The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

[@MochaBloke]

TIMELINE OF CRITICAL CAT EVENTS*: 5:25 Amy watches Dan dance 5:49 Amy licks her tummy 42:35 Amy twitches in her sleep 54:34 Amy gets comfy 1:08:29 Amy stares at Dan 1:11:33 Amy gets a toy 1:19:50 Amy gets skritches Amy stretches at 30:06, 36:46, and 1:21:58 *Edited to add timestamps courtesy of replies below. This is what real internet communities look like.

[@OliveOath]

Essential timestamps

[@GC-ps9mn]

MVP

[@cthulhluftagn3812]

Your doing the lords work

[@cyncynshop]

Super important

[@juliadandy6019]

🙏

[@ScariestGary]

The year is 2037. You’re on your way to your metajob in the metaverse. Your office is on the 7th floor, but the stairs don’t have collision, and the elevator hasn’t be programmed to actually work. You spend 30 minutes trying to parkour on the handrails, falling off and having to restart the journey over and over again. You get to your office half an hour late, and are promptly fired. This is the 4th job that this has happened in. You are now unable to feed your metaspouse and metachildren.

[@royalhydra9790]

The only unrealistic part of this is that the spouse and kids aren't npcs who don't need food

[@erwynnipegerwynnipeg8455]

Based Insaniquarium Deluxe Starcatcher comment.

[@bigboi1004]

​@@royalhydra9790counteridea: they are npcs but you have to pay a food subscription or watch an AI-generated video of them starving.

[@BimpytheWimpyShrimpy]

... A metaspouse who is currently cheating on you with Yemel (who agrees with Yemel) from the _DAO Oversight-Revocation-Administrative-Oversight-Comittee._ In the neighbouring Mario-Mansion that you'll never afford, because you could also not afford the "consumate marriage"-emote (user created, of course) from the marketplace.

[@momar678]

Also, you can't afford the metacide booth

[@davidv4018]

Everytime a tech Bro pretends to be a forward thinking rebel, they end up making a feudal society.

[@caseygoddard]

That's because they really want to be dictators and autocrats, but try to hide it by pretending to be libertarians.

[@solaribtw]

^

[@trninfan]

Such is the fate of every libertarian idea

[@nigerianprinceajani]

Literally reactionary in the 19th century meaning of reactionary.

[@georgebush3327]

Hit the damn nail on the head

[@Everdistance]

Think about this: They made a virtual world so boring that you can't even find weird perverts in it.

[@RatchetSly]

If furries refuse to engage with your digital project, that's a sign it's doomed to failure.

[@isomeme]

Rule -34.

[@BT-ex7ko]

@@RatchetSly Its true though! From what I've seen on my forays into VRchat (although I've yet to peek into the other spin offs), the "suspiciously wealthy furry' lives on strong there. They're genuinely the ones who would spend money and time to try a VR product; so if they think its trash-its actually trash.

[@rabidfirefox8914]

If Furries don't accept it, it's not the gonna be okay of the future.

[@abram730]

@@BT-ex7ko It's true, most have $2-3k into VR headsets and tracers, not counting their gaming PC's. PS: Lets not talk about the furry woman, who was active duty military. The one using hypnosis to convince children that they wanted to have sex with animals and send her the kiddy bestiality porn vids of it.

[@mattymerr701]

It's wild people cite Snow Crash and Ready Player One as inspirations when those books are literally dystopian hellhole novels.

[@Argusthecat]

"We've finally created the Torment Nexus from the popular novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus!"

[@Ziobbe]

@@empanada223 I wonder if all the people whining about English teachers asking "what do the blue drapes mean in this book" understand how much they're telling on themselves for missing the point (which is thinking even slightly past the surface level on the books they read)

[@TheRonnieaj]

@@ZiobbeAs someone who’s published eight novels and had a blue rug because my editor said I needed a color and that was the color of my nails at the time, I understand their frustration. That said, point well taken. MOST of the time my colors do have meaning, and my readers have found way more meaning in some of my books than I did. Or maybe they’re seeing what was unconscious to me when writing.

[@Ziobbe]

​@@TheRonnieajWow, congrats on publishing 8 novels! That's really amazing! I feel that. I like to understand it as having a world in my heart, a second world in the pages, and a third in the reader's hearts. I think that some things I intend to have meaning lose that meaning during the transfer, and some things that I didn't intend to mean anything come to life in the reader's hearts.

[@nielsvanhemert7972]

The medium is the message. Many popular media struggle to show that technologically advanced dystopias are bad for the same reason they struggle to show that war is bad. No matter how hard war movies like Apocalypse Now or Deer Hunter might try to show that war is hell, the audience invariably finds it cool and spectacular and thrilling.

[@Shventastic]

Jesus Christ, ChatGPT-generated jokes overlayed on a blank wall in a VR comedy club has to be the layer of hell that Dante forgot to mention.

[@thetheatreorgan168]

i keep on going back here because of this burn

[@thetableoflegend9814]

I find that section so funny cause a friend of mine is in a comedy group and for one of their shows they had ChatGPT write 3 sketches which they preformed and they were awful, but the joke was about how awful the skit was.

[@sealeo5772]

It's proof that comedy is something that will never be taken over by the robot overlords, because there is no way that a chatbot could script the joke that is the comedy club.

[@_bats_]

Not liking this because currently at 666 but I like it in satanic spirit.

[@benjiusofficial]

​@@_bats_ Ah, to be 12 again...

[@hqueso]

"Wait, that's backwards!" "That's backwards on both sides!" could be the best reaction to every defense of meta/crypto/nft/whatever that I've heard.

[@yourfriendlyinternetmeatshield]

It's like a Simpsons or Futurama gag but irl and unironically occurring. Both hilarious, and terribly sad.

[@idontneedaname318]

Just blinding incompetence

[@bighatbondquo863]

The idea of a digital facsimile of a real dog, eternally begging for its physical counterpart to be adopted, long after the real dog has been adopted, lived a full life, and ultimately died, is genuinely horrifying.

[@LimeyLassen]

I have no mouth and I must woof

[@sabretoo]

It's like the Star Trek ep of Black Mirror😱 But sadder bc it's a poor little dog😭

[@Cats_N_Doodles2018]

@@sabretoo What was the Black Mirror episode called?

[@hugmonger]

@@Cats_N_Doodles2018 Its called "USS Callister" and I dont think it really fits as well as like... I cant remember the episode name... It might've been "Black Museum" where a woman's mind is put into a chip and installed in a stuffed monkey and forced to watch her kid live, grow up, and discard her.

[@XanthinZarda]

Yeah, now I'm thinking about the Neopets account I abandoned. And more to the point, the old Petz series. From before Ubisoft sucked all the life from it.

[@crazynaut223]

The one-two punch of "The Decentraland Report is a dystopian concept of news reporting" into "nothing worth reporting happens in Decentraland to let it be dystopian" always gets me

[@realleon2328]

It's like if there was a country so small the secretary of state was also the director of the top newspaper just because the country's population is 12

[@CatBxtchNami]

@@realleon2328 The laws that define a country are so messy that this is probrably possible.

[@trevordillon1921]

@@CatBxtchNamihas anyone checked if sealand has a news outlet

[@tifinity]

Pretty sure that's the case for at least one of the microcountries!

[@blakksheep736]

Like he said, failure is the best outcome for something like this.

[@MtheGate]

The focus on mining in the embedded games really implies that the developers saw Minecraft and instead of realising that kids love creativity, they took away the idea that the children yearn for the mines.

[@DellDuckfan313]

I see it more as a metaphor for cryptomining. Except the developers don't understand metaphors, and their idea of a 'fun activity' consists solely of repeating mindless tasks for minimal profit. They're trying to market a 1910s Ford assembly line as a game. For kids!

[@BDCTheSloth90]

"They took away the idea that children yearn for the mines". Well, yikes. (At tech bros, not at you).

[@atmaeon]

Any plan for easy money will eventually exploit children

[@Zenturio331]

I yearn for the mines

[@johnnypopstar]

> the children yearn for the mines 9/10 Mandalorians approve of this message.

[@notNajimi]

If there’s anything that’s a testament to the irrelevancy of decentraland, it’s the fact that Nintendo hasn’t taken any issue with the modern Mario houses

[@blakksheep736]

😆

[@dr6559]

Harsh but true.

[@ampix4669]

Another thing: I learnt of decentraland in this video and the devs are from my country. It surprised me to realise that id never heard of them even tho my dad (a tech / crypto enthusiast) constantly talks about startups from Argentina and never talked about them

[@hels_belle8577]

Lmao, this thought came to mind as well. The same entity that would sue a 13 year old KZbin kid with 10 views and 20 subscribers is completely unbothered by digital houses decked out in their IP? Nail in the coffin. Nintendo not caring about IP use is a relevancey measurement tool not unlike Waffle House remaining open during a hurricane.

[@skeetorkiftwon]

​@@ampix4669Given the fact that we're running out of fuel per capita per second due to declining EROEI such that England is closing down its only blast furnace, fertilizer production is being reduced globally, and airlines are struggling to keep planes in the sky...it really amuses me that people imagine they'll be playing videogames and making videos on complex delicate equipment while real men, in the real world, are struggling to keep the lights on and the water pumping.

[@enirya]

this video is probably responsible for the largest amount of people who have ever concurrently thought about decentraland

[@AliceintheRabbitHole]

This is truth

[@mikolasstrajt3874]

exactly. I expect this video going to mess with Kevin views stats.

[@m1k3y48]

I don’t think I had even heard of it before, unless it was mentioned in Line Goes Up, so you’re probably right

[@meggylee8078]

Genuinely laughed-out-loud

[@timdunn2344]

I did try D-land once. It was shit.

[@voidify3]

1:27:40 The proposal “should we address the voting power distribution” being shot down by 1 guy’s disproportionate voting power is something that would sound hokey in a work of fiction and yet it’s real

[@nihilisticpancake308]

Sounds like a conversation in an 80s, shiny future, round and spacious, evil corporate boardroom.

[@DashingSteel]

That feels like some Alice In Wonderland type shit

[@Putnam3145]

@@DashingSteel Lewis Carroll actually did some work on voting, even inventing his own electoral system (it's a tiebreaker for Condorcet-criterion ranked ballots, so one of many, and it's an extremely hard-to-calculate one, funnily enough, but it's there). It's neat.

[@theREALmistafu]

"Don't shop less, shop digitally" is the perfect summary of the nightmare fuel the metaverse is

[@albinobluesheep]

When Dan said that I was sure it was a joke he was making, and THEN he zoomed in on the text. Absolutely mad

[@marocat4749]

And that not even new, skins buyable in games, are already a thing. Truely devoid of any oiginal idea.

