I haven't watched this particular video yet, but a similar explainer video that I came across this week has me feeling a lot like "Those who have forgotten Second Life seemed doomed to repeat it (badly)". I had a bit of a rough moment realizing that statistically most of the engineers at Meta are probably too young to remember Second Life. (And some of the ones that are old enough like Mark Zuckerberg were too busy in other parts of the internet to have learned the realest lessons, which were not technical but sociopolitical.)

I wasn't exposed to Second Life. But I do feel that the alternative life within a metaverse isn't going to appeal to a lot of people.

What kind of socio-political lessons did you draw from Second Life? Would love to hear your take.

Second Life briefly had That Moment where it looked like it won: it had a metaverse that everyone wanted to buy virtual real estate in. There were virtual malls full of shopping with Real Brands. There were virtual office parks for Real Companies to get Real Work Done (Virtually). There virtual campuses for Real Universities with Real Lectures from Actual Professors. Nearly every avatar had Legs! (I can't believe that needs to be stated in 2022, thanks Zuckerberg.)

There were small businesses, even, little mom and pop artists generating avatar clothing and customizations and hoping to make a buck from all these tourists that were around Really Shopping or Really Learning or what have you.

You know what else was Real that people brought with them to Second Life? Real Crimes. There were scams (not all those mom and pop artists were on the up and up). There were attacks (give coders enough scripting tools and they will code all sorts of terrible things). There was sex and porn so there was also sex scandals and sex workers and prostitution rings and allegations of sex trafficking. (Relatedly to that, EA sometimes doesn't want you to know that Sims Online ever existed because of events that happened in only a few days of a Beta test that spooked EA so terribly they stopped publishing MMOs for like a half-decade. Semi-relatedly to that, there's a recent sex trafficking lawsuit against Roblux, with Discord co-listed, that was recent-ish news that made it to the front page of HN. History repeats itself and Meta/Facebook should be listening.)

Eventually all the Real Brands and Real Companies and Real Universities and all that got bored and left. (Even despite the luxuries of avatars with working Legs! Lol, Zuckerberg.) Most of what was left was the furries and the crimes.

(To be fair, I think Second Life being mostly sex-positive was a good thing and the "Furries mostly" era of Second Life produced some fun content and wild stories, much of it positive in its way. The criticism is not at all that Second Life tolerated sex and porn; crimes happen all the same without sex involved, I certainly gave other examples. It doesn't help that crimes that the FBI likes to investigate tend to involve sex, but that's a different matter.)

I think Meta/Facebook are still in the phase of pretending like building any sort of Metaverse is just inherently good and separate from real world problems or concerns. I think Meta/Facebook are still publicly acting like a Metaverse would somehow "save" them from the real world problems of running Facebook and Instagram (and their various existing issues with world crimes). I think they have already forgot some of the lessons from Second Life that if you invite Real People into your virtual world you still get Real People with Real Problems including Real Crimes. It's in no way different in a 3D AR/VR (Now with Legs!) space, than an early Oughts 3D space (Always with Legs!). It's very much the same. (ETA: The technology may feel different, to some. But it turns out: the people are kind of the same. That shouldn't surprise anyone. Especially not anyone who has seen, I don't know, Facebook.)

The thing is, they won't pull it off, and they won't win. No one under the age of 30 wants to use a product with Zuck's face on it (or in it).