Technology Blows

Episode 18: Horizon Worlds: Part 3
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Theme music
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Intro
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Dan Slimmon: Hello, my loyal listeners. Welcome to part three of three of our three part series on the metaverse. In particular, Facebook's. Slash Metas Horizon Worlds virtual Reality shit show. Thank you for listening. This is Technology Blows. I'm your host, Dan Slimmon. And,

i'm here with my, guest for this three parter, my, friend and nephew, la comedian, Anderson Grenald Anderson. welcome back for part three. I'm so happy that you've [00:01:00] stayed with us for this whole thing and not just nope. Out halfway through part two. welcome to the show.

Anderson: Thanks for having me again. I was gonna say, I maybe coincidentally or subconsciously started watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy during this podcast series, and it does feel like I'm on the third one now, and. This third episode does feel like we're heading to Mountain Doom.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. well, I've got, I've got good news for you. That's what the theme is, is today we're going to, we're gonna tra trace track down Mark Zuckerberg, and we're gonna make sure he throws that Oculus headset into the, into the fires of the volcano.

Anderson: Amazing.

Dan Slimmon: we have to bite his finger off.

Anderson: And Oppy will fall in after it.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Api.

Anderson: Call back to last episode.

Dan Slimmon: been following us the whole way. so before we get started, a Anderson h how could people find your stuff online if they wanna follow you? 'cause you're a very funny comic.

Anderson: Thank you. Check me out on Instagram, Anderson grd.[00:02:00]

Dan Slimmon: Check Anderson out on Instagram, Anderson check me out on Instagram. Dan Slim. No. Underscore. and, uh, tech Under Tech blows on TikTok. got, we got some content, we got, you know, we're making content. that's what people like, right?

Anderson: Oh yeah. And to make sure not to, not to look up blow tech because that will get you something very different, very private.

Dan Slimmon: The, the, the, the underscore or, or lack thereof is very important in the name of the, of the, uh, account. Yeah.

Anderson: Correct.

Dan Slimmon: so I, so speaking of Instagram Anderson, I know you saw this on my Instagram and I'm still thinking about it. Boz, so we talked about Boz in the last two episodes, the, the CTO of Meta. he has a pending patent right now, which he filed in October of 2024, Contextual Time-Based Digital Representations, uh, which is a, which is a bit of a mouthful of a patent [00:03:00] that essentially just means you force an AI to read all of your dead grandfather's Facebook posts, and then the AI can pretend to be your dead grandfather so that he's never really gone and you always can, can talk to his avatar.

Anderson: What, what could go wrong?

Dan Slimmon: Well, what could go

Anderson: Hopefully it doesn't pick up too much on grandpa's racist phase

Dan Slimmon: right? Yeah, I was thinking I don't, I'm not interested. The only, the, the only one of my grandparents who regularly posted on Facebook is the one I at least want to talk to.

Anderson: as it usually goes.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. although I bet it would be a really accurate simulation because all his Facebook posts were like rage bait, fox news stories, and that's also all he talked about in person.

Anderson: Oh, nice. Yeah, it could nail him then.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. except he died in 2007. So his virtual avatar would have all like 2007 conspiracy theories instead of might be like,

Anderson: Child's play.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, Keith, Keith Ellison is a Sharia sleeper agent. What it[00:04:00]

Anderson: Huh?

Dan Slimmon: but Keith Ellison. Oh, you just wanna sit around and wait for Saddam to put anthrax in your gay wedding

Anderson: Here. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: I'm not even, I'm not gay grampy Jim.

Anderson: Green Day performed for Al-Qaeda in the caves.

Dan Slimmon: they, they really took it to Alqaeda when they did perform in indicates the, the caves though they had some like really, uh, sick liberal takes

Anderson: Oh yeah.

Dan Slimmon: I, I don't know, call me old fashioned, but I, I say there's only two way, two right ways to talk to your dead loved ones.

You either lull the three-headed dog guarding the gates of Hades asleep by playing a beautiful melody on your liar. you take a fuckload of masculine. if you're not doing either of those things, you're not really talking to your dead relatives. It's just a trick that Boz is playing on

Anderson: No, this is gonna simplify it.

Dan Slimmon: Yep. Yep.

So everybody go out and take as much me as you can get. so I was like, well, what can make, what, what, what other patents does Baz have?

Maybe I can find a, a, a more fun one in here. [00:05:00] uh, I did, I found a, patent for a virtual reality hat. Uh,

Anderson: saw this one.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, so I'm gonna share it here, just so to refresh your memory here. This is a virtual reality hat.

Anderson: Bummer. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: a hat. And so, so for those listening, it's imagine a baseball cap and the, the, the, just the glasses section of like a cataract glasses that rests on the bridge of your nose. It's just the glass part and it's hanging down from the brim of the hat, so it's in front of the wearers eyes. and this is how, this is how Boz, and this was in 2019, but this was how Boz thought maybe people might wanna enjoy virtual reality, is to just have this like the dorkiest garment I've ever seen.

Anderson: Horrible.

This is honestly like, this could be like the iconography of how, uh, tragic all of this technology is. 'cause it's like a hat is literally something [00:06:00] you put on to go outside. To cover yourself for the sun and now, now you have virtual reality glass hanging down from it. It's just

Dan Slimmon: The, the, the, the, the hat will protect you from the sun. And now you can also be protected from the world itself.

Anderson: exactly

Dan Slimmon: There's a couple different versions of

Anderson: for the bar visor for baristas.

Dan Slimmon: visor for if you play, uh, you have your barista, you, you're play golf. You're playing golf, but you don't actually want to be out there on the course. 'cause who actually wants to be on a golf course? Um, just, just, just, just jack in.

And then there's, and then there's a, a fedora down here, which, which rules?

Anderson: Yeah, that those would probably sell. That's, that's the model I'm, I'm imagining would sell.

Dan Slimmon: would absolutely sell. You could sell a ton of these. I don't know why they didn't go for it. finally, I have this picture of like a whole, a whole guy, um, [00:07:00] well, most of a guy. He's missing that bottom half, bottom half of his

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: And he's, he's holding his hand in front of the crotch of his pants. Like he's about to touch something.

Anderson: And he is about to throw up the blood sign with his other hand.

Dan Slimmon: he is making a little gesture with one hand where he's wear, he's wearing like a special, watch presumably on his, on his wrist. And he's making like a little gesture that will control the, keyboard or whatever that's hooked up to his virtual reality hat. he definitely looks dangerous.

Anderson: He might be whacking something. He might be, he might be whacking the penguin.

Dan Slimmon: He might be, yeah, he might. I would, I, I think it would be safe if you saw this guy doing whatever this guy's doing to assume he's whacking the penguin,

and get him, get the fuck away from this guy. so yeah, so Boz doesn't only file bad patents. Boz also sometimes files very funny patents.