[@Mene0]

It's such a late capitalism vibe too. Don't you dare shop less, just shop more efficiently

[@oldvlognewtricks]

@@Mene0 For products chosen specifically for their compatibility with the mechanisms of artificial scarcity

[@theREALmistafu]

@@albinobluesheep exactly what i thought, i nearly choked as he zoomed in...

[@commandrogyne]

Its still so funny that in a digital utopia where you can do anything, be anything, and see anything, where art and creativity are unrestrained by physical limits and anything you can think of is a possibility, these people seem to be unable to dream bigger than walking to mcdonalds and ordering a big mac from another actual person. Its embarassing.

[@jweathers131]

Capitalistic Institutionalization

[@Crypted112]

lol it really is amazing how little creativity any of these cryptobros have, it's nothing but endless and hollow greed

[@scotwithonet989]

i just had to say that this genuinely might be my all time favourite comment ive ever read on youtube, incredible work

[@Lishadra]

Where is their goddamn whimsy!!

[@NothingXemnas]

It is because it already exists in the form of VRChat. They don't want to be VRC, they wanted to be unique and built from the ground up, which means they cannot be the best current implementation of a virtual world, to their detriment!

[@ettaz]

How anyone can, with a straight face, claim that its "revolutionary" for me to strap on AR goggles, FIND and then WALK IN a virtual McDonald's, TALK to the poor cashier thats probably sitting in a weird call center, also wearing goggles, pay with weird McCrypto or some shit, when now I do it with a few clicks from my phone is mindbogglingly stupid to me

[@azzy-551]

it is endlessly funny how metaverse/crypto shills will sell the idea of roleplaying real life scenarios as a fantastic, life changing substitution for real life scenarios. They really don't want to go outside huh.

[@doingitwelldotbiz]

Then, presumably, there is a wait above and beyond what is typical in a brick and mortar establishment. So... still a social interaction, still a wait, still get the same food, but there's a barrier of entry that is both technical and financial. Cool cool cool. I'll take twelve.

[@ragalyiakos]

It really is fascinating how obsessed crypto-, NFT- and metaverse-bros are with forcefully reintroducing inconvenience into places where it doesn't need to exist.

[@OsirisLord]

I mean yes Decentraland replicates the functionality of tools that already exist but it's also cumbersome, slow, ugly, and runs at 5 FPS.

[@OsirisLord]

@@ragalyiakos This is why I called NFTs a solution looking for a problem. Take the example of "With NFTs you can take an item from one video game into another." Like first up, no they can't. An NFT is just a receipt on a blockchain certifying a transaction. Even if a game developer wanted said functionality to exist in their projects, they would build their games with that feature in mind and they wouldn't even need NFTs or a blockchain to do so.

[@FranzFartinand]

The whole "phygital" idea, with an object in the real world and in the metaverse was a whole videogame when I was a kid, Webkinz. You would buy a stuffed animal at a store and input a code on its tag online and you had a pet that you played with and raised and took care of, and they could even die.

[@dali-dog]

correction they couldn't die lol. The closest they got to dying was getting sick where they'd just look a little sad until you gave them medicine, and the same kind of silly creepypasta-esque rumors about spooky stuff happening that you see in the community of every kids game. An NPC killing your pet would not only be way too dark and make kids scared and miserable that they lost a pet they were attached to, but also *extremely* unfair considering the pets costed real money (usually around 15 or 20 dollars initially, but certain rare ones can go for hundreds of dollars online), so it's not remotely believable that Ganz would program a messed up feature like that just for shits and giggles. If it was real, you wouldn't just be hearing it from random posts online clearly made by kids, it'd likely be a huge scandal with a lot of pissed off parents who could prove that they had their money wasted and their kids traumatized, and Ganz would likely have to make a statement about it, remove the feature, and give people their well-earned valuable pets back (or at the very least make it publicly known that any pet could die, so that people wouldn't feel scammed if it happened to them, in a "well, we warned you" sorta way). Webkinz isn't just a game, it's a kid's product made by a toy company who's main goal is to keep making money and have a clean reputation, so obviously they wouldn't think to have a feature like this in the first place. The game has nothing remotely upsetting about it anywhere else, it's less scary than Sesame Street, so it would be extremely out of place to throw in something so randomly heartbreaking. But anyway yes, I agree that Webkinz is better than the metaverse lol

[@FranzFartinand]

@@dali-dog idk, all I know is when I logged in after a long time without playing I simply no longer had a webkinz, happened twice.

[@dali-dog]

@@FranzFartinand oh??? Well that's weird, and definitely not supposed to happen. I know I've also gone years without playing webkinz and even more years just ignoring several of my pets without feeding them, and each of them are still there. Maybe it's a glitch? I kinda assumed you were just talking about the silly rumours about how Dr Quack would kill your pets or whatever lol, oops.

[@None-Trick_Pony]

I played the hell outta Webkinz when I was tiny. Looking back, the mini-games were clearly terrible and unoriginal (I remember mini-golf and Bejeweled but with cows), and existed solely to draw in kids, but it was completely 100% functional. I had a beagle, and I couldn't make it go through a wall in the little house. My point is that a web game from well over a decade ago created by the lowest bidder likely under strict deadlines solely to draw in the pre-schooler market to buy cheap stuffed animals was more functional than Decentraland. P.S. I remember the website clearing all data for your Webkin after a year to force you to buy a new one. I was distraught when my parents explained that to me. That might be what you're remembering.

[@dali-dog]

​ @None-Trick_Pony I still play Webkinz, and yeah there definitely are some unoriginal minigames. One of the most recently added games (probably still a few years old though) is a very obvious ripoff of Cookie Run type games, it's even candy themed. There are some weird minigame choices too, like they have 3 different versions of solitaire... I guess for the one kid ever who's into solitaire enough to want three versions?? Hey, I'm not judging, currently I'm obsessed with the Webkinz version of Minesweeper (Skunksweeper lol) and how many kids out there are into Minesweeper. And the mini-golf game! Man, that's a throwback, they actually got rid of that one a really long time ago. To be fair there are a LOT of different minigames though, I've seen a million way worse minigames for a lot of other kid's websites, and there a bunch of other features that are interesting enough to keep me into it after all these years. So without a doubt Webkinz is more functional than Decentraland lol. And yeah, I think really old accounts get deleted, if it's been several years since somebody logged in. And unfortunately they have this really stupid system where like, they already have "deluxe" members where you have to pay a membership to use certain features, but on top of that you have "full" members, which isn't a typical membership you pay for monthly or yearly, but if you haven't adopted a pet in a while. you lose access to even more features. Obviously in order to encourage people to buy at least one new Webkinz every year or so. I still really doubt they've ever had a system where they purposefully delete specific pets though, just to make you buy a replacement for that specific pet. That seems cruel. I'm assuming that'd be a glitch or something, rather than an intended feature. Not that I hold it above a toy company to be greedy with money of course, cause they definitely are.

[@JLupercal]

I love how all these metaverse projects pretend like SecondLife just never existed.

[@rowanlavellan9755]

Right. Like...lmao. virtual fashion, physically walking from place to place, IRL businesses having virtual representations...

[@tiamystic]

Or Roblox…cuz shit looks like a Roblox game somebody made in 2012, especially that theatre from the beginning.

[@liamneedsauniquehandle]

@@tiamystic I've seen better looking and working theaters in Roblox.

[@brianmarini4841]

Second Life gave us the legend of Ralph Pootawn. Nothing will ever top that.

[@MissPoplarLeaf]

Or VRchat, or IMVU, or any 3D MMO. Heck, I see tons of people roleplaying running cafes and bars and nightclubs in FFXIV. There are nightclubs that hire Twitch DJs to livestream music and actually do the whole DJ emcee bit, and clubgoers can tune into the stream and pretend they're at a real club. The bartenders will roleplay making a drink for you and then sell it to you for in-game money. There are virtual sex workers (people call them "courts", short for "courtesan") at these clubs too, and they provide erotic roleplay services to people. I've even visited a live theater where people use their characters to act out Shakespeare's plays while the audience sit their characters in chairs to watch, theater aisle style. And we want to get into selling goods and services for real money? *There are portrait artists and photographers who will do live drawings or in-game photography of your character in exchange for real world currency.* And don't even get me started on virtual fashion; a running joke in FFXIV is that fashion is the "real" endgame - not raiding, not making money, but fashion. It all already exists! The Metaverse is nothing new.

[@rrkaminski9]

I laughed so hard when The Defiant said "the metaverse revolves around you" and then clarified that he meant you can literally move the camera around your character. A+

[@Duiker36]

"I have never played Mario 64 and I'm going to prove it right now."

[@67ghostLOL]

My wife literally groaned like it was a bad dad joke and I had to tell her he was probably serious. She just groaned louder.

[@elfinvale]

i've never heard of anything so out of touch lmao. i actually put my phone down and facepalmed. tell me you've never played a video game without telling me you've played a video game

[@UnreasonableOpinions]

“Yes I have played at least five of Video Games.”

[@jamesrule1338]

A wise man said it best: "Cringe. There's no other word for it. This makes me cringe."

[@JinStreams]

The comedy of techbros fundamentally misunderstanding why people go outside and spend time with friends is uniquely fascinating.

[@Desmaad]

It's like they're completely detached from the rest of humanity.

[@rightrightrightuhhuhuhhuh6516]

Outside = Not Safe Space

[@nickybakes]

Shakespeare level irony.

[@kanehodder3459]

Just make games meta..... just. Make. Games. Stop trying to reinvent Facebook it's not going to happen

[@kingsteve4304]

Techbros are what happen when you tell a somewhat dorky kid whose being bullied, "You can be that guy's boss" instead of teaching them to stand the fuck up for themselves. They grow up to be sociopaths who want to control everything.

[@svfrey7]

Lindt deliberately describing their metaverse store as "totally comprehensible," as opposed to, like, almost any other characterization, is just the epitome of how idiotic everything about the metaverse is. The fact that a user **being able to understand where they are and what they can do here** is being highlighted as a core aspect indicates that comprehensibility is the exception, not the norm.

[@FuckYourSelf99]

Yes!!!! I loved that. The most complimentary thing they could find to say about their Metaverse store is "you wont feel like you've had a serious head injury"

[@levibee9451]

Screw that, I want to buy chocolate in a store that is totally incomprehensible. That'd be some real innovation.

[@kodicraft]

​@@levibee9451 Grocery store of leaves?

[@FluoriteRhodochrosite]

The, slightly less funny, alternative is that they intended to call the storefront "totally comprehensive", but the budget on this was so rail-thin they didn't even bother to proof-read their press release.

