https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/29/the-metaverse-is-dystopian-but-to-big-tech-its-a-business-opportunity

Facebook’s plans to build a $10bn virtual reality world were ridiculed yet the rest of Silicon Valley has serious Fomo and is piling in

Once upon a time, a very long time ago – until Thursday 28 October 2021, to be precise – the term “metaverse” was known only to lexicographers and science fiction enthusiasts. And then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How come? Simply this: Mark Zuckerberg, the supreme leader of Facebook, pissed off by seeing nothing but bad news about his company in the media, announced that he was changing its name to Meta and would henceforth be devoting all his efforts – plus $10bn (£7bn) and thousands of engineers – to building a parallel universe called the metaverse.