Mark Zuckerberg's Eiffel Tower selfie
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Dan Slimmon: speaking of things that, Look too dorky to [00:08:00] exist, in August of 2022 to promote the launch of Horizon Worlds in France and Spain. Mark Zuckerberg posted a, metaverse selfie. You, do you remember? Do you remember this? Anderson, the, the Mark Zuckerberg Eiffel Tower selfie.

Anderson: vaguely. I think I'll probably need to see it to jog my

Dan Slimmon: Here It this is a selfie of Mark Zuckerberg's Horizon World's avatar, which looks like. If you found an old doll in your attic possessed by the vengeful spirit of a child that died in the Nazi invasion of France, um, if it, if it was just like a, like a little haunted doll that you found and, and then it started saying creepier and creepier things to you.

that's what this, you, you don't need to exist in the real world. Come with me.

Anderson: Yep. Yeah,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: exactly.

Dan Slimmon: this is at this point, this is 2022, they've already sunk something like at least $30 billion into this project.

And this is what it [00:09:00] looks like. in the background. There's a low poly model of the Eiffel Tower, and then further in the background is an even lower poly model of what I think is supposed to be the Sagrada Familia, a famous church in Barcelona. and this is all on a flat green plane with some like, sim city, 2000 ass little deciduous trees in the background.

Anderson: and some mountains I guess.

Dan Slimmon: I, I don't know what those are supposed to be. They're like the, they're like the, the mountains in the background of Mario. Kind of. Um, it almost like, looks like the world is being devoured by a, by a world spanning caterpillar of some sort.

Anderson: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: Um, but welcome, welcome to the Metaverse. Here's what Mark Zuckerberg's bringing.

Anderson: So this is the launch of Horizon Worlds in France and Spain.

Dan Slimmon: Yes. Yeah. Can you imagine being a French or Spanish person and seeing this and [00:10:00] being like, Worlds baby.

Anderson: you

Dan Slimmon: Uh.

Anderson: in there, though. You got the French,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I know, but there's no cigarettes in the me. Well, you, you could probably make a cig cigarette in the metaverse. They should have tried it. it would at least look cool.

Anderson: it

Dan Slimmon: He, he's looking real bad. and so because of this pathetic image, there was a really fun day on Twitter where everyone just put aside their petty differences and spent all day dunking on this dumb ass picture.

you know, like, like British and German soldiers playing a spontaneous game of soccer in the, in the no man's land between the trenches. Everybody just like came together and shadow all over this stupid picture, which I thought was really beautiful.

Anderson: The last time I remember feeling unified.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: Now it seems like every launch of Metaverse related, tech has been horrible. And so are we just picking the funniest, most horrible ones or are these literally just [00:11:00] chronologically. is launching and they all blow.

Dan Slimmon: it, a lot of it blows real hard and we're gonna see more that blows, later. I think they are just very bad at, imagining what people might like or think is good. They're just like not good at that. I don't know. Some of it was less, some of the launches of stuff were less cringey.

but. That's also, yeah, that's less fun to talk about on the podcast. And, and it really, it's high, it's a high density, it really is a high density of cringe. I mean, when you have, when the product is, when the product looks like this and feels like it does, the, it's really hard not to create because if you, the only way to make it not cringe is to not use actual footage from, from meta horizon worlds, because the whole thing just looks terrible.

Anderson: Gosh. Yeah. So you're in a bit of a pickle there, I guess.

Dan Slimmon: Right? Right. Twitter user CD hooks said this looks [00:12:00] like a 2002 Nintendo game, cube release called World Baby. And, uh, Lord Beef says simply in Fortnite, you can be Goku with a shotgun.

Anderson: Get 'em Lord Beef.

Dan Slimmon: everybody loves Dunking on Mark Zuckerberg. It's the best, uh, in response to all this because Mark Zuckerberg actually cannot, absolutely cannot handle being dunked on. He posts a picture of a more realistic kind of avatar that Meta Reality Labs is working on called a Codex Avatar, which is gonna look more like a real person.

And it does, And then also he posts a 3D render of an ancient Roman garden, because he's such a fucking weebulus. Weebulus, by the way, is a word I made up. I want everybody to start using it for someone who's like a weeb. But for Ancient Rome. this is legitimately the most hilarious way to respond to people on the internet making fun of what a dork you are is to be like, Hey, I'm not a dork. Look, I had my social media company mock up this radical ancient Roman garden or a peristylium.

Anderson: [00:13:00] Yeah, I mean, again, it's just like anything in the world you could make and imagine, and it's just

Dan Slimmon: yeah.

Anderson: the basics.

More sexual assault and abuse
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Dan Slimmon: So things aren't going so hot for the metaverse in August of 2022. but, at least that metaverse selfie that in that green background with the sim city trees, however, uninspiring at least looked serene and safe. It looked like a safe place to be. Um, nothing bad is gonna happen to you there unless Mark Zuckerberg decides to talk to you.

and so if all of horizon worlds were that safe as that picture, it might actually be nice to spend some time there. But alas, in January of 2022, so right when Horizon Worlds comes outta beta,

British psychotherapist and researcher Nina Jane Patel logs into the game and within 60 seconds, three or four male avatars sexually assault her Within 60 seconds, they're, they're taking photos and sending photos to her, and she's running away, and they're yelling after her [00:14:00] and taunting her. It's really, it's really bad.

Uh, I won't repeat the taunts. You can read 'em online. It's, it's well documented, but it's fucking heinous. Um. Another female researcher who was sexually assaulted in Horizon Worlds within minutes of joining the game recalled. it happened so fast. I kind of disassociated.

One part of my brain was like, what the fuck is happening? The other part was like, this isn't a real body. And another part was like, this is important research, which is a haunting quote that I think a lot about since I read it. It's, um, it's bad to be doing this to people

Anderson: Instantaneous is, I mean,

Dan Slimmon: right away.

Anderson: about

Dan Slimmon: Bam.

Anderson: the people not reporting it crazy.

Dan Slimmon: Right. there's probably a lot of people who don't even know what just happened.

Anderson: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: right. But then there's, there's probably a lot. Yeah. There's probably a lot of people who are just like, uh, okay, well I'm done with this now. Like this, this is, I played this for 90 [00:15:00] seconds and I already got sexually assaulted.

I guess this game's not for me.

Anderson: oh, of, of course, this is what it would be. bad.