[@ourgoldenspires]

@@kodicraft oh hell yes

[@wile123456]

Land being sparse and not unlimited defeats the entire purpose of the digital world lmao

[@McDonaldsCalifornia]

Funny enough if i remember correctly Snowcrash even gave a half plausible explanation for the scarcity in that value of a plot was determined by proximity to the predetermined spawn points. Still posits that people actually want to walk around rather than teleport etc but at least that made some sort of sense

[@nfinn42]

Watching techghouls use the internet to recreate artificial scarcity is like watching someone play golf with a toothbrush.

[@Dramatic_Gaming]

It only defeats the purpose if you're actually trying to deliver on the proposed ideas that decentraland was supposed to introduce instead of trying to be a digital landlord. You could bsically copy-paste the entire closing statement of Line Goes Up hre and it would be just as valid.

[@shiny460]

@Dramatic_Gaming Decentraland STARTED as an auction of digitally scarce land. It was never supposed to introduce anything other than digital landlordism.

[@geneparmesan8748]

I think it was Eddy Burback who said something similar in his Metaverse video. His thesis statement: that 15 years ago when Zuckerberg was young, sites like Facebook actually focused on the shit that would draw in young people: pictures of you and your friends hanging out, finding out who's dating who, planning parties and events, and just sharing your everyday thoughts. He made something people would genuinely like, and the financial opportunities followed. 15 years later, the same guy is now a middle-aged ghoul pitching Meta as a vehicle for artificial scarcity, real estate speculation, virtual offices/employee oversight and investment/FOMO opportunities for major commerce companies. He is doing Facebook in reverse: pitching the profit side first while not realizing that no normal person is going to voluntarily sign on. These guys have lost the plot hard in the last 15 years and if anything like the Metaverse is ever going to happen, it certainly isn't going to be due to a bunch of 30+ year old techbros running cryptocurrency schemes. As a 30+ year old myself, I was there at the beginning of the rise of giants like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but I'm realistic enough to know that you aren't going to set off the next online revolution by pandering to people like me anymore.

[@empatheticrambo4890]

The "Landlordism" of the virtual worlds is so disturbing...like, you have the opportunity to make the future you claim to be creating be more utopian and you're actually making it more dystopian.

[@skeletonwizard708]

No money in utopia.

[@stormveil]

These are the people that believe the only thing wrong with the world is that they're not nearer the top.

[@yikes6263]

People who work on it grew up in the weird mix of right wing conservatives dressed as libertarianism and for them rent-seeking is utopia.

[@gutsbadguy50]

"we're going to create a new world where people can freely create spaces and experiment with political philosophies. also, this new world will be a capitalist hellhole run by misanthropic tech bros"

[@Ugh-Fudge_Bwana]

Imagine taking something as theoretically limitless as a virtual world and willingly imposing scarcity on it.

[@icepelt1001]

The Comedy Club typing in 'Tell me a joke' to Chat GPT as an example of entertainment is one of the funniest fucking things I've seen all week.

[@Lucas-rz3vl]

Accidental Comedy

[@Nevernamed]

"In the future, humour will be randomly generated!"

[@firiel2366]

​@@Nevernamed Why did the chicken cross the road?

[@skyisreallyhigh3333]

@@firiel2366 "First and foremost, it is important to acknowledge that chickens are known to be curious creatures who are often drawn to new and exciting stimuli. As such, it is possible that the chicken in question simply wanted to explore the other side of the road out of a sense of curiosity or adventure. Additionally, there may have been a variety of environmental factors that influenced the chicken's decision to cross the road. For example, the chicken may have been seeking food, water, or shelter on the other side of the road, or it may have been trying to escape from predators or other sources of danger. It is also possible that the chicken was simply following the lead of other members of its flock, who may have already crossed the road and encouraged the chicken to join them. Of course, it is also possible that the chicken's decision to cross the road was entirely random and arbitrary, with no discernible motivation or purpose behind it. Ultimately, the question of why the chicken crossed the road may never be fully answered, as it is impossible to know for certain what was going on in the mind of the chicken at the time of its journey. However, by considering a range of possible explanations and taking into account the known behaviors and characteristics of chickens, we can gain a better understanding of this intriguing phenomenon." Chat-GPT

[@hop9193]

@@firiel2366 I don't know. Why did the chicken cross the road?

[@Littlejimmydoogan]

The thing about a dead mall is that you can go into one, look around, and notice that as a building it is still competently built. Like, the walls hold up the roof and even if some lights are dead and a few windows broken, the fixtures are still there and water is still connected to the bathroom. Its not missing anything load-bearing. This is something else. The Metaverse isn't even a dead mall; its a simulacrum of a dead mall. A Potemkin dead mall.

[@thetheatreorgan168]

It's an outstanding achievement to make something look sadder than my (somewhat) local uniwide mall,

[@uuh4yj43]

even a dead mall provides shelter, and houses birds and roaches, once this is dead it will shelter nothing, it will occupy no space besides the hole it left in the wallets of those involved.

[@arostwocents]

A dead mall could be converted to housing for hundreds or thousands of homeless. Decentraland can be converted to nothing, it will always remain an encapsulation of endless delusional hope that the $350,000 you spent on non existent land wasnt a total waste of money 😂

[@Borealis109]

Potemkin has got to mean something I don’t know because all I can think of is guilty gear

[@arostwocents]

@@Borealis109 a Potemkin village refers to the USSR when they built a fake village to show to westerners to show how good life was there, but it was all fake, new fronts on old buildings, poor labourers dressed up in smart clothes etc. So Potemkin means trying to show a good impression when the reality is really bad.

[@cogspace]

"A world where you can shop, buy things, invest, purchase goods, and go to stores" What a compelling list of features!

[@thetheatreorgan168]

I love how he says the same thing 4 times in different word-combos

[@fullmetaltheorist]

Sounds like he wants us to buy his stuff.

[@TheWoodenshark]

So a world where you can buy things, buy things, buy things, buy things and go to a place where you can buy things?

[@thetheatreorgan168]

@@TheWoodenshark If you don't like buying things, you can also do these following activities: -shop for goods -purchase goods -buy goods -go to stores -oh wait

[@-S.R.-]

​@@thetheatreorgan168b-but you forgot their biggest addition yet, you can JUMP around the map if you don't want to buy stuff!

[@tavitafish]

I always love the comparison "it's like Ready Player One" because Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian hellscape

[@Josh_Quillan]

Don't forget that it's also apt because Ready Player One is terribly crafted and springs from the work of significantly more talented others that the creator is entirely dependent on for ideas.

[@alwayshere6956]

​@@Josh_Quillan don't forget the slums they have to live in in the real world

[@matthewmuir8884]

And Ready Player One outright points out that one can never truly move into a digital world. "Reality is the only place where you can get a decent meal".

[@battlion507]

And book wise, the main character is a creep, and in the sequel, a complete, total douche canoe who wouldn't care about saving the real world unlike his "friends", pull a Sword Art Online (die in game = die for real) and a SOMA (launch a rocket server in space and load his brain into the OASIS like he was Motoko Kusanagi).

[@alwayshere6956]

@@battlion507 Which is a testament Id say to these chains binding us. Who would save us beyond someone suffering too? Im often discouraged when looking too the future but we draw from ourselves to create history and move forward, not from media but from soul.

[@phrygianphreak4428]

If a shrine to a passed child being next to a copy-pasted "meta-real-estate" mario house isn't the abyss staring back, i don't know what is

[@nzingahendricks4128]

the reflection, it is terrifying

[@SinHurr]

It's the abyss blowing raspberries.

[@vincentvangoatse2962]

Why do people avoid saying "dead" so much these days?

[@AnkhAnanku]

@@vincentvangoatse2962 maybe it’s behavior that’s grown out of some social media sites having weird censorship algorithms? IIRC, Mia Mulder did a thing on euphemisms a few months back…

[@todd1848]

@@vincentvangoatse2962 yeah, quite a few other Social sites (TikTok being the biggest) will delete and suspend you over certain words. Dead, Kill, Sex, and other words that do not look good near advertisements

[@juliocbp9389]

It’s clear that, for Metaverse advocates, “friends” doesn’t mean people you have a relationship with, but just “people you do activities with”

[@Max_McGamer]

"people you network with"

[@lunaangeleclipse9745]

"people you could successfully drag into a pyramid scheme"

[@dawildbear]

"fleshbags from which sustenance can be extracted"

[@triangleshiny]

god it just hit me that there's no seats in the theater because you can't actually sit in the game by default

[@luobomu9747]

But your avatar isn't going to get tired or uncomfortable standing up, so there's no practical reason for seats. But then again, there's no reason to go to a place with an imaginary screen in order to watch movies as in reality you're already sitting in front of an actual screen (or have one strapped to your face).

[@wadespencer3623]

@@luobomu9747 It's not about pragmatics, it's about how empty it makes the world you're inhabiting. You don't get tired walking around in Skyrim, but the game gives you benches and stools you can sit in cause it wants you to feel like you are in a real space.

[@monanarchoposad9276]

Decentraland's DAO having votes *disproportionately distributed based on wealth* is just poetic.

[@ethanstyant9704]

Especially since decentralisation's common claim is to circumvent this exact thing

[@gaz-l621]

@@ethanstyant9704 It's exactly what Dan pointed out in Line Goes Up. They're not trying to circumvent inequality, they're trying to be the ones on top.

[@bmv0746]

They somehow managed to recreate real-life politics, but make it even more corrupt than reality.

[@Morboxx]

@@gaz-l621 Slave never dreams to be free. Slave only dreams to be king.

[@DBKarel]

That's how all DAOs work. It's a disgrace.

[@Fluffkitscripts]

The “no ideology allowed” bit reminded me of a line by Terry Pratchett “For you see, the reason he couldn’t see it was the same reason someone in Times Square wouldn’t be able to point to New York.”

[@Yay295]

Or for a (much) older idiom, they "couldn't see the forest for the trees".

[@Pulsewave0]

This sent me down a bit of a rabbit-hole because I remembered that line as Trafalgar Square and England. But apparently the Times Square/New York line was from the TV adaptation of Good Omens, the book used Trafalgar Square and England. Strange thing to change! It'd generally be hard to know whether a given line in that book was by Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, but the TV adaptation came after Pratchett died, so...

[@sunnydong9069]

@@Pulsewave0 it has been reported that Neil during the adaptation process actively fought to preserve Sir Terry's bits as much as possible, even at the cost of cutting out his own bits, because he saw the show as a dedicated tribute to his friend. Not really arguing whether that specific line is Neil's or Terry's, I just find this fact super heartwarming

[@gemcorker3982]

​@@sunnydong9069 apparently the plan was for Neil and Terry to have cameos in the background during the scene in the sushi bar, because that way they'd get to sit there and eat sushi all day and just catch up like the great friends they were. Sadly, it wasn't possible, but Terry's trademark hat does have a cameo on the hatstand in Azeraphael's shop.

[@Norvolo]

That definitely sounds like a Pratchettism.

