dating apps, metaverse
Dating apps are so unlike how people have naturally met each other for millennia. Leaving aside matchmakers and arranged marriages, and staying with the common people, we meet people in the places we go doing whatever we do in our lives. Dating apps are set up more like picking something out of a catalogue. There are ways of "hanging out" over the Internet: chat programs, forums; however, in the real world, you meet someone and you're past that first barrier of actually being physically present with them vs needing to meet up... That all makes me worry when I think of this "metaverse" nonsense. We should be moving in the direction of more person-to-person interaction, but a metaverse just sounds like either adding things to our experience that we didn't need or want or else we're sinking further into virtual worlds constructed with varying degrees of attachment to reality. The only justification for something like a "metaverse" to exist or grow is to have a place to escape from reality...it's preferable to make reality better for more people.
I forgot, the other reason for a #metaverse is to have a means to have more ways to monetize peoples' every interpersonal interaction through persistent surveillance: when the walls are made of code, all of the walls can have ears