Dan Slimmon: Right, right. Well, glad I checked it out. yeah, it's the, um, it's, the plaza really is the main big problem. The plaza is, like we talked about last time, is like a rainbow colored floating island in horizon worlds where you first arrive when you join the game, uh, where you can like, make paper airplanes and shit.

and the reason it's such a problem is that it's the default spot you appear. So if you're an experienced player. You know where you're headed, you know where you're trying to go, and you can just teleport to where you're trying to go, and you jet immediately from the plaza. You don't hang out in the plaza.

Why would you hang out in the plaza? Right? So who's left in the plaza then? Well, first Noobs, who don't know what else they should be doing yet or how to stay safe. Second of all, guides who, as we talked about, are not there to protect anyone from anything. [00:16:00] And finally, of course, predators, because predators are naturally gonna hang out wherever there are vulnerable people.

And that's the plaza. so this space that's supposed to be the most welcoming, you know, peaceful, happy place in horizon worlds, just becomes a cesspool of griefers and sex pests. It's like a, it's like a perfect storm.

This happens in, like, this happens in, I feel like this happens in, uh, MMO games, like M-M-O-R-P-G games where, where like nobody's, you never want to engage with the chat in town because it's just full of trolls and, like there's no reason you would just get in your, get in your party chat and get outta town.

Right.

Anderson: Yeah, and God forbid you're a woman.

Dan Slimmon: God forbid you're a woman. Yeah. it's, uh, it's not good for anybody, but it's especially bad for women. Yeah. Like, like a lot of things.

Anderson: The one exception

Dan Slimmon: Right, right.

Anderson: Sorry guys. We're working on it.

Dan Slimmon: yeah.

It's, it's a, it's as, it's a cesspool, as I [00:17:00] said. but. Is the cesspool gonna stop? Boz,

Anderson: Hell no.

Dan Slimmon: Boz can't be defeated by a, a little thing. As mundane, as rampant verbal and sexual abuse get real.

Also, meta has sunk tens of billions of dollars into this thing, so it has to work.

Meta's mandatory VR fun policy
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Dan Slimmon: but, but Boz is not blind to reality. He knows, he sees that people don't like hanging out in Horizon worlds. They, they don't even like it if they work for Meta. well, that's not entirely true.

Some people at Meta like to hang out in the Metaverse, Vishal Shah, the VP of Metaverse, you'll remember from part two for his riveting making eye contact with his coworkers while they describe his their vacations story. Vishal Shah says in 2022 in an interview, he's asked how much time he spends in the metaverse, and he says, a couple of hours doing work, and then a couple of hours for fun. he also says, there are things I cannot do in the physical world that I can only do in the headset, which is an unsettling thing to say.

Anderson: to that quote.[00:18:00]

Dan Slimmon: Nope.

Anderson: the quote ends?

Dan Slimmon: Uh, I, that's where the quote ends. Yeah. Uh, if he, so he said that to me and I was in a room with him, even a virtual room, I would be like, okay, this interview's over. Bye bye. Nice to meet you. I'm taking off my yeah, no further questions. Um, so he likes it. Good for him. Some people like it. anyway, in September of 2022, Vishal Shah sends out a memo to his Horizon team. At Meta. He says, for many of us, we don't spend that much time in Horizon, and our dogfooding dashboards show this pretty clearly. Do you have any idea, Anderson, what dogfooding dashboards means?

Anderson: Know Dan. I was about to ask 'cause I have

Dan Slimmon: Yeah,

Anderson: clue what that means.

Dan Slimmon: So in tech there's this thing called eating your own dog food that people like to do, where if you make a product, you should use it because then you'll know what's good and bad about it, and you'll have a realistic [00:19:00] expectations about about it. Um, that's called, that's called eating your own dog food, uh, which is Not a good metaphor. I, this always struck me as a terrible metaphor. 'cause it's like, no, if you work at a company that makes dog food, you should not eat the dog food. Why would you do that? That's not helpful. Right. You should feed the dog food to your dog. but that's what it's called.

Anderson: sounds like there could be a much better metaphor in

Dan Slimmon: drink your own martinis if you're making martinis or so what? Right,

Anderson: just substitute any human food. Eat your own cake.

Dan Slimmon: right, right. Uh, nope. Nope.

Anderson: burger, whatever.

Dan Slimmon: Right. And, uh, that's not what they call it. They call it eat your own dog food. So dog fooding dashboards means they've done this thing where he has, where Vishal Shah on his computer has a graph that shows how much time every day all of his reports are spending in the metaverse on their metaverse.

He has their, their helmet, their like, [00:20:00] Oculus IDs all hooked into this system. And he's pulling out metrics to make sure that everybody's spending enough time in the metaverse to, to fall in love with it.

Sounds like a pleasure. Sounds like a pleasure to work for Vishal Shah. in September of 2022, Vishal, sends an email to the Metaverse division in which he says he's making a plan to quote, hold managers accountable for having their teams use Horizon at least once a week.

Uh, he says everyone in the organization should make it their mission to fall in love with Horizon Worlds. You can't do that without using it. Get in there, organize times to do it with your colleagues and friends.

Anderson: It makes sense, you know, because if everybody was just forced to use it, then they would use it. Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. It's like a field test of what happens if you just get control of everybody's lives and, and withhold their rent until they use your software. People use it.

Anderson: Hundred percent.

Dan Slimmon: yeah. This must have been a rough time to be friends with someone who works at Meta cause this is like September of 2022. You can go to bars again and [00:21:00] your friends like, Hey, let's meet up in the Metaverse, bro. Where? No, what I are there strip clubs in the Metaverse. I'm not going to the fucking Metaverse with you.

Anderson: No bro. It's actually more fun now.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. I met this guy last night. He's a world breaker.

Anderson: Yeah, then he had to run though, 'cause someone was saying racist things down in the lobby.

you know, I bet for a lot of people though, they were so smug about working at Meta

Dan Slimmon: Oh yeah,

Anderson: then to hear that they had to do that would be a little bit sweet.

Dan Slimmon: That's true. People do like to talk a lot about how they work at, or work at Meta. That's true. Oh, you work at Meta. Oh, you work in the, you work in Horizon Worlds, huh? So,

Anderson: Yeah. There we need

Dan Slimmon: I,

Anderson: for for VR users, but I don't

Dan Slimmon: I get to breathe 2077 and I forget.

Anderson: there to be a slur yet.

Dan Slimmon: well, we'll get it there.

We'll get it there.

Anderson: be A-K-A-K-P-I for Vishal.

Dan Slimmon: it would mean people were paying attention, [00:22:00] which is kind of, which was kind of his job. yeah. His diagnosis is that the game is too buggy. He, he's, he seems to think, I mean, I think he's not, I think he's not allowed to say pe-people don't like the game because it's, it's a bad idea.

Right. Because he's the VP of Metaverse, so,

Anderson: Okay.

