was involved in a visit to the Meta headquarters in Singapore back in March 2023 as one of those odd 'learning journeys' my employers think do me some good. This would have been a few months after Facebook's big announcement of its virtual reality world as detailed in the link above. I sort of enjoyed the trip simply because it was so obvious to me (and, I think, to all in attendance) that the concept just wasn't going to work. Even the guys tasked to introduce to their visitors the Horizon World (I think it was) clearly thought it didn't stand any chance of success such that they won sympathy by manfully covering up their doubts.
In its way it feels good to know that my scepticism was entirely warranted. But the sort of sadness of all the wasted talent & effort involved makes it difficult to laugh too loud even at the funniest of the videos that take delight in celebrating the off-the-scale-stupidity of it all. Though I must say the narrator of How Did The Metaverse Fail So Badly? elicited more than a few guffaws, to emerge as my favourite of the bunch.
Just hope all the folks we met back in March 2023 who got retrenched later, were able to get decent jobs after being sent on their ways doing something that actually benefits people.
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