If everybody's wearing an electric sleep mask, why didn't we focus on finding the reason everybody needs an electric sleep mask?
So what is this Oculus Rift thing Facebook just purchased?
It's a virtual reality video game headset. It's like a very fancy Nintendo Virtual Boy. Completely cuts off your periphery and everything. If your stove is on fire while you're in there, it's going to remain that way for quite some time.
Is it, you know, impressive?
Yes. I tried a first person shooting game on it once. You get legitimately afraid when you're being shot at. I cried a little.
But is it $2 billion impressive?
I mean, I'd be throwing that money somewhere else.
Is that why people are so goddamn angry? People seem pretty goddamn angry.
They are. But the answer to your question is yes and no. It is, in the grand scheme of things, a monumental waste of time and money. It is a video game. But even video game people are upset.
Facebook has not really been a friend to the video game industry. Well, really, they haven't been much of an unconditional friend to any industry.
They created a platform that allowed for massive growth in social gaming, which created that monstrous Farmville company Zynga. Facebook had, overnight, become enablers for the world's 5 million unemployed aunts and uncles that play it all day.
Then they decided they didn't want all of that mobile game sharing because, you know, it is obnoxious as hell, having Jeff from middle school ask for 50 coins so he can keep playing Candy Crush.
So Facebook changed the algorithm to devalue that kind of sharing and this effectively killed Zynga as a company. One could argue that this is Facebook's prerogative and it's their ecosystem. That would be fair. One could also argue that sharing is now the currency of the social web and this would be like the Treasury coming and saying, "Hey, everybody, $20 bills are useless now! Enjoy your day!"
And they've done this to a bunch of industries, most of them unsavory, like those hacks over at Upworthy.
Yeah, what is it with them?
That's an interesting point, though. Basically, you're saying they didn't want gaming to work because it felt "anti-social" when people were abusing notifications to ramp up their market share. But now they've bought a company that makes a product which literally closes off all access to the world around you — and they're deeming that a social affair?
I'm not necessarily saying that.
Are you not necessarily saying that because you don't want Facebook to devalue Esquire's place in their algorithm, which places emphasis on news content?
So, really, all reporting on this is couched in that? Isn't this what people talk about when they talk about money buying exponential power?
Hey, know what I love? Ritz crackers. Just plain old Ritz crackers.
That still doesn't fully answer it, though. Why would an average consumer be against this purchase?
Well, if this takes off — and with the marketing power of a multi-billion dollar company with a young user base, it should — we're then putting our children in electric sleep masks all day.
Then we get into the dissolution of society thing and that gets tricky. Everyone wearing a headset means we are essentially handing off our brains to a separate entity in a more entertaining reality. And that's why people write sci-fi books. That's how we got Robocop.
Well, that seems like an overreaction.
It is an overreaction. Parents will just mercilessly mess with their children at that point, and they'd absolutely deserve it.
So is this the thing so ridiculous-looking that people will eventually go outside with their hands and feet and arms and legs and maybe throw a ball to another person, maybe talk about why we're here — why we'd actually require something that can entirely shut off the world, even in our periphery — and how to make the outside better instead of just letting the hot media vomit wash all over us, like the heat of a sewer grate in the winter — nice, but not actually, and really shameful, if you think about it?