Dan Slimmon: uh, he can't, he can't admit to the obvious fact that like, it's the, it's the kids running around and screaming. And also the sexual predators that are like, probably the main reason people don't like being there. Uh, so he has to say like, there's too many bugs.

You, you, we we're putting, so he, he puts it on like a quality lockdown for the rest of the year. Well, where nobody is. Yeah. Yeah.

Anderson: Ooh. All right.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, he really,

Anderson: news the meta employees ever received.

Dan Slimmon: well, they probably still had to use it while it's, while they're, um, [00:23:00] they basically, he basically puts them all to work being, being world breakers. and so like, they're meant, they're like, no more, no more new features, until we get control of the all these bugs and make it easy enough to, to use, which, which I don't think is the, I don't think that's it because, for example, one of my favorite video games of all time and what also one of Mark Zuckerberg's favorite video games of all time, if you believe the 2021, meta keynote is get Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas.

And Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas is like one of the buggies fucking games I've ever played. But it's fun. right, so like, I don't think it was the bugs,

Anderson: No. I mean, if, if a game is fun enough, like people will ignore the rest of, you know, it doesn't have to look or whatever,

Dan Slimmon: right?

Anderson: fundamental thing works.

Dan Slimmon: It just has to, it just has to have The one thing that I think meta is fundamentally [00:24:00] incapable of providing, which is a creative vision.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: it's also probably not fun that still nobody has legs. So let's talk about legs.

The leg hoax
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Dan Slimmon: Legs are a non-starter for Horizon Worlds. The main reason avatars don't have legs is that the Medi Quest headset can't tell where your legs are. right. So if your avatar did have legs and you look down at your legs, that your legs wouldn't be in the position that your brain knows your real legs are in, and you'd be like, what the fuck?

And it would make you physically ill. So that's why you don't have legs.

Anderson: And in knows where your hands are. 'cause you have like the gloves. Right.

Dan Slimmon: You have the gloves on. Yeah. Or the, that you're using the little, there's these little controllers that you hold in your hands.

Anderson: Okay.

Dan Slimmon: right. So it knows where your hands are. And it can, and it knows roughly where your, like neck and shoulders are, and probably your chest because, cause it knows where your hands are and it knows where your head is.

and it has cameras [00:25:00] on the outside. So, can, it can infer some stuff about like what angle you're at, right. Because it can take a, it can make an image of the room you're in and, and figure out what you're doing with your body to some extent. Um, it still glitches out a lot, but it can, it can get, it can get mostly get that stuff, but it can't see your legs, right?

which has been, which has been a source of constant embarrassment for Horizon worlds. It, it's like, every time the press mentions their game, they're like, nobody has legs. Why would you play it? Why would you do this if you can't have fucking legs? Uh, and, and, and of course, so like, again, because Mark Zuckerberg cannot handle being dunked on, in October of 2022 at the Meta Connect keynote, Zuck announces that legs are finally coming to Horizon Worlds.

And so in a short demo, he and a colleague, as their avatars demonstrate what this brand new leg functionality is, is like, and it works. [00:26:00] Miraculously, well, I'm gonna show you a, clip from the keynote, um, to show you how well these, how, how good these legs are.

There's one more feature coming soon that's probably the most requested feature on our roadmap. Legs. Legs. I know you have been waiting for this. I think everyone has been waiting for this.

So that was pretty cool. That was pretty good. They did, like, she did some, she did a karate kick. He did a, he did a jump. Yeah. Pretty impressive, right?

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: yeah, I thought that was a great demo. Perfectly real time, no glitches,

Anderson: And the avatars look better too,

Dan Slimmon: and the avatars looked really good.

Anderson: you can see more detail on Zuck shitty hairline. In this one

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah.

Anderson: more refined.

Dan Slimmon: He looks less human, which is how you know it's working.

Anderson: Yeah. That's how you know it's more accurate.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Uh, it is like [00:27:00] a quantum leap in, leg tracking technology in vr. They've solved it almost overnight. Except not exactly because as it c as it comes out the next day, the very next day, this demo was not created using the medic West headset at all.

Anderson: Okay.

Dan Slimmon: who know VR technology watch this keynote and immediately they're all like, no, they're lying. This is a hoax. This is not real. Uh, and indeed it was created using motion capture.

Anderson: Damn.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: What a stupid play.

Dan Slimmon: Right. Right. Obviously people are gonna ask,

Anderson: Yeah. You know that famous saying Over promise and under under deliver?

Dan Slimmon: right?

Anderson: No, it's the other way around.

Dan Slimmon: So like, the next day they, when people find out about this, me meta turns around and they're like, oh [00:28:00] no, this was just like a far future. thing that we were, that we were saying could, could, could we, could one day create if we, you know, if we set our minds to it, this is what the, this is what the metaverse could be like.

People could have legs, which is just obvious fucking bullshit because everybody knows what it would be like if you could have legs. You'd have legs. We know what legs look like. You don't need to, you don't need to spend a, you know, a million dollars on a mocap studio and a team of animators to get people to, to show people a demo of what legs look like.

Anderson: No, not at all.

what are you getting into this? What they actually look like with the

Dan Slimmon: Um, yes.

Anderson: even launch anything? They're just like, this is in the future.

Dan Slimmon: We'll, we'll, um, we'll, we'll, we'll get to that. But it's, it's definitely, they, they're not, they do not have, even in 2026, as far as I know, they do not have anything that you would think of as like realistic legs.

Anderson: Got it.

Dan Slimmon: but they, but they said they were gonna, and, I mean, [00:29:00] they, they, they rented out a mocap studio.

They put the, mark Zuckerberg put the tennis balls on, I think they may even have hired Andy Serkis to come in and play Mark Zuckerberg. I'm, that's unconfirmed. this would be like if Tesla claimed they'd solved self-driving cars, and then to prove it, they showed a demo of a car driving around a neighborhood for 10 minutes.

But then it came out that the car was just following a pre-programmed route and didn't actually know how to navigate any of the roads, which did happen in 2016.

everybody's doing it.

Anderson: tech blows man.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, I know.

Anderson: tech people blow

Dan Slimmon: yeah. Oh, so you're saying people might not catch me if I lie about this. All right, here we go.

Anderson: green lit.

Dan Slimmon: Uh,

Anderson: been on product launches though, right?

Dan Slimmon: mm-hmm.

Anderson: How scared are you the night before somebody in technology of a product launch? Are you expecting it to go to shit?

Dan Slimmon: Um, I used to be that way. I, at, at this point, you know, I'm in operations, so [00:30:00] it's gonna be my. Job usually to like, help everybody, get everybody to figure out why it's broken

Anderson: Mm-hmm.

Dan Slimmon: it breaks. And so the night before I'm usually pretty calm. and I just kinda live my life until I get paged and then it's time to deal with it. I'm able to like, kind of shut it, shut that dread off.

