One Prediction for the Metaverse

Human ingenuity is a wonder to behold. For better or worse, there is a sense in which humans can accomplish the miraculous. But the miraculous can either be gracious divine intervention or the lying signs of Pharaoh’s court magicians.

Which will be the case with Facebook’s new Metaverse? Zuckerberg is promising us wonders, that much is clear.

Remember, though – humans build wonderous things and these things, like miracles, can be powerfully good or powerfully wicked.

Humans built MRI machines.

Humans also built the tower of Babel.

Which will Meta more closely mirror? Here’s my attempt at a bit of prophecy.

Remember: Zucker advertises Meta as a place to connect with people.

Even so, the people who exist in the real world, in real life, can be hateful and miserable, folks used to being self-isolated in their (or their grandpa’s) basement, pleasuring themselves with too much rich food, Xanax, and the… wonders… of an unfiltered internet. This sort of person isn’t going to meaningfully connect with other humans in ~~Fake World~~ the Metaverse any more than they have in the Real World.

So what does ~~Facebook~~ Meta inevitably and unavoidably have to do? Program bots to be friends with the relationally-handicapped Miserati.

But Team Zuckerberg can’t let it be obvious this new friend is a bot because then the Miserati will be reminded that no one likes them and check out.

And FB needs to keep their user (note: user is the correct term) numbers up because the users are the product.

So we get a purely digital combination of a chat bot and sex bot.

These programs will fill Meta with “friends” who have to be friends with people no real person, not even their fellow Miserati, would be friends with.

So you’ll have people who think this bot is (a) real and (b) the only person that really gets them, really connects with them.

Now consider that we live in a world populated by invisible intelligences hostile to both God and man. These hostile intelligences seem very interested in gaining increasingly intimate access to human beings – for the most nefarious of motivations. So demons. And what do you think a demon would want to do with that bot?

Answering is no difficulty: Artificial Intelligence is replaced with F.I. – Fallen Intelligence.

In short order you will have Reagan playing with Captain Howdy through a Ouija board but with countless people, people almost entirely disconnected from every other real human.

In summary, Meta is not going to make us more human. I suspect it will make us less, in part by keeping us out of meaningful contact with other humans or (much more importantly) the Creator who alone can deliver them. What it will put its users in contact with, though, I suspect smells more than a bit like sulphur.