Metaverse and the out-of-touch corporate world

Letters from O'Brien #30

Dear Mr Smith,

Amongst the big tech giants, I get the impression that none are more universally hated than Facebook and the legacy of Mark Zuckerberg. I may be misreading the situation, but it’s worth a letter to you as I explore the reasons why this might be the case.

THE FACEBOOK MONOPOLY

It seems that Facebook is no longer operating in a true free market, but rather on the fringe of what is becoming a planned economy. Meta appears to act as if the satisfaction of the customer is their primary concern, and maybe they don’t need to have such a concern in such a controlled market.

Of course the lack of free market dynamics is a curse on anyone who wishes to produce or sell goods, unless you own the market. Just like the game ‘monopoly’, randomised trades and transactions will inevitably result in a monopolistic player emerging, alongside a lopsided distribution of wealth. He who has, will gain more, and he who does not have, will lose all. The game is not rigged, it simply is what it is. This isn’t capitalism, in fact it seems to be a law of nature. However, I don’t think all free market ‘monopolies’ are necessarily bad, since the free market players can only monopolise so much as their competitors cannot out-compete them.

However, when capitalism becomes corporatism, everything changes. Under a corporatist economy, monopolies inevitably form, and can then manipulate the market in order to forcefully stay in their position of absolute market dominance. I use the term ‘corporatism’ loosely, since the term is itself loosely defined, and I primarily use it in reference to a market which has been infiltrated by state policy, thus allowing for intervention into the free market at the behest of the state, lobbyists, or large corporations who can ‘buy their way in’ to state policy making. This could also be described as a type of centralised socialist economy. Regardless, the point is this; a centralised economy which is dictated by state intervention will lead to monopolies which cannot be out-competed. However, a traditional free market allows for the most creative business to produce goods which were more attractive to consumers than whatever the major companies were producing, thus allowing for the ‘undoing’ of monopolies over time. They can be visualised as boats; in the free market, a large corporation is like a freight ship, which allows for large quantities of goods to be bought to a given destination (market trends), but takes a long time to steer and travel (adapting to market demands), whilst a smaller business is like a speedboat, which cannot carry the same capacity as the freighter, but can rapidly travel between destinations, and takes little effort to steer in a new direction. However, in a controlled economy, the small, fast boats are held back, being ordered to follow the freighter, never exceeding its speed at the risk of penalty.

METAVERSE

This brings me to the topic of Meta. There are multiple reasons which prompted Facebook to move under ‘Meta’, but a personal opinion would be that it offered an opportunity to rebrand and move away from the overwhelmingly negative history Facebook has had. It hasn’t really worked, and the same negativity that surrounded Facebook and Zuckerberg’s personal brand has carried over in to this new space. This is partially a result of the insistence that Zuckerberg remain a ‘face’ of the brand, despite the on-average negative view towards him as an individual. Again, I may be misrepresenting the majority sentiment here, but this seems to be the state of affairs.

The Metaverse, to the surprise of no one, is not a concept attracting overwhelming applause. The idea exudes an out of touch corporatist approach to ‘gaming’ which appeals to a small band of equally out-of-touch tech consumers. This is problematic because the economic dominance of Facebook is not only forcing this product upon a market uninterested or unwilling to accept it, but also attempting to monopolise the entire peripheral tech industry to support the move.

What is happening in today’s corporate world, and Meta is a case in point, is similar to the situation within Nazi Germany. The National Socialists forced a centralised method of governing the economy upon business owners. All large corporations were essentially taken over by Nazi sympathisers or Party members, and a socialist market place replaced the previous free market. As history shows, this market manipulation was anything but capitalistic, with the Nazis demonising ‘merchant traders’ such as Jews and Roma as parasites, since, just as the Bolsheviks, the Nazis believed that only labour equaled value. Thus merchant trading and the reselling of goods (despite having value and the very reason for its trade) was seen as a parasitical force on the back of the hard-working German man. There was a normal market demand for such free trade but the Nazi engine was out of touch and too big of a monopoly to care.

Meta suffers from the same problem that plagues practically all big tech corporations; an out of touch culture resultant from near-monopolistic control of a market. Due to the sheer size of Meta, there is no longer an innovative desire. In fact, it is not even seen as a necessity to partake in market competition as would usually be the case. The majority of the employees within these bloated big tech corporations have no actual attachment to any actual product being released into the real world, such as the endless layers of management and middlemen that make up a large portion of a mega corporations payroll. Thus, companies such as Twitter began producing peripheral jobs based on distant extrapolations of the companies actually core purpose: to run an online social media platform.

I don’t think there is any compelling free market demand for what Meta is producing. Their product is not only out of touch with consumer demands, but comes with the disliked Facebook big tech brand. If the free market had its way, which may yet happen, then the ideas unfavoured by the public would be relegated to the attic. However, due to the corporate influence over both the controlled market and the ability for said corporations to pay out state policymakers, the products produced by Meta can be forcefully marketed. I think we’ve seen some healthcare products marketed this way over the past few years.

If Meta gets its way with the Metaverse sphere of products and software, it’s possible that policymakers, particularly those in education, may impose ‘learning ready’ Metaverse spaces which will act as virtual classrooms. In this way, Meta can cheat the free market by forcing demand on their product through state intervention.