Anderson: Right, because that's, that's your job.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah. Like, nobody's gonna be mad at me because the generally people aren't gonna be mad at me unless I'm the one that brought the site down.

If it got, if it got brought down because we got so much traffic and we didn't know, we didn't, it wasn't able to, we weren't able to deal with it, then that's, that's fine. We, we solved that problem.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. I don't know. And I bet Mark Zuckerberg wasn't like, wasn't. Uh, wasn't losing sleep about whether the demo, the legs demo would go well the next day.

He was, he, I'm sure he, he thought it would

Anderson: sleep,

Dan Slimmon: right,

Anderson: he

Dan Slimmon: because he,

Anderson: down for six hours

Dan Slimmon: he, [00:31:00] he's, he doesn't sleep, but he sort of covers himself in wet mud and goes into a, a, a semi-comatose state for, uh, several months. yeah, man, it's, uh, it was, it was terrible. I don't really think, like, I was wondering, okay, well maybe, you know, technology's moving pretty fast. maybe they will come up with some way to actually do VR leg tracking, but. I don't know. I, I don't think there's a realistic solution to this problem with the existing technology.

You know, so they've, they've researched, like putting, using the cameras on the headset to, to look down and look at your legs and see where your legs are. Of course, that doesn't work because your shoulders are in the way. And also if you tilt your head now, like one of the cameras is looking at your neck and the other one's looking at the ceiling, that's never gonna work.

another option they've researched is using physical trackers that you strap to your legs. Nobody's meta is [00:32:00] after the mass market. They need the mass market to come onto the metaverse in order for it to be self-sustaining and profitable. Right? It can't all just be Palmer Luckies and Mark Zuckerberg's, who are true VR believers and are willing to spend 20 minutes strapping on equipment before every time they jack into the metaverse.

That's not gonna, that's not gonna bring them the market they need. and, and then recently. Meta started looking into a new approach. You take the upper body data that you have from the helmet, like the head position and the shoulder position and everything, and you use that data to predict leg positions by, you run it through an AI model to predict where the legs are.

This is the one that really proves, I think, that meta has no idea how they're gonna make VR legs a thing, because that's nonsense. To me, a AI is like the final Hail Mary of any doomed project ba. Basically, if there's anything [00:33:00] you can't do with your existing technology, you can claim that AI will be able to do it in five years because nobody knows what AI will be able to do in five years, and then everybody will be like, oh, great.

Yeah, you're gonna use AI for that.

Anderson: Nice.

Dan Slimmon: Nice. It does not make any sense to me. first of all, the upper body just doesn't provide enough data to make that inference, right? You can't tell if somebody, if somebody were in a, you know, if, if, if you had a, somebody wearing like a big 18 hundreds crinoline dress, so you couldn't see that where their legs or feet were, you would not be able to tell me from that, from just looking at their upper body, no matter how long you looked at them, what they were doing with their legs.

That's not a thing. right. And, second of all, it needs to be real time. You need to be able to update the leg positions like. As fast as somebody moves their legs. AI is many things, but it's not low latency. [00:34:00] Like by the time the data goes outta the headset over the internet, out to meta's AI data center, and their model does its little calculation and the result comes back to your headset, your virtual legs have already been in the wrong position for hundreds of milliseconds or more, and you're already puking.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: it's just not doable, guys,

Anderson: and it seems awesome that we're trying to develop technology strictly with mass market appeal in mind. That seems like the best way to develop and make sure that technology's good.

Dan Slimmon: That's the only way to do it. Yeah. once your meta's size it, nothing else makes sense as a strategy. Right. Uh.

Anderson: bunkers don't build themselves, which know if you saw, you see like, I think there's, there's like a compilation going around online of like people asking billionaires if they have bunkers. And I think it was [00:35:00] like Sam Altman who's like, I wouldn't call it a bunker. more of like a basement with concrete walls and a. Head and Zuck has some similar response.

Dan Slimmon: He has the little, the definition of a, it's definitionally a bunker.

Anderson: A hundred percent

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: in

Dan Slimmon: Um,

Anderson: Zealand or something.

Dan Slimmon: in Hawaii.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. he hired like a third of the island to build it for him. Everybody under NDA.

Anderson: Literally like a, like a doctor. Evil volcano layer.

Dan Slimmon: It is. Yes. and I'm sure he'll be very safe and happy there. I, you know, I'd love to visit.

Anderson: Yeah. Zuck, if you're watching,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Zuck

Anderson: we said, we'd love to come.

Dan Slimmon: call in. So as F 2026 legs are still unsolved. In horizon world, they sort of dangle around the, the, um, your avatar does not have legs. When you look down, you're still, you still don't [00:36:00] have legs.

Other people have legs, but they just sort of dangle around underneath their bodies. Like a marionette?

Anderson: They drag along the concrete,

Dan Slimmon: Yes,

Anderson: concrete.

Dan Slimmon: they're just sort of like sliding around, lazily. It is, not a good place to go if you like having legs. Now, of course, someday, who knows, technology and money are very powerful.

Nope World
---

Dan Slimmon: Maybe someday they can get the in-game economy rolling downhill and start raking in some transaction fees, and then they'll be able to like work on the legs problem. to do that, they need consumers and brands to spend money in the metaverse and they need creators to create worlds worth going to. that's how they're gonna make the, the economy go in game.

There are a lot of obstacles to this, not least of which is that n nobody likes the product and, but, um, one, one attempt to kickstart [00:37:00] the end game economy comes in 2022 when meta partners with Jordan Peel's production company, Monkey Paw Productions to create Nope, world.

This is a world where fans can immerse themselves in the incredible science fiction world of the trailer for Nope.

now, Anderson, I'm not gonna play this on the, actual podcast, but Anderson, here's the trailer for n to refresh your memory of what's in the trailer for n.

Did you know that the very first assembly of photographs to create a motion picture was a two second clip of a alright. I just showed Anderson the trailer for n If you wanna follow along with this conversation, just go watch the trailer for Nope. It's a great, it's a great trailer. okay, now I'm gonna play you a clip of Nope. World, which was built by creators who had no knowledge whatsoever of the plot of the film beyond what's in the trailer.

So that they couldn't create an, they couldn't accidentally, like, make any spoilers [00:38:00] or give anybody any spoilers. Uh, and we'll see if we can spot any differences, uh, or if they just completely nailed the execution and like, we can't tell. It's not the same exact video we just watched. All right.

Anderson: I'm ready.

Dan Slimmon: here we go.

So that's Nope. World.

Anderson: Holy shit. I can't believe went live. It's worse than you can imagine.

