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Smoking avatars and online games: how big tobacco targets young people in the metaverse
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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Words don't mean anything anymore.
They're so desperate to make the real-life Snowcrash, Ready Player One, Matrix, they haven't even acknowledged how hard metaverse flopped, nor how there's no "smuggling" anything into a virtual "space". They can't stand the idea that what they really made was Worse Second Life 30 Years Later.
Apparently it mostly appeals to young children, or maybe people pretending to be young children.
This is because they include stuff like Roblox in the definition of Metaverse. I personally hate that.
If we kept it to SocialVR titles, the demographics would shift to something more balanced, afaik. VRC bans people under 13 when they are discovered/reported.
Oh, so metaverse not Metaverse.
Yeah, that isn't confusing and stupid.
Yeah it sucks. Meta shit all over the term. And then every other company jumped on board claiming their stuff is a metaverse too. Even Microsoft claimed Teams was a metaverse.
Jesus I can't think of anything I would want less than a Teams metaverse. Although I do have a macabre fascination as to how they could make the product even worse.
Hopefully that means less of the little bastards will be in VRC.
Vampire Recreational Coffins?
(VRChat)
The Meta prison purse®™
The things being smuggled are ideas. "beyond the reach of regulators," see? It's the advertisement nature of what's being done here.
Nothing is being 'smuggled'.
They are just advertising. Regular old advertising which should have the same rules applied as any other advertising.
They're advertising tobacco to children, which is illegal. Why would you throw yourself on this hill?
If they are circumventing regulators, and they are doing that, then they are smuggling advertisements to illegal targets, yes.
What hill do you think I'm on?
My point was that they were advertising and it should be treated as advertising, including any legal pushments for advertising to children. Advertising doesn't involve 'smuggling' or other words that make zero sense in this context that make it sound like it isn't advertising.
The article specifically calls out advertising—how does 'smuggling' imply anything else? To smuggle here just means "to circumvent regulators." And yeah, I think it's appropriately terse.
You are reacting to what is, at worst, a bit of poetry. I don't understand why you're doing that.
Smuggling is moving physical goods from one place to another, not advertising. That is why I think it is important to just call it advertising.
Why are you trying to read some kind of negative intent into my differing opinion that is fundamentally the same as yours, but with a minor difference?
Well, firstly, because I did think for a moment you were going to start defending tobacco companies—that would have been wild. Thanks for not doing that, I guess.
But secondly, because there is nothing actually wrong with this word choice. Like, this is kind of a literacy issue: smuggling is more than just moving physical goods, it is to sneak them across lines and borders maintained by authorities. The advertisement here is the good being smuggled; it's a perfectly apt metaphor. The implication is either that regulators don't know this is happening, or are by some technicality unable to do anything about it.
Broadly, this is related to arguments I've had with people about whether 'genocide' is an appropriate term for what the US is or wanted to start doing. And, what do you know, we now have our first internment camp. I'll pause for applause; you gotta love an achievement.
Hell, I remember arguments about whether Isreal was technically committing a genocide. They are doing that. People were just calling it ahead of time.
I desperately want to see people stop particulating over the details of at best mildly incorrect word choice. This is a kind of anti-intellectual behavior. It's refusing to see a metaphor, or even a perfect application, for what it is. You actually work against positive forces by constantly dragging the discussion down.
Anyway, sorry for the long post. I just thought thoroughly explaining would be better than going back and forth 17 more times.
Jesus Christ, I just thought it was a shitty metaphor.