190
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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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.