Again, the vaccination program across the west has defied purchaser demand, and relied on bureaucratic purchasing decisions by the state at the behest of those receiving payouts and partnerships from the very same companies producing vaccines. A welcome feedback loop if you are the beneficiary of such a controlled market, and robbery of those who are not.

In fact, if I dare to be even more cynical about Zuckerberg’s empire, it seems the relationship between Meta and its users on Facebook and Instagram is akin to that a drug addict and his dealer. The dealer, however, owns the whole market of the addictive vice.

I think the only platform associated with Meta that continues to flourish is Instagram; a project which was acquired by, not created by, Facebook, and which has been under constant manipulation since its acquisition. This is unfortunate, because Instagram was once a platform oriented purely around photo-sharing. Now, thanks to continual updates and changes, it has been transformed into perhaps the most addictive and destructive social media platform in widespread use. I guess TicTok would be in the same category. Instagram has warped an entire generations mindset and worldview, it chews up countless hours of time, and it adds nothing of value to the lives of the majority of its users. TicTok is quickly becoming the twin destructive force for the younger generation, and probably part of a CCP strategy to weaken the west.

ABSTRACT PEOPLE

On a tangent, another negative attribute of social media in general is the proclivity for users, and particularly young people, to use abstractions seen online to draw conclusions about real life people they have never met. An obvious and regularly discussed example is beauty or living standards posted online, and how they contrast to reality. Such distorted abstractions create stress and dissatisfaction via the tyranny of comparison that young people are so vulnerable to. The same distorted abstractions encompass all sorts of things, such as how one perceives people groups, political figures, opinions from others, and so forth. A more pressing example would be activists, particularly radical activists, and their habitual attacking and defaming of ideas, individuals, or even whole people groups. It is possible that much of this stems from extrapolations drawn from abstractions, such as those presented on Instagram, TicTok, YouTube, and Reddit.

Using the online sphere as their base reality, people can take extrapolations, personal beliefs, cultural ideas, and stereotypes, and then combine them to form the basis of judgement for people or people groups that may be far removed from reality. The ‘people’ in the minds of these individuals don’t actually exist. They are a by-product the imagination, based primarily off of what they have heard, read, and absorbed. These abstract people or people groups are almost like fictional characters, playing out their role in a semi-fictional pathological projection. It makes you wonder if many career politicians think in this manner, and it’s likely that many activist types are prone to such projections. The result is an inability to actually make accurate judgements or decisions, since nothing is actually real. The people groups, for example ‘white people’ or the ‘black community’, do not even exist. They are beyond broad in concept and quite ill defined. Thus, people jumping on stage with loudspeakers and asking for radical change in the name of any one of the endless stereotypes often do not know what they are even talking about. They are projecting a formulation of their own abstractions onto reality, and expecting other people to go along with it as if it were fact. When someone speak on behalf of the ‘black community’, who are they talking about? When someone says that ‘black people think this…’, what are they suggesting? Again, it makes zero sense, because beyond skin pigmentation there is no other factor which can really unite such broad terms as ‘the black community’ any more than ‘the white community’. Of course, many of the activist types would claim, lacking all sense of self awareness, that you can actually draw a marker around such groups as ‘black people’, by suggesting that they all think a particular way, act in a particular way, and are all essentially the ‘same race’. Try telling a Kenyan and a Somali that they are the same. This is, of course, actually racist, and in one of the most stupid ways possible.

With this considered, it is easy to see how social media, and in particular those owned by Meta, can be a negative force on the collective mind of its participants. Are we nurturing a people who see abstract others in their heads, built upon overwhelmingly negative abstractions in their virtual worlds?

People of all ages need to unplug themselves from a pseudo-reality which is constantly being crafted before them if they are to have a healthy outlook on the world, themselves, and those around them.

The free market needs to be reinstated. Controlled economies and corporatism is a cancer.

Meta has been able to force itself into the lives of a majority in the first world. Their reach is beyond that of the often discussed globalists. This mega-corporation already controls over 1 billion people, and by extension touching almost 4 billion to some extent. Thanks to this forced adoption and dominance over any competition, Meta can continue to push whatever out-of-touch, intrusive products they like. Soon enough not even schools will be free of its reach. I feel this is a major threat to our future. Even if it turns out that no secret agenda is being pushed, the incredibly unhealthy extrapolations crafted by Instagram will continue to corrode the health of those who constant consume from it. After all, we are only just seeing the first generation raised completely reliant on these applications. No one has any idea how they will turn out, but is already not looking good. The dealer owns the market and he’s not about to let his addicted clients go anytime soon.

Meta continues to grow, but my hope is that its reputation will likely continue to plummet. Nevertheless, the danger posed by the platforms within its apparatus still pose a serious threat to our individual and corporate sanity. A controlled market allows such corporations to force growth, while stifling any competition. And, a population constantly exposed to this forced product will likely develop unhealthy addictions, an inability to tolerate boredom and experience reality, and create unrealistic projections of the world which are then superimposed on reality itself. The answer to this is complex, but a great place to start is to simply not take part in the game. If this cannot be done, then at least be aware of what is happening, and be self-critical of just how much these large, heavily monitored and manipulated platforms are affecting your own discernment and health.

Thanks for listening Mr Smith.

Sincerely yours,

O’Brien

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The Left's Grasp