All too rarely do journalists revisit “big” stories long after they’ve left the headlines. That’s why I was so concerned about this lengthy feature by Paul Murray in the New York Magazine pleased. He undertook a lengthy self-experiment in the Metaverse long after the general public had lost interest in Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious mega-virtual reality project. The result is not only better than the self-test articles from the start phase of Meta’s VR world “Horizon Worlds” and other digital worlds. The article is also great narratively, and hilariously funny. Murray manages to glean comedy gold from the immature tech, his quirky encounters with kids who are only in the Metaverse for obscene voice chats, and misfits of all sorts from across America.
In the end, however, the story turns. Irishman Murray is also in the Metaverse to escape the loneliness of his new homeland of USA, where he doesn’t know anyone. Turns out, the freaks from the Metaverse he meets are more than laughable legless avatars in search of VR porn. You are also: much lonelier than he is.
Worth reading to the end.