[@icequeen52]

"The world literally rotates around you!" *rotates the third person camera around the avatar, just like in every third person game ever*

[@Rutgerman95]

Today I learned Super Mario 64 is the metaverse

[@cynthiacrescent]

Geocentrism logic

[@queenbiscuit311]

at 1fps too

[@AmellsGrace]

To be fair, some third person games lock the camera behind you so you can't actually see, say, your face. Not that its any less funny tho

[@BunnLilah]

lol I remember the first time I ever saw that clip and how I was so confused. A rotating camera is such a basic feature that I couldn't comprehend what was being shown off. I had to rewind it to figure it out.

[@mothersbasement]

"our thing is gonna be exactly like Ready Player One!" *thing can't even emulate Atari properly*

[@anastasiagreen666]

they probably can't even run doom, which is so simple in code it can be played on a good enough calculator

[@jeffreyrhoten8652]

I want some real trash isekai. *plays eminence in shadow* I said real trash isekai. *plays sword art online* I said the REAL trash isekai. *shows Decentraland* Perfection.

[@Jimbo55151]

When they say “I want ready player one” they mean “I want to be the king of everything simply because I know enough pop culture”

[@0ptimuscrime]

😂 the Atari 2600 had 128 bytes of ram, or a tenth of a kilobyte. How can they not even get that running?

[@aznthy]

because they are grifters and not actually real coders who do work, they are con artists who doesn't know the art.

[@EthanBradley1231]

The idea that making it possible to walk from one website to another is about as silly as if someone asked you what superpower you would want and you said you would want to *not* be able to teleport.

[@Colddirector]

Year FR. It'd be fun maybe like a few times but I'd rather just click to get to where I want to go.

[@Robstafarian]

It makes sense that the people involved do not understand that existing in a physical environment is what makes walking enjoyable.

[@lilowhitney8614]

Basically just look at any game with a bug enviournment and fast travel. Doing a challenge with no fast travel can be compelling in some ways (certainly more immersive) but also pretty tedious and requires a lot more forethought.

[@frankwales]

This was tried before in the 1990s with VRML and virtual malls on the web that made you 'walk' to and between their stores. It was just as idiotic then as today, and failed utterly. As my wife said to proponents of it: "why are you inserting distance into hyperlinks?"

[@bobbodaskank]

You hear your mom coming down the hall. Oh dang. You start the four-block sprint from p*hub back to KZbin.

[@ianm1462]

The Metaverse’s understanding of what made multiplayer games fun is the Steve Buscemi ‘how do you do, fellow kids?’ meme but his outfit cost 10 billion dollars.

[@zleep9182]

The metaverse looks like the videogames you see characters play in movies from the early 2000s

[@ProjectThunderclaw]

And somehow it still looks exactly the same

[@fishbrains1249]

these worlds are an early experiment where players have real digital ownership. the purpose of decentraland is to make businesses understand not players

[@DawnAfternoon]

@@zleep9182 That's an insult to the 2000s game. PS2 games look better than that.

[@zleep9182]

@@DawnAfternoon I’m not talking about actual games, but a lot of movies end up using crappy-looking fake games when they need to show a character playing something cause it saves them needing to license the rights from an actual thing

[@ekki1993]

Techbros, every 3-5 years: Technically, you can make a square wheel work if you reworked all roads to have this particular bumpy shape.

[@AccSwtch50]

Imagine trying to turn in that lol

[@ekki1993]

@@AccSwtch50 Don't worry bro, the tech will only get better and those problems will all be solved. Square wheels are the future! /s

[@bulldozer8950]

@@ekki1993god this perfectly encapsulates the techno bro stuff. “Here’s some unnecessary change that is the future because it’s different and more convoluted than what we currently do, but technically works” “Here’s an extremely obvious flaw that is unsolvable why should we switch” “Trust bro the tech in the future will fix it”

[@dm121984]

@@ekki1993 Bro, people will prefer having their spines badly trashed by the roads. Trust me bro, I have a spine and it feels great having all my nerves trapped.

[@randomlywild3437]

I think you just explained Tesla's engineering ethos

[@Arkhavist_S]

Around 2004, age 13-14, I spent most of my afternoons playing heavily modded lobbies in Jedi Academy with a handful of friends I met online. We had a very involved and long-running RP going across dozens of characters, faction conflicts, internal politics, even a romance or two. It was fantastically cringeworthy, but all the more beautiful for it. At first we just used whatever mods, models, maps, etc. we could find and just make-believe them to be whatever we needed, but a couple of us eventually learned to make the mods ourselves and kitted everyone out in their fully-realized, only slightly plagiarized OCs and built two or three feature-complete maps that had everything from study halls and dueling arenas to lounges and secret council rooms. A few times, outside of the RP, we'd gather in a theater map and arrange a movie night. The screen in-game was just black, of course, but we coordinated on picking out movies that we all had on DVD and had someone count us down to hit play. What a cozy little world we had, just a dozen nerds connected over a silly Star Wars game, living our lives together as though we were roommates. What I'm trying to say is, in a time even before KZbin tutorials, there were gaggles of pre-teens crafting a better "metaverse" than this shit for free. At least we could sit in our chairs. (edit to fix 4am typos...)

[@starmaker75]

Your example shows that “metaverse” community kinda happen ether out of nowhere or by people who can nerd out on there favorite fiction or subject. It kinda of poectic that corporations can’t replicate social groups. the best they can do is sell stuff to those social groups and provide the technical stuff.

[@Arkhavist_S]

@@starmaker75 The metaverse isn't a place or product, it's a people.

[@sixstringedthing]

This is why ZuckBot has gone all-in. He's spent over a decade watching metrics that describe just how obsessive and/or tightly-knit people can get over their fandoms and hobbies. He's seen how so many millions of these communities, these "little metaverses" have sprung up organically around whatever subject or common thread. So now he wants One 'Verse to rule them all, One 'Verse to find them, One 'Verse to bring them all, and in their headsets bind them. And all at the behest of the most vapid and predatory industry that exists: advertising and marketing. I'm thrilled that it's all going so poorly!

[@Arkhavist_S]

@@sixstringedthing I snorted my drink reading that. I love it.

[@raspymorten]

Hell. And I cannot emphasise this enough. Yeah. This is the most beautifully dorky fucking thing I've read in a long time, and I love it.

[@b_megamaths]

...I can't believe this only just occurred to me. Decentraland being inspired by The Matrix literally makes it the embodiment of that meme about inventing the Torment Nexus from the famous book "Don't Invent The Torment Nexus"

[@ludo_narr]

They fall into that particular pit all the time. One of them compared the metaverse to Sword Art Online to me. The dude who made SAO in the story was the bad guy. The Cryptoland trailer was evocative of Jurassic Park. The people who made Jurassic Park in the story were the bad guys.

[@troodon1096]

They're the same kind of people that read Frankenstein and somehow their takeaway was that Victor Frankenstein was the hero that should be an inspiration. The Matrix isn't as deep as people think it is, but it's pretty obvious the message was never "the Matrix is a good thing we should totally impose on ourselves."

[@ethanladwig4292]

the message was abt being trans, estrogen came in a red pill in those days. [for the record i am trans and i think that shit owns]

[@XanthinZarda]

I liken it to reinventing a square wheel because they thought the last person who failed didn't put enough pepper in their egg salad; a non-sequitur of a reason for failure, divorced from the reality of the situation. And maybe a bit of a hot take, but like every attempt at VR and mainstream 3D thusfar.

[@GladiusTR]

@@ethanladwig4292 Big brain meme where the biggest brain is "The Matrix is about how Trans People look Hot in Leather"

[@ChristopherMooreAU]

I immediately added this video to my recommended viewing list for an upcoming lecture on cyberspace. It was then pointed out by one of my PhD students that I was cited in it! Sincerely a highlight of my career. Thank you!

[@PogieJoe]

Congrats!

[@nicholaswoollhead6830]

Yooo that's too cool. Good job, prof

[@tennicksalvarez9079]

Noice

[@ThatsOneNiceKitty]

You look like his twin brother.

[@Victoria42armstrong]

That’s amazing!

[@finnruel1813]

"Creating a rayified space so real it could be said to contain divinity" sounds like the motivation for a JRPG final boss

[@blakksheep736]

📝

[@Karamazov9]

Reified

[@calebharris292]

Modern Christians take the "being in the world but not of it" more as a challenge instead of a warning.

[@ihollander6736]

Lol, they cant even create divinity in the real world and they think they can invent it in the metaverse too. Its almost...adorable in its naivete

[@filaristillixusilan6109]

I agree with that, and I'm religious lol.

[@inciaradible7144]

‘The metaverse literally revolves around you.’ he said as he showed off the novel technology of *checks notes* a third-person camera.

[@harfharfful]

That was just really weird. It's typically a benchmark of maturity to realize that the world *doesn't* revolve around you. This is the kind of socially mal-adjusted bizarreness that seems to completely permeate the web3/crypto/NFT/metaverse landscape like some kind of nauseous miasma.

[@cheezemonkeyeater]

Well, when he rotated the camera, it did look like the world was revolving around him. Maybe that's what he meant?

[@dcogs8856]

@@harfharfful it’s also reflecting on investment culture. The lambo and 🚀 are not within the scope of responsible investing but instead are indicative of main character syndrome. A need to have power that’s recognized by everyone else.

[@eddieZDI]

So much better than the real world where I often am not the centre of the observable space...

[@marocat4749]

Ok i admit, its very funny, and a sorry excuse, but funny

[@Packbat]

27:48 I just realized that not only is the Decentraland office of Eashoo Law unstaffed, it is so thoroughly and guaranteededly unstaffed that you can film a stunt where you pretend to be James Eashoo *in James Eashoo's office* with complete assurance that neither you nor anyone else will experience any consequences for this.

[@DStecks]

This is extremely funny, but let's think about it, what consequences could there even be? If this game actually was a smash hit, and altered society to a degree that it made sense for James Eashoo to actually take clients in his DCL office, the game would still be DCL. Flagrant harassment and griefing would be the rule, not the exception, because that's how it always goes down in online games, ESPECIALLY ones that are trying to take themselves seriously as a participatory experience. And that's not even getting into how the entire enterprise is libertarian as fuck, so implementing even the most basic means of behaviour-control would be a non-starter.

[@SleepingLionsProductions]

I legit thought Dan found a clip of Eashoo Law and it was legitimate. Which makes it funnier lol

[@LucyBean42]

Imagine trying to have a talk as a lawyer in an environment where any passing idiot can listen in to sensitive privileged information. Or, say, where you can't prevent people from just walking into your law office.

[@TetrapodsOfLaniakea]

I wonder how James Eashoo feels about his whole Decentraland experience now. Does he wish he could sink into the Earth, or was it a mildly amusing diversion or ...? Did actual clients show up? Were they Bored Apes, and if so, how does one engage in a serious legal consultation with a Bored Ape?