Dan Slimmon: It really, you should go watch it. Listeners. It's incre. It's incredibly bad. Um,

Anderson: even describe.

Dan Slimmon: one thing, worth describing is, I don't know if you've seen Nope, but there's a lot of horses in it. They can't do horses.

Anderson: that's

Dan Slimmon: there's like.

Anderson: mean,

Dan Slimmon: Zuckerberg doesn't have room in his basement.

Anderson: Nope. Is just funny too, because like it is sci-fi, but it's also like, imagine Southern California, like that's

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, yeah.

Anderson: that crazy [00:39:00] about it.

Dan Slimmon: right. That's true. It's not, they could have done like a, uh, another planet or they, they, you know, could have been Interstellar World or something.

Anderson: the editors on that trailer must have been cracking up, putting that

Dan Slimmon: Yeah, another thing is the royalty, royalty free music, which just really takes the wind out of the sails of the movie. I feel like. everything looks so silly and janky.

Everybody's just jerking around at like four frames per second. I don't know why they couldn't do, why they couldn't just put horses in. Maybe they haven't yet built Quest helmet big enough for a horse's head. Or maybe the, like the horses couldn't figure out how to run with no legs, and they were just flopping around on the ground.

Mark Zuckerberg had to come put 'em outta their misery. I don't know. But it, it didn't, it doesn't work without the horses. one of the, one of the visual elements in no that's, uh, so arresting is that the field is full of these like wacky, waving, inflatable alarm, flailing tube men.

Um, they have those in no world, [00:40:00] but they don't move. They cannot, they, they, they stay still. And the people in no world look more like flapping cars, car dealership, advertisements than, than the actual props do. Um, yeah, there is another video which I won't show now with that has where Jordan Peele and Keke Palmer both try putting on the helmet and traveling to Nope.

World as a publicity stunt. And they have to pretend that they are proud of it or like it, which is very fun. And, And they had a budget. Like this was a, this was a, um, collaboration between, monkey Paw Studios and Meta, like they had money to work with to create this, and this is the best that they could do.

They were gonna do an US world and a get out world. They had plans to do that. But as far as I can tell, those never came to be. I can't [00:41:00] imagine why

Anderson: you know what? We've taken, we, you know, we've taken a lot of shots. Credit to them for not making Get Out World. Good job. Good job Meta.

Dan Slimmon: relive the magic of Get Out.

Anderson: Oh Racial terror.

Dan Slimmon: You're just, you're just, uh, in the sunken world the whole time. The sunken, the sunken place.

Anderson: we made the sunken world.

Dan Slimmon: just, just imagine what your life could be like. Uh, incredible. I mean, that kind of would be like if they had a creative bone in their body at meta, it could be cool to do like a nope, based, or, sorry, a get out based VR experience where you're stuck in someone else's body.

That could be horrifying and cool,

Anderson: totally.

Dan Slimmon: Uh, another major problem with getting the economy going [00:42:00] is that any content you buy in Horizon Worlds is world locked. Meaning it can only be used in the world where you bought it. So for example, if nope, world wanted to sell any merchandise, like O J's, iconic, scorpion King Crew Hoodie or Ricky Parks Red flowery Sky lasso experience suit, um, that clothing could only be worn in Nope.

World.

Anderson: Gotcha. And you'd pay real money for it.

Dan Slimmon: You pay real money for it. You can only wear it in nope. World. Which if, uh, I don't know, it didn't look like there was much else to do in nope. World you could do do the Hay Bale tossing game for a while, but that probably, probably get bored of that,

Anderson: Nope. What does Nope world look like in 10 years?

Dan Slimmon: right?

Anderson: going and

Dan Slimmon: That's gonna be the only place anybody goes and everybody's gonna be wearing the Ricky Park suit. they could even have done the, um, you know, gordy's home experience. where, all of your castmates in the sitcom that you're in, get murdered by a chimpanzee.

[00:43:00] Um,

Anderson: that would be good.

Dan Slimmon: that'd be great. So, so you can't, you can't bring in the clothes if you, if you're selling merchandise, you can't, user can't take anywhere else, even though they paid real money for it. And also the creator of the item can change it after purchase. They can do whatever they want. It's digital. so like for example, if you go to No World and buy, the birthday Party hat worn by the lovable Chimp Gordy from the film, and then you take it out of the, even if you could take it out of the world, monkey Paw Studios could just decide, okay, now, instead of being a birthday party hat, it has an ad for our next movie on it.

And everybody who had, everybody who bought the hat is now a walking advertisement for, you know, the next movie we're gonna make you. You have no guarantee that it's gonna stay a hat, which fucking sucks. Finally, maybe the biggest thing hindering the development of cre of a Creator economy in Horizon worlds is Meta's insistence on on building their own generative AI [00:44:00] content creation tools.

Right? for example, they built a, gen AI clothing design tool where you can prompt it to generate clothes, and then those clothes will become wearable in-game items. you know, so why would creators make a unique in-game clothes if they're just gonna get undercut by this gen AI slop that meta promotes, right?

And I looked into this tool, the tool isn't even fucking good. In fact, it blows absolute chunks.

Meta's AI clothing generator
---

Dan Slimmon: Here's an official meta tutorial from September of 2025, so less than half a year ago. Uh, here is here. This is, um, meta Horizon creator, sorry. This is a mouthful. Meta Horizon creator, meta Horizon Creator Program, mentor Space, glitter Unicorn, leading her students through the process of creating an AI garment in the official Meta Horizon, worlds clothing creation tool.

[00:45:00] what's cool about our community is people have really pushed the limits on, on what these silhouettes can do. Like for example, you see a hoodie, but people have turned these hoodies into like armor or, or like, um. like really cool stuff. So, um, sound off in the chat. What should I put as the prompt for this one hoodie. And don't be afraid to get creative. A janitor. All right. what color? So janitor's uniform, hunter I see orange. So with orange detail.

You are gonna be blown away. so I'm gonna go ahead and generate, let's see what we got. I like that we can zoom in. So with your middle mouse button you can zoom in and out, which is [00:46:00] really, really cool.

Oh yeah. That's so cool.

It does take time, right?

So I'm gonna go for a coffee break. Uh, I'll be back,

Anderson: He got fired for saying that.

Dan Slimmon: I'm telling you, we need that lo-fi music. Whoa. Okay. What do you guys think about this

Anderson: That's a janitor.

Dan Slimmon: that's a janitor's outfit for sure. for listeners, it is a hoodie, and it has its green hoodie with some orange stripes on it. It's ugly as fuck, and it does not look anything like a janitor's uniform.

Anderson: I don't know. It looks like Harry Potter merch or something.

Dan Slimmon: Yes, it does look like Harry Potter merch.

Anderson: could, she was struggling to even imagine what color their uniform might be.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: out there for her to picture.

