Microblog Memes

John Carmack had some choice words when he left Meta.

"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.

"It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover."

Imagine getting John Carmack on your project and ignoring him. Like, what was the point? Zuck got lucky in the beginning and was cut throat enough to hold on to it, but he has no entrepreneurial talent.

$73G to make VR Miis with no legs

Meanwhile, VRChat:

It wasn't for nothing! I'm sure Meta generated tons of patents they'll use to stifle anyone else in the industry who tries to innovate.

MetaZuc looks more human than the real thing.

VR isn’t a bad idea.

…Zuckerberg is just an idiot.

That’s really what it comes down to. Facebook has some neat branches and employees, but at the end of the day, its head decision maker is chronically flakey and makes catastrophically bad financial choices, repeatedly.

He’s just so freaking rich it doesn’t even matter.

My conspiracy theory is that it was wildly successful, because the point wasn't creating whatever VR space they claimed wanted to happen; it was to cover up the story of the Facebook papers. The timing lines up (both in October 2021 within a day or two). The additional patents acquired in the process are just a nice little bonus.

Investors ate up the idea from someone who has a history of wildly successful growth. And we all know, it would have been outcry from investors that caused any real change (in America at least) about Facebook's business practices.

Most reasonable explanation for this crap I heard:

1. facebook is just a website that makes money through tracking and ads
2. people need to use a device to access facebook, so they can get tracked and see ads
3. apple and google own all your devices and started to block tracking and ads (except their own)
4. Zuck saw a risky chance by investing in VR. The vision was to get everyone on their VR platform so they can continue to track you and show you ads

I just realised what Zuck looks like in the metaverse: the evil kid from toy story!

I’m sorry, the free market allocated that cash to efficient uses. 

It wasn’t even obvious how to get into this thing. We got a Quest headset, the kids use the heck out of it for gaming and hanging with friends, and I poked around in it trying to find this Zuckerberg World and you have to work to find it. I mean, if he wanted this thing to be big it should be the default, but nope. Anyway, the headsets are a ton of fun for gaming with others, but as far as VR interaction with other’s avatars for the purposes of social interaction? Nope.

There's something wrong with anyone who doesn't find that image disturbing.

Brrr.

They could have done this AND universal healthcare. Universal Healthcare would actually save us money allowing us to put more into useless BS like Meta VR.

What's really dumb is that VR could actually take off if it was done correctly, but these billionaires can't think of literally anything besides profit so they base the entire model around that and just expect people to want it. If he had dumped an iota into further development of VR tech, and invested in some actual original VR content, games, etc then people would flock to it. That and actual affordable VR since everything is still overpriced since it's considered a niche market.

Note that this was a 10% cut. Meta has a lot of staff. They are also slightly pivoting to AR glasses, as they say Ray-Ban Display sales are much higher than anticipated. I think they see their chance of cornering the VR market as gone (probably because of android xr) (see https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-pauses-third-party-horizon-os-headsets/ ) but think they have a chance to dominate AR glasses / wearables.

They could have created a whole grand theft auto level city and filled it with real people for cheaper wtf

The art direction in that screenshot seems to be "make everyone else look so weird Zuckerburg looks normal"

Has no one commented on the side eye - “what the feck am I doing working for this idiot?”

For context, $77 billion is more than most nations spend on their military.

What we could have bought instead; a list of real problems that money could help significantly with, or fix entirely (generated with AI):

Universal Healthcare (Medicare for All)

• Est. cost: $3–4T per year
• $77B covers ~2–3 weeks of healthcare for the entire US
• Or ~6–7 million people for one year
• ~2% of annual national healthcare spend

High-Speed Rail and Public Transit

• Est. cost: $50–120M per mile
• $77B covers 600–1,200 miles of true HSR
• 3–5 major national corridors plus urban transit upgrades

Homelessness, Veterans, and Mental Health

• Est. cost: $150k–300k per housing unit; ~$25k/person/year care
• $77B covers 250,000–400,000 permanent housing units
• 10+ years of care for all chronically homeless
• 100% of veteran homelessness eliminated

Roads, Bridges, and Infrastructure

• Est. cost: ~$5M per bridge; ~$1M per mile of road
• $77B covers 15,000–20,000 bridge replacements
• ~100,000 miles of roadway rebuilt
• ~15–20% of all structurally deficient bridges

Domestic Semiconductor Manufacturing

• CHIPS Act: $52B total
• $77B covers 150% of CHIPS Act
• 3–5 leading-edge fabs
• Full AI, defense, and automotive supply-chain security

Fusion and Advanced Energy

• ITER reactor: ~$22B
• SPARC program: ~$4B
• $77B covers 3 ITER-class reactors
• 10+ SPARC-class fusion programs

Climate Resilience and Clean Energy

• Est. cost: ~$1B per GW renewable capacity
• $77B covers 60+ GW clean power
• Electrification of ~10 million homes
• Coastal protection and grid modernization across multiple states

Public Sector Scale Comparison

• Equals 3+ years of NASA’s budget
• Equals 10 years of US homelessness funding
• Exceeds annual defense budgets of most countries

Facebook is a boomer infested, depressing, idiot shithole. I'm not spending extra money for hardware so I can experience that in VR.

If I wanted to experience that, I can visit my shitty boomer mother for free in reality.

I mean he just pumped that money into the US and Chinese economy. It's not like he lit a pile of money on fire like the Joker. Most of that money went into salaries of the people doing R&D and manufacturing of the headsets in China. Lets hope the Zuck has a dozen more of these failures.