Beyond the Mehtaverse

How to bring humanity into impersonal virtual worlds

2022 was supposed to have been the year of the metaverse.

Instead, the virtual worlds offered up by tech corporations hoping to cash in on the Next Big Thing have been… meh.

Decentraland is depopulated. Meta’s plans to get people to use its VR headsets don’t have any legs. Efforts by big brands to cash in on metaverse hype have been downright embarrassing.

How could digital futurists have been so wrong?

The answer is simple: If people are given no compelling reason to strap computers to their faces, they would rather not do it.

We’ve all just spent a couple of years interacting with people through digital interfaces, and it didn’t feel magical. It was depressing.

We already have access to a fully immersive world that filled with billions of users who we can interact with using all of our senses. It’s called… the world. People are happily reacquainting themselves with it.

Why would anyone pay money to leave the vivid real world behind in favor of a thin imitation?

Why?

Until now, digital titans haven’t truly grappled with this question, but it’s really the only one that matters.

How To Design A Metaverse That Fully Engages

The problem with existing attempts to seduce people into a metaverse doesn’t lie with the technology. Sure, the graphics are glitchy and the controls are awkward, but people have eagerly embraced technologically primitive immersive experiences for hundreds of thousands of years.

They’re called rituals.

Rituals are systematically-designed experiences that arouse people’s emotions, pull them into shared action, transform their identities, and invest them in communities.

Rituals use forms of art such as story, song, theater, and dance to bring imaginary realms into apparent reality. In doing so, they shape societies and motivate individuals to undertake dramatic sacrifices.

They do it all without a single volt of electricity.

They key to the power of rituals is that they’re fine tuned to work within specific cultural contexts for vital social purposes using powerful psychological motivators.

Rituals deal with what matters. They’re designed by people who are intimately familiar with human needs.

Familiarity with humanity is vital essence that’s missing from any metaverse.

Digital businesses have made their wealth by disrupting human communities and distancing themselves from people by automating work that was once a labor of love. A few titans have become fabulously rich in the process. Everyone else is getting laid off.

At the same time, the midas touch of digital business seems to have worn off. No one understands why they ought to get the new iPhone. Digital voice assistants sit dusty and forgotten on kitchen counters. The bored apes of cryptocurrency tread water just above a complete market crash only because it’s so damned difficult for people to convert their tokens to units of reliable value.

Of course people still buy and use digital devices, but only when it makes sense for them to do so.

This is the organic criterion that keeps the metaverse from mattering: Nobody has come up with a reason beyond simple novelty that anyone should bother to go through the trouble.

Humanity has caught up to Arthur C. Clarke’s threshold of enchantment. Digital technology is no longer sufficiently advanced enough to seem like magic.

The razzle dazzle is over. Now it’s time to get real.

If digital corporations want people to buy what they’re selling, they’re going to have to start making sense. They’re going to need to stop breaking things, and begin to build authentic brands based on genuine human experience.

To build a metaverse that is worth visiting, designers will need to imbue it with culturally-grounded, socially-relevant, and psychologically evocative rituals that actually help people to manage their lives in materially important ways.

Such a project will require a new kind of digital company, one that’s willing to step out from behind its chatbots to actually get to know people again. Automated data mining won’t do the job. Two-minute surveys won’t be enough.

If companies really want virtual worlds to thrive, they’re going to have to learn what makes a world worthwhile for real human beings. This project will require prolonged observations of the struggles that people are going through, and face-to-face conversations that go beyond quick numerical ratings and glib opinions to get to the heart of the what’s at stake: The emotions, beliefs, ambitions, and obstacles that aren’t being addressed by Silicon Valley’s minimally viable platforms.

Transcendence without a purpose is nothing but a toy.

If a metaverse isn’t fully human, no one is going to want to call it home.