[@ToozdaysChild]

@@TetrapodsOfLaniakea My guess is someone on his staff was a cryptobro and asked him if he could set up a 'law office' in Decentraland. James, not knowing or caring what a 'Metaverse' is, said yes, thinking it was some new advertising thing. The staffer then went on to create this embarrassing display of incompetence, and James continued practicing law, blissfully unaware of the Metaverse.

[@chuckd3921]

The metaverse is that one episode of Community where the dean was using a full VR rig to interact with his computer, but all the simple tasks you could do with a normal mouse, like deleting files, involved overly complicated nonsense, like climbing a mountain of file cabinets and drowning the file in a fountain...

[@lilowhitney8614]

At least that actually gamify the tasks since it provides some challenge. Could be a fun way to spend some hours, if not really a good way to clean up your computer 😅

[@gljames24]

I think XR would be great for things like virtually carving a 3d model or other design applications, but yeah, this weird meta-skewmorphism when people are fine with pulling up a window in vr and interacting with traditional interfaces is way more convenient. While it would be fun to see a filing cabinet file explorer, it would be way too impractical.

[@dieuwt2626]

AND JESUS WEPT ...for there were no more worlds to conquer.

[@Posiman]

Or the one Community epidode, where app developers test a new socisl app to remove all inherent inequalities and build new friendships. And end up creating an extremely hierarchical, authoritarian society where friendships are torn apart in an omnipresent quest for meowmeowbeenz. My god, the show was so good...

[@acg1189]

@@dieuwt2626 My favorite part about that bit is its mixing two metaphors that not only are have nothing to do with what the Dean is seeing, mean the exact opposite of each other.

[@vonriel1822]

I come back to this every so often - what can I say, Dan's voice hits just right - and every single time, that Breakout rant absolutely kills me. "The only thing to actually do here is play one of the four variants of Breakout and feel the gnawing, cold reality seep into you, as you realize that Decentraland is such a monumental failure as a platform for socialization, for commerce, _and_ for gaming, that it can't even handle properly emulating Breakout - a game from 1976 that you can play on goddamn Google Images. Steve Wozniak built Breakout 50 years ago to run on 44 TTL chips and a ham sandwich, and that's _still, somehow,_ too demanding a gaming experience for Decentraland." It's poetry.

[@Hayson898]

It's one of my favourite rants

[@blakksheep736]

I love it so much.

[@sydneygorelick7484]

The ham sandwich bit really just sells the whole thing and the ridiculousness of the failure

[@javiers5599]

There's one test that's equally crucial and I don't know if it's been tested, can it run Doom?

[@blakksheep736]

@@javiers5599 probably not.

[@LittleJimmy835]

Why order a pizza on the phone like a chump when you can boot up your computer, put on your VR headset, log into decentraland, travel to a pizza kiosk, and talk to a guy who will then order you a pizza on the phone? It’s so much simpler!

[@_loss_]

The idea is that you're already in VR

[@OsirisLord]

The cool thing about Decentraland is that you don't even need to put on your VR headset to order the pizza because they dropped VR functionality from their list of features.

[@thetheatreorgan168]

​​@@OsirisLord and the other cool thing is that, *you don't actually need to even order the pizza* because the guy running it peaced out and deleted the stand!

[@Syco07-pm3iz]

And? You can just type on your phone or just ask Google or Alexa to order a pizza​ @@_loss_

[@JJ-qo7th]

People still ordering pizzas on phones like chumps in 2023/2024. I order mine on a website like a chump instead.

[@Alicehastur]

i think a fundamental question a lot of metaverse stuff needs to ask itself; "is this just club penguin?" cause most of it seems like it's just club penguin

[@VSPhotfries]

It's more SecondLife circa 2007 or so - which in all fairness, was probably just 3d Club Penguin with more exposed genitals.

[@Lucinoxe_Halliday]

don’t you dare insult club penguin like that

[@goosegas2087]

Or Roblox. That's an apt comparison too.

[@DerplingKing]

Hey, club penguin is at least fairly stable

[@Leafeon56]

decorating their houses with their NFTs like it isnt the only thing you can actually do with your NFT. I was stuffing my igloo with 100 tvs and puffles i know this trick.

[@soulofastro]

It's incredible to see what a world built solely on greed and desperation looks like.

[@rodawallace]

Vegas?

[@smileyp4535]

Rapture and literally any place based on the plot of ayn rand's books 😂

[@snackerfork]

But enough about Earth, let's talk about Decentraland

[@lemeres2478]

Meh. Even I take a look outside my window every day.

[@rarecandy3445]

USA number one

[@JordanBelfort-d1k]

Dan throwing the WoW plush at 1:11:41 and the kitty walking over to investigate it is the best part of this video

[@lostozian_turandot]

I'm adding my voice to a 12,000 strong comment section and will likely be seen by no one, but it just struck me how many Decentraland users ask to be contacted on Discord, when the Metaverse is supposed to be a "place for genuine connections"????? Why would there not be native user-to-user chat in your Metaverse!? One of the foundational features that would actually make people stay on the platform in order to interact with each other?!?!? This could be something they add later the same way they added JUMPING multiple years after launch, but like, that just hit me that Decentraland users constantly ask to be contacted on other platforms that MAKE SENSE.

[@vaiyt]

That's bevause Decentraland is a digital scarcity monetization scheme first, a virtual world second, and a platform with features people actually want to use a distant third.

[@TomTriyingtothink]

Good point you have been heard

[@spinecho609]

Yell into the void, and you will be heard (eventually)

[@highjumpstudios2384]

It's like that sometimes

[@orestes0883]

That stuff is there, but since it was made by the same people who made the rest of Decentraland, it sucks and is basically unusable.

[@josuemoralesdominguez5669]

The guy saying "the metaverse rotates around you" and then spinning the camera around his character is hilarious. Put that guy in the comedy club.

[@ThatSpecificIndividual]

I'm convinced so many of these people never played videogames.

[@faameexplains1192]

I mean he's not wrong, technically. But it's also not special. That's just how 3d video games work lol

[@HakanKoseoglu]

@@ThatSpecificIndividual I'm convinced so many of these people never heard of Second Life.

[@ThatSpecificIndividual]

@HakanKoseoglu Or even VR chat. Seriously, if I had a bajillion dollars and wanted to make the metaverse real I would just buy VR chat and other games to expand into a seamless crypto-free metaverse. But I'm not wealthy nor interested in making the metaverse.

[@stratdax4028]

@@HakanKoseoglu or even Mario 64, apparently.

[@UndeadMozelle]

The clip of the guy from the Defiant saying the metaverse "literally rotates around you" while rotating the camera around his avatar at 3 fps is the most tragically funny thing I've ever seen. 😂

[@Smidgeon-pigeon]

This exactly. As though when you move your head, you don't see the world spin around you! As though this is not basic functionality of any 3D model!

[@misirtere9836]

When I got to that part I heard the setup and thought "no, surely he's not going to, SURELY NOT" and was absolutely *shattered* when he really did just say that like it was groundbreaking

[@AndrewScott1337]

I know hahaha, it was hard to watch honestly.

[@RobinSchmidt-bz3hm]

Yep, it was a shit video and that was an embarassing moment. I will fully own that. You have no context for that moment but it was still garbage and it deserved to be skewered. I was trying to articulate something and it came out really badly.

[@misirtere9836]

@@RobinSchmidt-bz3hm Either you're pretending to be the guy, or you're actually the guy and somehow made video content yet did not have a KZbin account until this February and still do not have any videos uploaded. Either outcome is highly embarassing, but we'll indulge in the second one for the moment. Your suggestion that it *was* poorly articulated, and *came out* badly, both past tense, suggests that you have since found a way to articulate it well. So please, enlighten us. What *were* you trying to say? What *is* the context?

[@crazynaut223]

The Eashoo Law section has gradually become my favorite part of the video. I don't think anything shows the stupidity of "moving to the metaverse" quite like the acted out scene of what a metaverse consultation would actually look like. No buzzwords, no analysis needed; just the digital space being used as intended, and basically just offering a less flattering version of Zoom. As others already pointed out, the lack of privacy and the fact that you can just impersonate a lawyer like that definitely add to the scene as well.

[@PointsofData]

I don't know if you talking about "lack of privacy" covers "inability to separate waiting clients from one's you're seeing right now and general inability to have security" but might as well specify that

[@blakksheep736]

Nothing burns their vision to the ground faster than actually trying to build it. All of a shudden, reality becomes real, and it drives it into the soil.

[@Frenchhornhero]

Watching Gloria Gao finish the fashion week show and yell "what the fuck did I just watch," followed by her hyping up the future potential of Decentraland, was truly some whiplash.

[@JJ-qo7th]

Bills gotta get paid I guess.

[@ultrawhitebread]

I just love the screaming in the background of that clip. Dude is orgasming at whatever is crashing in Decentraland.

[@Magic_beans_]

That’s basically what Dan’s saying at 1:16:20. Lifestyle journalism (fashion, travel, hobbies) is very much “if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.” And often the journalist has an editor who won’t let them “say nothing”, so all that’s left is to cherrypick the positives.

[@Ahnkitomi]

@@Magic_beans_ I remember someone talking about their review of American Dirt, and they weren't allowed to write negative reviews for the magazine they were reviewing it for, so they found one thing they thought they could praise (the quick pace of the narrative) and tried to move on. Man, sometimes you really do just need to collect your check and go home and have a beer or a cup of tea lol. Vent in the group chat where it won't get you fired.

[@brianmattei7134]

@@Ahnkitomi So ridiculous that we as a society are here at this point. People should be allowed to shit on terrible products and art.

[@globules804]

Decentraland looks like it would be the main set piece for an iCarly subplot

[@ryanm.9363]

Godlike dunk

[@javiers5599]

Spencer would definitely fall for a crypto scam

[@ashikjaman1940]

@@javiers5599 nah Neville would fall for it and somehow it's revealed that Gibby was the one scamming him

[@silversonome5360]

​@@javiers5599 absolute Spencer slander, he may be an idiot, but he's not stupid

[@javiers5599]

The man ordered 200 pillows instead of 2, caused a multi car pileup, and can set things on fire with his very presence

[@anselmenator]

I'm amused that this video has had drastically more people viewing it concurrently than Decentraland itself.

[@Sam-uz4iy]

This video didnt cost billions of dollars and has generated more value to humanity than Declownland ever did. Besides the video is a quality product that hundreds of crypto grifters couldn't generate.

[@FrankMcFuzz1]

@@Sam-uz4iy Decentrabland

[@hawkhero5730]

Heck, it looks like this comment is going to do numbers bigger than Decentraland.

