Maneuvering through the metaverse

Gone are the days when people fantasized about a virtual realm like Ready Player One, where real life and faraway sci-fi technology mingled to create a completely new world. Gone, too, are the days when people wondered of all the opportunities and risks a virtual realm like the ones today would bring. Now, new virtual avatars, jobs, and even more are available—all at the swipe of a finger. With recent discussions regarding the metaverse propelled into the mainstream, more companies are beginning to seriously consider expanding into the digital world and the boundless possibilities present within such technology. In the midst of the global pandemic in 2021, 73 percent of employees expressed a desire to continue working in hybrid workplaces—for which metaverses are fit as more employees want to start working at home.

Though the concept of the “metaverse” may seem completely foreign, only recently being used by corporations like Meta (formerly known as Facebook), the idea itself is nothing new. Seven years ago, Google introduced the world to its Google glasses, which it had anticipated to roll out globally. Though the glasses were eventually abandoned, metaverses have always been present in games like Roblox or Minecraft. All of them deal with the fundamental concept of creating online, digital avatars in a simulated world—the only difference of recent talks surrounding the metaverse is that these conversations center around a metaverse with a focus on social interaction. And even this is not new—the idea of a realm where people interact for social purposes has been promoted since 2009 by another game, Second Life, though this attempt to construct a widely-adopted world waned as visible by its small user base.

In contrast to these ill-fated attempts to build a metaverse, current attempts to assemble a metaverse are gaining much more traction. In February, Meta’s Horizon Worlds reached 300,000 users, while virtual realms like Decentraland had several properties bought by large brands like Samsung and Adidas. Businesses are not alone in their hopes for these worlds either; a poll by Accenture shows, public perception of the metaverse is increasingly shifting to view these worlds as “transformative” instead of as a short-lived fad. With revamped opinions, many are now beginning to realize the opportunities in what has been derided as an “imaginary world” in the past.

This rise in the fictional metaverse also comes with the rise in digital commerce, as people are increasingly turning to these digital realms to purchase goods—and with this demand has come the supply of entirely virtual influencers who have built fictional personas to market goods toward consumers. Influencers, such as Monica, on platforms such as South Korea’s Zepeto, have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars through their new financial opportunities, even to the point of earning six-figure salaries by advertising for large name brands.

Like the way online shopping and the advent of the internet drastically changed the way society functioned by facilitating the purchase of goods with a simple click, experts believe cryptocurrency and the metaverse can metamorphose the current internet. In these realms, people will no longer be restricted to seeing clothes and other goods in photographs, but instead able to try such clothes on their digital avatars. Furthermore, these new worlds open up creative methods of social interaction as promoted by companies like Meta, and of course with it the rise in ways to access customers through advertisements and personalized cryptocurrencies.

Though the metaverse poses great opportunities for change from the way goods are currently bought and from the conventional actions of visiting the mall, there continues to be the ever-present danger present with these anonymous transactions. With the release of new virtual realms, new currencies have emerged, further creating instability. Furthermore, as these digital avatars and the exchange of cryptocurrency are difficult, if not impossible to track, they have fostered the growth of hate speech and racist verbal abuse online.

These metaverses are allowing for the realization of our wildest sci-fi dreams, and allowing life to be interwoven with technology more than ever before. But with the sparks of the true digital age and the convenience it is bound to bring to the world, it too comes with darker social implications that must be addressed before the technology is adopted by and promoted to a larger audience.