{"id":12656,"date":"2023-03-15T22:06:32","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T22:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12656"},"modified":"2023-03-21T22:09:55","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T22:09:55","slug":"the-lonelyverse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/03\/15\/the-lonelyverse\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lonelyverse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from New York Magazine Intelligencer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s deserted fantasyland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Paul Murray<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
The church.\u00a0Photo: Paul Murray<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In September,\u00a0my family and I move from our home in Dublin to a fancy East Coast college town, where I\u2019ll be teaching for the semester. I grew up in Dublin, which means I have a wide circle of friends to draw on whenever I\u2019m let out of the house. The street where I live is friendly: If I want to borrow a spatula or I need someone to look after my cat, I have only to ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is different for us in the U.S. We have, for the first time, a basement. But we have no friends. It seems as if none of the permanent faculty can afford to live in the suburb where the university has placed us. We technically have neighbors, but we never see them; they manifest only in the form of their gardeners, who are at work every day with their leaf blowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s in this strange scenario \u2014 alone on a continent, cut off from everyone I know \u2014 that I decide to try the\u00a0metaverse<\/a>\u00a0for the first time.\u00a0A whole galaxy of pals brought right to your living room?\u00a0<\/em>I think.\u00a0Why not?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing that strikes me when I enter the metaverse is the people, the avatars, their \u2014\u00a0Where are their fucking legs?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at NYMag<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from New York Magazine Intelligencer Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse? Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s deserted fantasyland. By\u00a0Paul Murray In September,\u00a0my family and I move from our home in Dublin to a fancy East Coast college town, where I\u2019ll be teaching for the semester. I grew up in Dublin, which means I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}