By Peddling His Metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Keep Us Even Further Apart

According to a recent advisory from the Surgeon General, there’s a “public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in our country.”

Even before the pandemic hit, the advisory states that “approximately half of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.” This loneliness “increases the risk for individuals to develop mental health challenges in their lives, and lacking connection can increase the risk for premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily.”

This crisis of loneliness was on my mind when I read about Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse conversation with computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman. Thanks to Meta’s Codec Avatar research, the duo appear as 3D hyper-realistic avatars, which makes it look as though they’re talking face to face.

It’s not exactly real, but it’s almost real—like Zoom on steroids.

Evidently, this is Zuckerberg’s vision for our future: Stay home, put goggles on your face and connect with the “hyper-realism” of human avatars.

Never mind that Zoom, Amazon, Postmate, Netflix and other merchants of convenience are already keeping us isolated at home. Zuckerberg now wants to pile on and deliver virtual humanity to our door. If you’re comfortable at home but starved for human connection, Zuckerberg wants you to know there’s no need to schlep anywhere or invite anyone over. Human connection will come to your door if you buy his avatar-producing Meta goggles.

We can’t blame Zuckerberg. This is what he does. He is neither a poet nor a philosopher. He’s a techno nerd. He sees life’s problems through the cold lens of technology. If humans are lonely and isolated, how can technology fix the problem and boost Meta’s revenue in the process?

It turns out we didn’t need much technology these past few days during the Jewish festival of Sukkot. As I gathered with friends and family inside these frail huts we call sukkahs, the only technology we needed was a sturdy table. We were a group of real humans sitting in a real space in real time with real food and real wine enjoying real conversation with real hugs.

Who knew such a simple human ritual would ever be worth mentioning?

When Zuckerberg tells us his new technology is “hyper-realistic,” he seems to sense its limitations. He knows he can’t really offer us the real thing, so he overcompensates by telling us it’s more than real, it’s hyper real. Maybe he’s hoping we will replace “almost real” with “hyper real” and forget the difference.

Zuckerberg has so much loose change he’s poured more than $40 billion into his futuristic play toy, even renaming his company from Facebook to Meta. He’s got meta plans for humanity, and, apparently, nothing will stop him.

Well, not so fast.

There is one thing that can stop him. We can say no to his vision. Just as the Meta king is using his freedom to foist on us his Metaverse vision, we can use our freedom to foist on him a counter vision. This is a vision of a life with real people around us, whether eating a meal or hiking on a trail, whether strolling through a mall or going to a theater, whether gathering in communities or meeting friends for coffee. From these simple goggle-free pleasures, Zuckerberg’s Metaverse won’t make a penny, and he knows it.

Zuckerberg’s magical goggles may make him giddy with techno pride, but it won’t fix our loneliness. It will likely make it worse. No matter how many human avatars his $40 billion gizmo can push through our tired eyes, it will only reinforce our isolation and remind us of our need for real human connection.

The only thing that can fill our need for real human connection is real human connection. If enough of us stick to that truth, humanity wins.