[@ax14pz107]

​@@hawkhero5730 hell I think my unlisted, private video has more viewers than decentraland.

[@FFKonoko]

​@@ax14pz107 nevermind unlisted videos, somehow raising my sub count with literally no videos at all. 😂

[@TwigTheThird]

When they mention ChatGPT supplying the jokes in the comedy club it’s like when Palpatine shows up in the Prequels.

[@rizizum]

The thing is that jokes are the worst things ChatGPT can do, it knows the structure of a joke, but they never make sense, not a single one, AND THEY DIDNT EVEN BOTHER TO USE AN API THEY STRAIGHT UP OPEN THE WEBSITE

[@OctorokHero]

I hope he does a video on AI bros.

[@JesseLeeHumphry]

@@rizizum I think it's even worse: it looks like a _video of_ someone typing into ChatGPT.

[@TheBonkleFox]

WHAT DO YOU CALL A BEAR WITH NO TEETH? A GUMMY BEAR!

[@alexanderwinslow3422]

The shrine at 33:46 was surprisingly sad to me for some reason. The way people had seemed to treat the game as a way to make money being put in stark contrast to someone dedicating an area they spent money on to somebody they loved gave me emotional whiplash.

[@valletas]

And then BAMN mario house

[@meghanhenderson6682]

I can't imagine Nintendo saw Decentraland and thought it was a viable product (something about their close relationship with vidoe games, I dunno), so I can't imagine those houses have permission...wonder how long it'll take for Nintendo to sue.

[@Native_Creation]

@@meghanhenderson6682 Probably wasn't even on their radar because the user count and visibility of the spaces are abysmally low

[@Bzuhl]

Hopefully it's not a story of some grieving parents being scammed by a crypto-enthusiast sleazebag.

[@PinHeadSupliciumwtf]

All of it is sad.

[@LJmysticOwl]

It finally sunk in to me after Dan said it several times that there is no VR component to this. This thing isn't even bad VR Chat, it's bad Neopets. Amazing.

[@aidanwarren4980]

I've said it before: it's just Roblox if every game ran simultaneously in one server, all competing for space, and the part where you gamble on cosmetics is cranked up to 11

[@geneparmesan8748]

The thing is, if they were to dump this shitty Metaverse component and do away with the artificial scarcity/speculative component of it (which they never will, I get that’s a chief part of the scam, but hear me out) then I would play the SHIT out of modern Neopets. Reworked so that the “hubs” were more like WoW than the old 2000’s static images that led to forums, and with some basic AI/actual animated pets, Neopets 2023 could totally be a thing. It had all the components of many of these MMO’s: engagement-based rewards, regular events, collectibles, a solid stable of games, a decent lore and a solid community powered by forums. Again, I get that the artificial scarcity is the chief scam here, and that these shitty fake metaverses are really just vehicles to turn the NFT market into digital apartment rentals or some shit, but how cool, doable, and effortlessly-better-than-this would modern Neopets be??

[@HAHA4625]

Neopets at least has cute avatars and not ugly rubbish

[@LJmysticOwl]

@@HAHA4625 Yes, that's why I said it's bad Neopets. Neopets was more functional and usable and fun 25 years ago. The metaverse as it turns out is literally worse versions of a quarter-century-old idea.

[@racebase9146]

I know it’s such a small detail but my favorite moment is 56:40 where our host discovers that the stairs have no collision and, as a true gamer would do, begins to tight-rope walk up the hand railing in a desperate effort to restore functionality to the experience

[@GenesisTheKitty]

Real gamers make do

[@Lenariet]

Now I wanna see non-gamers being thrown into that situation. Just wanna carefully watch and examine their behavior. 🧐

[@IDOLA149]

Gamers gonna game

[@jonathanbince6410]

came looking for this lmao

[@chainswordcs]

i didn't notice that, that's incredible

[@DerekPearson-fi1hb]

If you are given a blank 3D space to do anything with and your first thought is to build a billboard, we are not going to get along.

[@bobstown5259]

How about 12 identical mario houses for rent? With me using my mana and influence to vote for a law outlawing homelessness inside the 3d space.

[@SUUN-SHINE]

Only a crypobro would, in their own advertising, call playing at a casino "earn(ing) real money" Priceless.

[@Clarste]

"I've been here for two days and I've almost earned 3 dollars!"

[@AreGeeBee]

​@@ClarsteAn honest wage for honest work...

[@baranxlr]

Fact: 99% of gamblers quit right before they’re about to win big

[@larkohiya]

​@@baranxlrhahah! I forgotten about that line. Classic.

[@thetheatreorgan168]

​@@Clarstelmao it isn't even real gambling. **You actually have to buy a wearable that costs $270 dollars to provide liquidity to the system**

[@JeremyBuxman]

Getting on a janky dragon that drunkenly flaps and leaves you stranded on a cliff while it flies away using commands from seconds ago is a pretty much Web3 as a metaphor.

[@cainprescott4937]

I've read this as "it barely works, it'll lead you nowhere, and everything it does is out of date". Yeah, that sounds like a pretty apt summary.

[@BIGBLUBLUR]

"Nah, but see, the dragon got me TO the mountain that it stranded me on. That means the idea is sound, we just need a lil' more time!"

[@skrrp]

Hey, I pay good money to do that in WoW.

[@kelinator2000]

The techbros at the decentraland committee accidentally inventing the voting system of the Roman Republic by making votes contingent on wealth is objectively hilarious.

[@josephmoore4764]

Voting shares for corporations are a thing

[@ebassi]

It's not a bug: it's the system's (only) feature according to the techbros

[@mikewaters2126]

It's a pretty natural thing to do, considering the US is explicitly modeled on the Roman oligarchy. Anyone looking for inspiration for how to define their pseudodemocratic system is just gonna be most familiar with modern day liberal democracies, which effectively function the same way.

[@alexgaudette988]

That's what any DAO is and it's one of the pillars of crypto. And it's hilarious every time someone uses an exploit to gain most of the share of whatever coin it's based on and casts their single massive vote

[@vylbird8014]

@@alexgaudette988 1. Buy 51% stake. 2. Proposal: "Give everything to me!" 3. Proposal passes.

[@hex.adecimal]

"first virtual real estate" is a real insult to all the gil i’ve dumped into house hunting in FFXIV

[@ekki1993]

One often overlooked fact about cryptobros is how little they know about the mediums they claim to revolutionize. As a very basic example, "code is law" is a gross, entry-level misinterpretation of both coding and law.

[@berrim26]

Ah yes, FF14, the game about finding an apartment in San Francisco

[@dianauwu1312]

​@@berrim26except you actually own that house in Eorzea

[@berrim26]

@dianauwu1312 ahaha yeah

[@OG_McLovin]

I still can't get over the guy marveling that a third-person camera revolving around him and being amazed at how awesome it is and how profound he thinks it is.

[@NatalleeK]

He really thought he was being poetic

[@FixTheWi-Fi]

"a world where you are always at the center" he says as his character model is off to the left.

[@Cricket-mo4vr]

It's hilarious. Like, I hope he stretched before making that reach

[@fntthesmth423]

Oh shit that really _was_ what he was saying...

[@psychott6]

I deadass thought he was playing roblox

[@FaithlessIsHe]

The simplicity of simply juxtaposing tech bro word salad against actual pathetic footage of the metaverse is so beautiful

[@thetheatreorgan168]

"the game lives in the mall, THE MALL NEEDS THE GAME." *Cuts to shitty walk-to-grind coins "game" with the fun and depth of a wet shower floor, so buggy the coins don't even collect half of the time*

[@blakksheep736]

No words said. No words needed.

[@blakksheep736]

​@@thetheatreorgan168 😆

[@TheInfamousBertman]

Speaking of incomprehensible word salad, this video references a study called "The Magic Circle: tabletop role playing games as queer utopian method" which is some prime word salad nonsense.

[@felixvelariusbos]

@@TheInfamousBertman while certainly word salad (and I looked up the paper; the abstract has even more word salad) I actually understand and can vibe with the core concept even more than whatever the tech bro salad is the core concept is that in in TTRPGs, because you can roleplay as whatever, you can very easily try out different identities/sexualities without pesky things like irl homophobia/transphobia/general anxieties getting in the way. It's a very common queer experience (at least in my own anecdotal evidence, which I know isn't scientific but whatever): I get to play a dude even though I'm assigned female at birth, get to try out what it's like being a guy, get to see what it feels like being treated like a guy/getting he/him pronouns. Or, get to try out romancing people of the same sex. Or romancing nobody; just being asexual and happy with that! All queer ideas that might get pushback from certain people IRL. tl;dr: TTRPGS provide a place to safely trial these kinds of things (knowingly or unknowingly) before feeling comfortable coming out to your family and friends.

[@sydneygorelick7484]

1:11:33 not to get even more distracted, but Webkinz was a game from 2005 that literally was "buy a real plushie and it comes with a virtual one you can walk around and play as online" so the concept behind the god awful word "phigital" is just shy of 2 decades old at least

[@twinsister2780]

Also, at least some items in Webkinz fashion were the same as "digital fashion", I had some items like a pink polo shirt that I (well, my parents, let's be real) bought and my plushie Webkinz could wear in real life, and it came with a code that could be used in the Code Shop to redeem a digital version of the same shirt, which the digital pet could wear.

[@demetriam2408]

Webkinz runs better than decentraland

[@LuckyHicks2]

That’s sort of what’s baffling to me about this whole thing; For as passionate as a lot of Metaverse folks are about digital worlds, they seem remarkably uninformed about what digital worlds nowadays actually entail. Granted, some might just really, REALLY want a return on their investment, but even then, it’s a bit absurd.

[@SwordmaidenGwen]

@@demetriam2408 My great grandma runs better than Decentraland. And she's dead.

[@elliscrawford7026]

I was immediately reminded of Bella Sara, a children's card game where you could buy little trading cards and activate them online to get a little horse you got to take care of and feed. Even the little Hershey's minigames are just a recreation of old game-ads that would be put on children's game sites in the early 00s. It's strange looking at this and knowing how much essentially comes from children's games but reported as adult.

[@CC-rg3tc]

I'm not sure what's sadder: the fact that the Lindt statement on their metaverse touts "comprehensibility" as a main draw, or the fact that it was a lie.

[@AmySay]

that’s an extremely underrated part of the whole video - they had to ADVERTISE that a website was comprehensible. and it was a point and click nightmare!

[@blakksheep736]

I love this comment.

[@HuntinaterH]

I’m very late, but I just wanted to add that there is a Fallout New Vegas mod that adds an NPC to the game who orders you real life pizza. It actually is code that orders the pizza and has it sent to your home. The metaverse couldn’t even do that

[@idontneedaname318]

Do they require you to enter your home address or

[@resentfulshrimp8044]

So did the Wii. The Wii. They can't do Wii level tech

[@Werewolf.with.Internet.Access]

What! The! Fuck! That’s so cool

[@blakksheep736]

​@@resentfulshrimp8044 isn't the Wii technically a retro console now?

