That's extremely judgmental of you. There is strong merit in building online, international but close-knit communities. I have met many friends for life through the internet and through my own experience as CTO of a popular metaverse project (that failed because of a hostile takeover and ridiculous pivot to a sex bot startup that spat in the face of our loyal users)

I cared deeply about our users, about connection and technology. I also love being outside and meeting IRL with friends I've met online. I just took a road trip through the West with a friend from Armenia whom I met doing metaverse work and the exchange of culture was exhilarating.

VR isn't even required for the metaverse, which tells me you're criticizing something of which you have an incomplete understanding. The metaverse is about people and deep connections. About building communities. That's nothing to criticize.

You know you can do all that in meatspace for free right now, as our species has been doing since the dawn of civilization.

I’m not convinced a literal screen strapped to your face can beat your human senses perceiving the world and other human beings in the flesh at a biochemical level.

Not until people are strapped with IV drug releasing devices flooding their brains with happy chemicals to imitate the joy of real life experiences with others. That would be barely scratching the surface of imitating human-human interaction.

The cool thing is that I don't need your approval or permission to decide how I want to network with others, or in what ways I decide to integrate technology into my networking.

> I’m not convinced a literal screen strapped to your face can beat your human senses perceiving the world and other human beings in the flesh at a biochemical level.

No shit? I already said VR isn't a core part of the metaverse vision. Zuckerburg didn't invent the concept of the metaverse or its modern incarnation, he co-opted it and even changed his company name in an attempt to make the metaverse synonymous with his company and particular vision. Do everyone a favor and decouple this from your understanding of what the metaverse scene set out to do.

My network stretches across the globe, it's impossible to replicate this without technology. Judge less, seek to understand more.

I recall a study that says you can have at most a single digit amount of close friends. So what to you mean by network, acquaintances or business contacts?

It’s almost impossible to be fully engaged with more than a handful of people in the day to day.

It may or may not be a failing bet. Maybe smartphones are the ultimate form of human-data interface and we'll simply never do better.

I'll take your argument a bit further. The thing is -- "human-data" interfaces are not particularly important. Human-Human ones are. This is probably why it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to beat the smartphone; VR or whatever doesn't fundamentally "bring people closer together" in a way the smartphone nearly absolutely did.

VR may not, but social interaction with AR might be more palatable and better UX than social interaction while constantly looking down at at a computer we still call a "phone" for some reason.