Dan Slimmon: so this woman, is doing her job. She's like, This is her job to teach people how to do so here she here is this heroic woman on this live [00:47:00] training session, defending this nonsense AI creation so that she can move on with the fucking demo and get her job done.

This is not bad. Not bad at all. This kind of reminds me of like a football team or something, to be honest. So maybe this, this janitor, uh, works at a, at a local college, uh, and this is his uniform, you know, makeup story, right? Hunter, x Hunter vibe.

Yes,

Anderson: Sure

Dan Slimmon: I guess I.

Anderson: what a story that was.

Dan Slimmon: it's like, uh, maybe if it's like a football themed high school, right?

Anderson: ya,

Dan Slimmon: I think this is like one of the most common ways that AI gets used in the modern enterprise is that like somebody, they build an AI tool.

It's very expensive to build. It's outputs are fucking abysmal. And then it's the employee's job to defend whatever this digital hairball [00:48:00] is that got coughed up by the slop machine. 'cause that 'cause humans, can be accountable for things. yeah. It's, it's uh,

Anderson: New Mexico has no water. Now,

Dan Slimmon: right.

Anderson: to remember,

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. But if they move to, if they move to the city now, they can just, um, you know, pay San Francisco rents and get a, get an AI helmet pop onto the fucking

Anderson: easy.

Dan Slimmon: if you check out Tech Blows on Instagram, that's TechCo blows.

Uh, Anderson and I just posted a video on there roasting the Horizon Worlds AI clothing generators. So don't miss that. We got a couple examples of terrible, terrible clothing that this thing has shat out. like I said, you know, as far as I can tell, the only people using this AI clothing generator are the people who are paid by meta to demonstrate it via the Meta Horizon Worlds creator program, because it's a piece of shit that makes absolutely unredeemable slop. And the video, the training video I showed you with space glitter unicorn that goes on, that's like five.

The first five minutes are how to [00:49:00] use the AI clothing generator tool. And then the next 20 minutes are the person, like telling you how to use image editing software to edit the image that the AI actually generates. And then how to use like Blender 3D to do the 3D modeling thing to make it into an actual piece of clothing.

what's the point, right? The AI does the only, the only part that the AI does is generate the, the texture that goes on the outside of the garment, which is the part that humans are good at in the first place.

Anderson: Right and would be the enjoyable part of it.

Dan Slimmon: And would be the part that anybody would wanna do. Yeah,

Anderson: it's like a tutorial on how to use the AI and then how to undo whatever the AI did.

Dan Slimmon: yeah. Yeah. Great world. but even if the AI tools were perfect, there could still not be a creator economy without users.

Horizon World's flagging usership
---

Dan Slimmon: So in October of 2022, the Wall Street Journal [00:50:00] reported that meta had lowered its year end monthly active users goal. monthly active users is the number of distinct users active in the game each month, from they lowered their goal from 500,000 by the end of 2022 to 280,000.

And that at the, in October, the count stood at 200,000.

Yeah, that's a big old, whoa. Oh, furthermore, the Wall Street Journal reported that only 9% of worlds built by creators are ever visited by more than 50 people, and most are never visited by anyone at all.

Anderson: Wow, that's

Dan Slimmon: pretty damning.

Anderson: that there's all of these just like empty world. It's creepy.

Dan Slimmon: That could be a good sci-fi story

Anderson: Totally.

Dan Slimmon: you're like, well, like getting lost. You're lost, and you all you can go is from is one, one Meta Horizon world to another, and they're all empty. except one of them. Mark Zuckerberg's still hanging out in the one with the Eiffel Tower.

Anderson: [00:51:00] yeah.

Dan Slimmon: He just likes it there.

Anderson: it's like the, the good part of Mark's conscience got stuck in Horizon Worlds and he is like, you gotta help me bust out.

Dan Slimmon: man. Uh, this sounds way more entertaining than the actual game. I'm way into this now. Sounds cool. It could actually be cool. no, it definitely doesn't sound like an ecosystem that's gonna make anyone any money.

Moderation: a nice idea
---

Dan Slimmon: so, so if users are bouncing off Horizon worlds because it's full of annoying kids and dangerous predators and it, and the graphics suck and there's nothing fun to do, they, you'd think they could at least moderate it, right?

Why is it so hard to like, have. Moderators who can respond to reports of bad behavior. It's, it's pretty clear that Meta wants their technology to mediate every aspect of our social existence. You know, from our, from our friendships to our team meetings, to work, to concerts, to comedy, open [00:52:00] mics. You know, they just, they want to be the thing through which all these social experiences happen because the more relationships meta can sort of get into the middle of the more ways it can exploit those relationships for profit.

But they don't wanna actually control the relationships. Right. I think they, I really don't think they do. Mark Zuckerberg hates it when anyone tries to make him control. What people are doing and saying on his platforms, he won't silence COVID, anti-vaxxers. He won't give like tasers to the guides in horizon worlds.

So they can like tase assholes, Even when there are kinds of speech that Facebook does moderate, like hate speech and political misinformation, they carve out exceptions for specific important users through their crosscheck program. I think they stopped doing this, but the Wall Street Journal reported like they had this whole big program where if you had enough, if you had enough followers or friends on Facebook, they would just let you let you [00:53:00] say racial slurs.

'cause you, um, were a VIP. That's how you got to be A-V-I-P-I guess.

Anderson: Wow. Well, I, so like, I worked with social media and I remember in the fall of 2024 on meta platforms that, uh, the accounts I was running would like, often get flagged. and it's because they were running everything through like shitty AI sensors. So it, like, it would be like a random video would get flagged for pornography.

So it was like, The, the censorship they did have was terrible, but then as soon as Trump was elected, just of those out the window. So now you can do literally whatever you want.

Dan Slimmon: fantastic,

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Um, I mean, it wasn't working before and so why, why do it anyway, right? just say whatever you want. My, my video the other day, I posted a video that was a clip from last episode about how Mark Zuckerberg fucks his, [00:54:00] uh, horizon World's avatar. And that got flagged.

I tried to promote that.

Anderson: Mm.

Dan Slimmon: Um, and that got flagged for politics. Like I understand flagging it for, you can't say, you can't say that Mark Zuckerberg fucks his horizon world's avatar. That makes sense. But it got flagged for being political, which is absolutely not

Anderson: Now it's a,

Dan Slimmon: not

Anderson: I mean we're talking about a universal experience in that one.

Dan Slimmon: right, right. Everybody can appreciate that.

Anderson: in though that like you can't. You can't say anything against like daddy

Dan Slimmon: That's true.

Anderson: like Elon kind of has X algorithms to like

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: his posts, whatever.