[@SillyLittleDemon]

i looked into this, i couldn't find a new vegas mod for that but i found an oblivion one that does the same thing

[@KingUnKaged]

This is a weirdly large amount of effort for Dan to put into advertising his modern Mario houses

[@JaseekaRawr]

I snorted lmao 😆 pretty sneaky, sis (that's a boomer reference, I'm sorry)

[@misirtere9836]

@@JaseekaRawr >boomer reference >megamind what are you 5

[@JaseekaRawr]

@@misirtere9836 😆 did megamind do it, too? Bc it's originally from a 1980s commercial for the Checkers game lol

[@misirtere9836]

@@JaseekaRawr Huh. Alright, I stand corrected. That said, the reason it's in Megamind is because apparently it gets quoted enough that it's just a phrase people can recognize, so there's still no real reason to call it a "boomer reference". You're not out of touch, the children do be kinda wrong sometimes.

[@PointsofData]

​@misirtere9836 no, if you're specifically referencing something from the 80s you're a boomer. The people who put that reference into Megamind are also boomers.

[@juniperrodley9843]

Dan's cat setting itself up in the beginning of the video and then just hangin out is a much needed ray of sunshine

[@Pratica294]

It going after the WoW plushie was adorable OMG.

[@wisdommanari6701]

Time stamps

[@unseenmolee]

iirc her name is amy :)

[@davidwave4]

She’s not just there, she’s often watching him, listening attentively. Love Amy so much.

[@vizerandevir6422]

Dreaming floof spotted at 42:36

[@nemexisto]

I keep being reminded of an mlm sales pitch: they're not trying to sell you the product, but the prospect of becoming rich off of their product... But also they sell you the product and then you're stuck trying to pass it on to other people or else you've wasted your money

[@petercdavidson]

I laughed out loud when that one guy said, “I’ve made $2.98, and I’ve only been playing for… two days!”

[@PhotonBeast]

Which is.... (Checks the calculator) 18 and a half cents an hour.

[@lilowhitney8614]

Imagine how much more he would've made in... literally any minimum wage job during the time.

[@TrulyMadlyShallowly]

But make it sound enthusiastic!

[@paulmahoney7619]

@@lilowhitney8614 In some states he'd be making more than 40 times that!

[@thetheatreorgan168]

It's not even real gambling. You have to *buy* an at minimum 270$ wearable to give the system "liquidity" so those 3 bucks are likely *even worse* than it seems

[@13strong]

What's always so outstandingly clear about these projects is how completely bereft of imagination the creators and many of the users are. They have all this technology and money, and they immediately recreate the world online more or less exactly as it is in real life, but even jankier. No one seems to stop and think "Hey, why do we even need money in a virtual world?" or "Why do we need roads and cars in a virtual world?" It's so, so grim.

[@cassarandara9489]

Because they are trying to recreate reality from a blank slate: the underlying idea is that real world finance has become so instituionalised (which is not wrong per say of course), that there is little one can do to participate in it. So they want to create a virtual realm where everyone got a chance to become the new institution.

[@13strong]

@@cassarandara9489 Except that they aren't, and can't, because the whole virtual world is the creation and property of a single private corporation. The real world capitalist inequality is baked in.

[@TheRoboKitty]

I want to contrast Decentraland with other VR projects to highlight how utterly devoid of creativity Decentraland is. Other VR games, like "Hot Dogs And Horseshoes," have a modding community that does value recreating real guns as faithfully as possible. But not only is this even as a hobbyists challenge instead of an expected baseline, these realistic recreations are used as a jumping off point for other more creative projects, unrealistic projects and "cursed guns" that couldn't exist in reality. Fake things that take advantage of gaming's magical sandbox to show off creative ideas. "Beat saber" is another comparison. If Decentraland were to make a rhythm game it would just be a picture of a "Dance Dance Revolution" monitor and button pad. Beat saber in contrast has you weaving between obstacles that can only exist in VR, once again taking advantage of the inherit unreality of video games.

[@davidmotheral1071]

Don't you remember "The Matrix?" They tried to create a perfect fantasy world, but it all fell apart and lots of people got killed (they didn't specify why), so they had to rebuild it as something that sucks in all the ways human brains are wired to expect.

[@13strong]

@@davidmotheral1071 Yes, I remember that work of fiction.

[@ELSTERLING]

Gotta say, I love the expression 'powered by the blockchain.' That's like claiming a ship is powered by its inexplicably unretractable anchor.

[@becauseimafan]

😂😂

[@nathancongdon248]

“It’s simple! First, we drop an anchor, then sail to wherever we need to go. If the anchor isn’t long enough, then we just attach more links to the chain. When we want to sail back, we just wind the anchor back up again!” “Um… doesn’t that require us to already he at our destination? And wouldn’t it be simpler to use the sails we already have?” Honestly, you made a great analogy.

[@cryptophasia8511]

???

[@rawbebaba]

Even the people constantly talking about how great the Blockchain is never want to actually use it

[@cryptophasia8511]

@@rawbebaba Gary Gensler was paid to teach classes on bitcoin but he has never used it. This is an exceptionally infrequent occurrence as in my experience most people who talk about blockchain actually do use it on a regular basis

[@3one7crew]

I feel like getting away with trying to profit off official Nintendo art without getting a cease and desist is the true and undeniable proof of the platform's irrelevancy

[@Vlorisz]

Reminds me of talk by some marketing man to our college. He mentioned Second Life, which was big in FOMO for corporations at the time. And he asked a group of 150 or so college fresh men to raise their hand if you use second life. And only he himself and some old marketing lecturer raised their hand. Their looks of embarrassrment as they scanned the hall and saw how out of touch with reality they were was priceless.

[@TrulyMadlyShallowly]

The talk around Second Life was exactly the same as it is his time. Brand 'adoption' included. It was never more than shortterm ads ordered by marketing people who were talked into it by their agencies selling FOMO

[@disastergirl888]

“Phigital” sounds like either a kind of toenail fungal infection or the topical cream you’d use to get rid of it

[@sixstringedthing]

It's spelled "phygital" as it's a portmanteau of "physical" and "digital", but I only point that out because both spellings instantly mke me think "some sort of fungus found only in the tropics?"

[@disastergirl888]

@@sixstringedthing oh yeah, you’re totally right, in the process of trying to figure out the portmanteau I temporarily forgot how to spell actual words

[@sixstringedthing]

@@disastergirl888 Phygitalis Nonsensica. Calling dibs, there's gotte be an Ig-nobel in that somewhere.

[@disastergirl888]

@@sixstringedthing okay, but we’re accepting the award together

[@nomukun1138]

@@sixstringedthing Phy+gital and ph+igital are equally reasonable portmanteaus!

[@Ouvii]

I recently started teaching music lessons and kinda feel like a talentless hack who is stealing money. Thanks for showing me what talentless hacks stealing money actually looks like. I feel a lot better now.

[@princegobi5992]

If you have enough self awareness to have self doubt, you are certainly more developed than many of these people trying to shape the world in their image.

[@madwomansinsight]

Teaching music is infinitely more useful than creating something useless like this. It's an admirable effort in my eyes to want to teach it. You're doing good.

[@Colddirector]

If you were a talentless hack, you wouldn’t be thinking that and you wouldn’t care. Sometimes you just gotta tell that asshole who lives in your head to shove it.

[@Kei-ye8if]

Hey, I teach a bit myself, and I'd like to say you're making more of an impact than you think. The people you're teaching are being provided the gateway they might've not have had otherwise because you're willing to be bridge. There're many reasons why teaching is considered a selfless profession, one of which is the fulfillment is very dependent on being aware of the learner's strides, which doesn't always happen. The fact is without teachers, vast knowledge, even fundamental knowledge, for countless disciplines will sit, unmoving, in the heads of people fortunate enough to have it. Being able to pass on knowledge is what keeps us moving forward, and that's not even an exaggeration

[@wryckingbaul8612]

Teaching music is incredibly important. Don't you ever forget that. You matter.

[@uselessDM]

A dead mall would imply it was once alive. I think stillborn mall would be more accurate.

[@xyrissavage4983]

what terrifying nomenclature. love it

[@longsocks7798]

Glad to see the return of hat Dan, the Dan who wears a hat and is a different character from regular Dan. Truly one of the characters of all time

[@Illiteratechimp]

I miss the puppets

[@talesfromthenuzlocke1619]

I’m still so glad we got a cameo from the finger guns, I could use forty seconds of constant firing from those things

[@straitJacketFashion]

You won’t like the ending skit then.

[@SnowCat-nu7gj]

One of the defining characters of our time is hat Dan, the Dan with a hat

[@chellejohnson9789]

I must have blown $500 on getting the SR Hat Dan

[@normalperson4sure]

this just shows how dangerous it is that major publications are expecting non-games journalists to cover what is essentially video games. if they had sent anyone from ign or polygon to cover fashion week they would have immediately pointed out how bad it was. but instead they sent the poor fashion reporters

[@zenaku666]

Game is laggy, animations and graphics are basic, and gameplay is largely an afterthought. Systems are poorly optimized, and the core gameplay loop is mediocre to nonexistent. 6/10 IGN.

[@willmaud2359]

Everybody knows ign and polygon are paragons of unbiased, stellar journalism.

[@thaddeusgenhelm8979]

@@willmaud2359 I mean, that's part of the irony, isn't it? Even though they have their own issues and angles, we could still have at least expected them to handle *this* more accurately =P

[@gino14]

I'm always at the forefront to call gaming journalists in particular the bottom of the already abysally deep barrel that is modern journalism... but you're right. They would have handled this far better and called this for the BS it is.

[@georgewash8926]

​@@gino14 Yup. Unless of course... 💲💲💲💲💲

[@themassagechair6785]

That fashion show was basically a real life 'The Emperor's New Clothes'-tale. A bunch of people have been told that only smart people can see the value in a scuffed virtual fashion show and so they go on to laud it as a great succes. Only a handful of people actually had the guts to point out that the entire thing was a farce.

[@KalCounty]

That's so spot on. Like to the point that if Decentraland were happening in a fictional story, people would think the fashion show was a metaphor that was too on the nose.

[@Crypted112]

@@KalCounty hell, all this crypto stuff in general would probably be criticized for being way too implausible and unrealistic if it were taking place in a story

[@codytebaldi]

I almost got whiplash from seeing on one hand the clip of Gloria Gao commenting on how terrible it was as she experienced it in real time, and then in a later clip declaring how amazing it will be in the future once VR is added.

