Christians, Beware the Metaverse

Crisis Magazine
OCTOBER 29, 2021
David Larson

I try my best to temper my tech-skeptic instincts, but despite these efforts, I can’t help but consider all the worst possibilities of the coming “Metaverse.” In fact, the more I read about it, the more I think Christians should start preparing for it now, before we, along with our family and friends, are pulled into a life far from the one God created for us.

For those unaware of this Metaverse, here are just a couple of recent updates.

This week, Facebook announced plans to change its name to “Meta” and rebrand itself as a Metaverse company rather than a social media company, betting its future on the importance of this development. Facebook/Meta also announced that it is hiring 10,000 people in Europe alone to advance this project. And Epic Games announced they are putting $1 billion toward building the Metaverse.

So, what exactly is this Metaverse? In short, it will be the new version of the internet. Experts say it will not exactly replace the internet, it will just absorb it and take it to the next level—the “Internet 3.0,” according to Ronke Babajide writing on Medium.

Virtual reality and augmented reality will fully integrate with the world around us, they say, so we won’t need to look down at screens all the time (that part actually sounds pretty nice). If a friend wants to speak with us, we won’t have to read a text or an email or speak on the phone; a digital version of them—like a Princess Leia hologram in Star Wars—will emerge and simply tell you the message they wanted to deliver. If you’re hungry, maybe a character from your favorite show (whatever those will look like) would pop up and suggest you get something from the new restaurant down the street.

To navigate this world, each person will apparently need an avatar, a kind of digital representation of themself. If you think the world has gone crazy with navel-gazing Millennials self-actualizing by “identifying” as whatever feels right in the moment, wait until turning from a man to a woman (or a man to a rabbit) just takes a click of a button rather than surgery and hormones.

This description is from the Oct. 22 Vanity Fair piece titled, “The Metaverse Is About to Change Everything”

… While a lot of the other early work for the Metaverse has been done by video-game companies, like Epic Games, Babajide says, “The Metaverse won’t be a game world. It’ll never ‘reset’ or ‘pause’ or ‘end,’ it’ll go on indefinitely like the real world. It’ll be synchronized with our real world and there will be no limit to the ‘users’ of this digital world.”

This is what Zuckerberg said, too, in his comments about the Ray-Ban Stories: “You don’t have to choose between being on your device or being fully present. We believe that this is an important step on the road to developing the ultimate augmented reality glasses.… Imagine seeing holograms, turn-by-turn directions or being able to play chess on a table in front of you with your loved one 3,000 miles away, right from your glasses.”

… And we don’t have to wonder about what kind of values this Metaverse would want to reign supreme. The very nature of the thing reveals them…

Read it all …

— Metaverse “about to change everything”

March 30 Apple and Meta Gave User Data to Hackers Who Used Forged Legal Requests

March 2022: Humans Will Live In Metaverse Soon’, Claims [amoral greedy madman] Mark Zuckerberg. What About Reality?

— Individuality to dissolve into mindless conformity

— Feb. 2022. Kickoff problems: Facebook Owner Meta Set for $195 Billion Wipeout, Biggest in Market History

— Zuckerberg loses 31 billion

Previous

“Our physical reality will merge with the digital universe…“

— The Metaverse is coming and it’s a very big deal…

— The Metaverse: a Symptom of Unnatural Despair