Shares in Meta plunged by 25% recently after poor quarterly results. The slump is being blamed on fake-faced founder Mark Zuckerberg’s obsession with his pet project, the Metaverse, a product which has met with almost universal criticism.
But it does have some supporters and, perhaps surprisingly, many of them are parents.
One mother, Janice Relieved, said: ‘I just love the Metaverse! It’s such a ridiculously bad experience that my children are actually asking not to go on their screens for once.’
A father, Sunil Phew, agreed. ‘My kids are practically begging me not to be allowed to go online because the Metaverse is so dull and lonely. My eldest even asked me to play real life football with him the other day — and he loved it. He really enjoyed how the ball was actually round and not a series of badly programmed lines designed to mimic a sphere… and he couldn’t believe it when it bounced convincingly according to the laws of physics and without any lag. Plus, you know, he could actually kick it with his real legs, as opposed to having no legs in the Metaverse.’
Janice Relieved added: ‘My children are even talking to me again over meals. Mostly about how bad the Metaverse is, but that’s good enough for me! They’re just glad to have someone to talk to after the barren, people-free digital wasteland that Zuckerberg seems to want them to inhabit.’
Sunil Phew also added: ‘Frankly, the children got scared of the place. An arid, joy-free world of badly crafted pixels with occasional bursts of terror when the legless avatar of Mark Zuckerberg appears asking if they’d like to do be his friend. By contrast, taking them out to a real life art gallery or museum — things they hated doing before — now seems like the best fun ever!’
Not every parent is delighted, however. A Mr Paul Slacker said: ‘Curse you and your Shit-a-verse, Zuckerberg! Instead of my kids staying online this half-term so I could watch sports and finally put that shelf up, I’ve actually had to engage with them. I just didn’t know what to do with them… until I decided to take them to Meta’s headquarters and throw shit at the place… it’s a memory they’ll always treasure’.
With opinion divided over the Metaverse, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg just can’t win: which is fine by us.