[@Default78334]

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

[@tuffemily1431]

Having watched this video several times favourite detail has to be the amount of people saying "when vr is here it's gonna be cool" and Dan just casually dropping that there never will be official vr support

[@nfinn42]

The number of times he just casually bodyblows these nerds by dropping a small but relevant fact with a little grin on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. 😂 love to watch a man enjoy his work

[@iamalivenow3721]

all of decentraland has some real "hey isn't this just second life but worse" energy

[@michimatsch5862]

Which, not to be rude to Second Life, but it's been some years. You'd think that the graphics would at least be better.

[@VonVikoGoat]

this is literally second life but now you get called slurs faster

[@Saltience]

second life but without mod support for every kink imaginable

[@Bighomie39]

And, by extension, it also has an extreme "wait this is Great Value VRChat" energy

[@officechairpotato]

"Second life but with delusions of grandeur"

[@Nintentheheartless]

Biggest takeaway from this video is that we need to crowdfund a point n click fmv game featuring Dan Olson as every npc

[@granite_planet]

I for one would certainly love to listen to "I can't use that right now" a couple thousand more times.

[@Bruno-ec8ft]

Hat Dan the Game

[@wadespencer3623]

Only if it's a terrible VR experience that makes us want to puke at all times. And has bad FMV graphics.

[@nicanornunez9787]

I hope someone will see this and put gpt4 to program a sketchy game in order to crowd found a couple hundred dollars, and never been seen again

[@Dobbyisfreelmao]

I'll make that game for free. Someday. Possibly. I don't know how to make games

[@BurningHydrant]

Mario Maker: Hey man, why not build a dumb little platformer level for your nine friends :) Players: Build torture chambers, musical experiences, working computers, and other games within the game. Decentraland: Yo dude, how about you build an ENTIRE DINGDANG UNIVERSE WITH THIS Giant corporations: Build dumb little platformer levels for their nine friends.

[@timothymclean]

What I'm hearing is that Mario Maker accomplishes 90% of Decentraland's stated objectives better than Decentraland ever could. (With most of the other 10% being stuff like rent.)

[@justalostlocal]

Bc Mario Maker is a modular system made by designers and developers hand in hand and users have the freedom and relatively low cost to play with this system / lego set. Decentralland is a piggy bank made by tech bros who think that theyre above designers and artists. No wonder it fails.

[@DaveUnknown]

At this point like 90% of any decent multiplayer video game with the slightest bit of modularity is better than decentraland.

[@jackyfudge5115]

As a avid Maker play who plays the torture stuff for fun this comment made my day

[@Pancakes_Master]

If I recall correctly a few corporations have actually made Mario Maker levels, too.

[@SuomiGameHUB]

4:18 "Earn real money" (displays a gambling table) Gives you a real sense of what these people consider "earning".

[@JoshBurcham104]

Did corporate tech bros forget that we are living things? That one guy describing a future new York as "covered in dust cause no one will bother with it anymore" is literally the funniest thing I've ever heard

[@Nazgy]

"Local IT community baffled by people intentionally going outside" summarizes like half of Metaworld projects

[@aureliusmarcusantoninus3441]

@@Nazgy They forgot they were chimpanzees with laptops. It happens to the best of us

[@MariaNicolae]

They probably think whole brain emulation is right around the corner, and no-one will have any anxiety around its ontological implications.

[@edgarallenhoe3518]

​@Nazgy arguable worse than that, he's skimming over the part where those people would need an *inside*. Would the people currently living in NYC move somewhere else? Why? (I know he's mainly talking about office buildings, but if there really was no other use for them, real estate developers and city planners would eventually give in and have them converted into housing.)

[@BigTylt]

"Let's rebuild society in VR so we don't feel as ashamed of spending all of our free time on the Internet rather than with real friends"

[@breadofjustice3584]

The weirdest part of this to me is VRChat does all of this stuff much better cuz it's actually intended to be a social space, even with its own massive flaws

[@Bustermachine]

Well yes, VRChat is trying to figure out what you can do with VR. So it's janky and derpy, but it has the end goal of figuring out the tech it's using and what it's actually good for. Decenterland meanwhile seems to be a glorified venture capital scam taking advantage of people's expectations from fiction.

[@PrimroseParadox]

VR chat has the closest and most legitimate claim to being a "metaverse" that lives up to the cryptobro marketing that yet exists, and it doesn't even care for the label. It's quite amusing.

[@massgunner4152]

And Fortnite did the gamification of events better, their musical concerts compared to that pathetic marshmello collab from years ago are like night and day.

[@JackedThor-so]

But... it's web 2. It's stinky poo poo cuz of that! Need web 3 to be good! 😢 I hate tech bros.

[@ltbq]

VRChat is seemingly uninterested in crypto or building the entire experience around finance and monetization so naturally it doesn't 'count' as the metaverse

[@graystedious1147]

Ready Player One: You can climb Mount Everest with Batman! Metaverse: You can go to Walmart. Ish.

[@samb3209]

the Danny Gonzalez-Folding Ideas collab we didn’t know we needed

[@neoqwerty]

Minecraft: Let's build Mt. Everest as the Christian God, Robocop, and Twilight Sparkle

[@swordhunter12]

VRChat: You can hangout with 5 different flavours of Kermit and a bunch of anime characters at a rave party, where there'll be more than 3 people! I swear, what techbros have consistently failed to do on purpose, smaller online games end up achieving, by accident!

[@hpspacecraft713]

The guy who thinks not knowing how to pronounce Hershey's is the Mandela effect lives rent free in my head

[@Putnam3145]

the mandela effect's definition is "the belief that memory is totally infallible and that any misremembering is thus metaphysical shenanigans", so it's pretty typical, really

[@D0cSwiss]

Whenever anyone mentions the Mandela effect, I immediately think of that guy

[@slykele547]

Imagine living in your modern mario house across the dead child shrine. I can’t wait for decentraland to be real 😍😍

[@lunab541]

This gave me a good laugh, thanks

[@weatheranddarkness]

and then you try and leave your virtual condo and glitch out the floor of the world

[@thesultrystrangerdanger6824]

Just throw fireballs 🔥😱 maybe she was sacrificed to Baal in order to build the sacred Mario house

[@plasticflower]

It's sad enough by itself that a kid died. The existence of this shrine... the idea that someone, probably a parent, expressed their grief through this virtual shrine next to virtual mario house... It breaks my heart and makes me want to cry.

[@Robstafarian]

@@plasticflower Exactly!

[@milliequick1271]

Don't you see the innovation here? In the non-metaversr world, it would be really difficult to walk into a Lawyer's office to film a bit because there would be people there and walls and consequences. So this really is a leap forward

[@highjumpstudios2384]

Oh god you're right

[@PointsofData]

Or you could dress up an empty office to be a lawyers office. Or ask a lawyer if you could pay them a small sum to rent out their office for a shoot. Or build a lawyer office in mine craft. Or...

[@1998_MIN]

I had no idea that the makers of Decentraland were such fans of Superman 64, what with the flying through rings, low frame rate, and poor draw distance

[@greenredblue]

It would be funny to join Decentraland, clone the AMC theater they were so proud of, then have it stream this on loop.

[@DaveTheVader]

The only problem would be that you'd have to spend actual money on that, which makes it categorically not worth the effort

[@fntthesmth423]

If some $LAND bagholder from Decentraland somehow manages to get this deep into the comments section... please it would be so funny

[@Gatorade69]

Not just this video but his video on NFTs and maybe Jauwn's videos too. Just anti crypto videos.

[@genkmiz]

Watching the cat slowly change sleeping positions over time was unironically more engaging than anything offered by the metaverse.

[@Bluecho4]

Everyone who ever considered getting involved in the "Metaverse" really should just go to a shelter and adopt an animal. It's way more productive, way less expensive, more psychologically rewarding, and the pet gets a forever home. Win win.

[@marys.9367]

her name is Amy!

[@mhawang8204]

It’s Dan’s tactic to drive up view count. I can’t concentrate on the video, just staring at Amy. I’ll have to watch through this multiple times. What a beautiful cat ❤

[@zutaca2825]

But especially when Dan threw the plushie and Amy ran after it

[@meghanhenderson6682]

Looking at Amy in other videos, she clearly loves Dan, so she's obviously intentionally helping his view count.

[@rampagingrabbit9042]

It’s so wild that these tech bros are like “we’re making the future like Ready Player One, you know, a dystopia. The book where the biggest theme is that people need to be in the real world and not online all the time”

[@guidovanthaar3761]

Or The Matrix. A simulation so realistic its mundanity is its defining feature.

[@ponivi]

I entirely agree with you but I find it funny that ready player one‘s entire point was to spend time outside and the person who wrote it is clearly a creep who hasn’t touched grass in his entire life

[@hibachimk240]

Yeah, RPO. Where the protagonist live and breathe internet, manage to win because of his knowledge of old geek culture he learned via the internet, have Mary-Sue levels of mastering this online game, and then at the end goes full grandpa imposing days without internet so people goes outside. Not sure it was that strong of a theme to begin with.

[@theotherohlourdespadua1131]

@@hibachimk240 Don't forget that the lesson the OASIS founder and creator impart of the MC (one of the few near coherent themes in the first novel) got thrown out, burned in a blazing fire, and its ashes spat on in thr second novel by making him the actual true antagonist to the MC from the previous book. The IRL version of James Halliday realized too late he was a monster all along and tried to do right by including a killer worm protocol within the OASIS that destroys it which can only be activated by the winner of the Easter Egg Hunt as part of his admin rights; the virtual version of the same founder (named Anorak) threatens to enslave the entirety of the OASIS users if he doesn't get back the admin rights the MC won and be with his beloved Leucosia (Kira Knightly IRL, late wife of Ogden "Og" Morrow, co-creator of the OASIS) whom James Halliday had a crush on since highschool and "cloned" her memories without her consent prior to her death. That franchise character assasinate James Halliday from being this social awkward but brilliant game dev that saw too late that the OASIS is a monster that is destroying humanity to basically being THE Snow Crash virus...

[@hibachimk240]

@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 Thing is, I didn't read the second book. I did read the first one long before the movie, thought it was okay, then reflected back on it and realized it was... not that good, really. OP protagonist, forced references, etc. So I didn't watch the movie and avoided the sequel, which I only heard of in KrimsonRogue's videos about it. So I can only judge the first book by its own, just like when it was released.

[@StinkFeart]

In high school for the senior art awards they brought in an industry creative to talk about the importance of art within their career… all she did was preach about the ‘inevitable greatness’ of the metaverse and quite desperately begged an audience of mostly HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS to invest. Everyone was uncomfortable and it took away from the celebration of the students work:(

[@Hayson898]

Dude that sounds horrible! I would say "I hope that person was talked to later/ashamed of themselves and apologized" but that would require them to have some level of self awareness.

[@blakksheep736]

😭