Dan Slimmon: Oh, for sure. I've got a Grok episode. Uh, there's a two-parter on Grok coming up after my break in a couple weeks, and, uh, who, boy, the, what a shit show. yeah, I think this is why.

AI as a shield from accountability
---

Dan Slimmon: So like they wanna the media, they wanna be in the relationship. They want to be able to like, make the relationship [00:55:00] happen via their tools, but they don't want to control it.

And this is why they're always looking out for solutions to fix their problems with AI moderation tools. like a huge part of what makes AI attractive to companies, I think is the fact that it can make decisions or it can appear to make decisions, but it can't be held accountable for any of those decisions.

Right.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: Making, making moral choices is hard, and everybody's always mad at you when you make a, when you make a moral choice at scale, um, and they try to hold you accountable. It's a big pain in the ass. But now we can just have AI make all these choices, which is a moral, but can give the appearance of making a moral decision that appears impartial because it's a computer.

And then if it's wrong or if it does something stupid, we can, they can just be like, oh, I don't know, man. It's the algorithm. We guess we just need to tune the weights better.

Anderson: Yeah.

Dan Slimmon: the bad news is it doesn't fucking work. So Zuckerberg said in 2016 that by the end [00:56:00] of 2019, AI would be detecting the vast majority of problematic content on Facebook.

In 2021. So two years after that deadline, a senior engineer and research scientist at Meta estimated that AI removed posts accounting for only 2% of views of policy violating hate speech. Now, I'm no fancy math doer, but I'm pretty sure 2% is not the vast majority.

Anderson: I don't think so, and I'm an English major, so I don't, I

Dan Slimmon: Yeah.

Anderson: what those words mean either.

Dan Slimmon: Two, let me think about that. Carry the two. No, yeah, that's not right. Um, a lot of progress has been made in AI since 2021, so maybe it works since now. Maybe Facebook finally has a, a, a moderation working and there are no more speech pro, there are no more like pro prohibited speech problems on Facebook.

I feel like I would've heard about that, but I haven't been on there for a while.

Some moderation ideas from the real world
---

Dan Slimmon: Personally, I don't expect AI [00:57:00] moderation features are gonna save horizon worlds. Um, but you know, maybe if they just chuck enough GPUs at it, they'll, they'll solve ethics somehow. in the real world we have lots of participatory institutions devoted to the problem of making calls about who's allowed to do and say what.

Right? We have, we have law making jurisprudence, religion. We have things like common decency, politeness, codes of conduct. We have a long list of things that like maybe 30% of our time as a species is spent handling what people are allowed to do and not do in the public sphere. even mob violence has its place, right?

Like in real life, if you go to a public place and start shouting racial slurs, you get the shit kicked out of you.

Anderson: Right,

Dan Slimmon: Right. That's why you only ever see neo-Nazis in groups. It's always like 15 guys or more. You rarely see a neo-Nazi out on the street by himself doing Hitler salutes or whatever. The, the, if you, [00:58:00] if you do that, you get decked like Richard Spencer.

Anderson: Hm.

Dan Slimmon: so at, so, you know, in Horizon worlds, you can't kick the shit out of anyone. I think that's a big problem. although I guess in horizon worlds, the people you'd wanna kick the shit out of are not Nazis, but children, children, the Nazis of Horizon worlds.

I guess what I'm saying is to fix horizon worlds. They should let you pull the room on whether somebody is a child, and if the consensus is yes, they're a child, everybody should be allowed to beat the absolute piss out of that child virtually.

Anderson: need to go through the same evolution that the real world did, where they start, start with which trials, who cares? They'll, they'll

Dan Slimmon: It doesn't matter. and if, if that child's a avatar has to then walk around Horizon Worlds for the next few weeks in a full cast, even better,

Anderson: Right.

The bleak future of Horizon Worlds
---

Dan Slimmon: in August of 2024, meta announced they were testing in headset ads, in Horizon Worlds. And it looks like the plan there is to have certain parts [00:59:00] of the environment be like virtual billboards.

And every, every player sees a different targeted ad when they look at the billboard. as far as I can tell, this never launched and. What's the point of launching ads if you don't have a user base? Right. So I don't think it's gonna happen for 'em. with their, with their 2026 budget, it seems Meta has finally admitted to Horizon Worlds being a lost cause after its reality.

Labs Division saw operating losses since 2020 of $77 billion. Meta is winding down, metaverse spending and focusing instead on their new AI glasses, the meta Ray Bans. I tend to think the metaverse is, is unattainable except through near universal human misery. And I think all these guys who have subscribed to the Metaverse vision over the last couple decades.

Would've known this if they'd read their sources critically. Like in Snow Crash Hero lives in a 20 by 30 foot storage unit in Ready Player one. [01:00:00] The world is so polluted that nobody goes outside anymore in the Matrix. Everybody's an atrophied vegetables, stewing in a vat of nutrient broth like maybe these are all utopias to a company whose business model is to charge rent on human relationships. Um, but I, I feel like we don't want to let the world get bad enough that the metaverse is appealing.

Anderson: if that's the alternative, then we are fucked.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. I mean, $77 billion is just so much money just pissed down the drain for comparison in 2024, the Los Angeles Housing Department estimated that ending homelessness in LA would cost $22 billion.

Anderson: Wow.

Dan Slimmon: And instead.

Anderson: they can get property and, and Horizon worlds

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Maybe they did end homelessness all, there's all these empty worlds now.[01:01:00]

Anderson: totally. For the homeless to move into.

Dan Slimmon: Yeah. Just move into a flat brown plane and, uh, enjoy.

Anderson: Start

Dan Slimmon: Uh, that's right, that's right. get in there. Yeah. I just think that's so sad. Like, why that was, that's all those people working for $77 billion that whole time and this is what they created.

Um, we can do better. this is what you get when you teach men. They can have anything they want if they're just talented enough at programming.

Auf Wiedersehen
---

Dan Slimmon: Anderson, let's hear your socials one more time for the people in the back.

Anderson: Yes, Anderson Groul on Instagram. Check it out

Dan Slimmon: Get on there. And I'm Dan Slimmon on Instagram. Uh, no underscore, I'll write. That's it for Technology Blows. I've been your host, Dan Slim. This has been Anderson Groul Anderson, [01:02:00] what a pleasure to have you on the show. Let's do it again sometime for a shorter topic,

Anderson: whenever.

Dan Slimmon: listeners. It means the world to me that you've stayed with us to the very end of this three part series on Horizon Worlds, and I can't wait to talk to you again next week. On the subject of, and this is not a joke, Marty, the inventory Robot at my local supermarket. It's

Anderson: That's gonna be

Dan Slimmon: real. Some real Connecticut inside baseball for For next week.

Farewell for now from technology blows.

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