> You run into trouble when talking about "the public" the same noises were made about the internet back in the 90s but the discussion forum of the day was major news outlets, newspapers, magazines, etc. since "the public" weren't on online forums. Those that were saw that the internet was going to be huge but they were a tiny minority of nerds, enthusiasts and university students who didn't have much of a voice in the traditional media.

Well yes but the difference there is the Internet for all it's flaws is a new form of communication that improves upon it's predecessors. Early internet took it's cues from previously published communications; magazines became e-zines, newsletters became... newsletters I suppose, directories went online, newspapers became RSS feeds/websites. Basically any print media you wanted could incredibly easily become a website that was then infinitely updatable and didn't require sending a physical slice of paper to get the same information across. The trade-off was of course the technical competence required to use the Internet, but people adapted quickly(ish) to that once they understood it and computers were more widely available. There is a cost, but the benefits are clear as day, and the adoption/simplification trend with the migration to platforms combined with the ubiquity of devices with Internet access has only accelerated all of that.

Now I grant, this is with the benefit of hindsight, but still, I challenge you to name any aspect of a VR shopping experience that is directly translatable in this way. VR shopping is slower, it requires an investment in niche technology, the experience itself is far from universally improved with many users having serious motion sickness issues with it, and the medium of text which remains an essential part of the shopping experience (prices, descriptions, dimensions) is uniquely difficult to convey in the VR format, you essentially need to create either popups which are obnoxious, or floating text that is difficult to read.

The ONE aspect I can see is you could visually inspect the item you're looking to purchase in 3D, and while that's neat and useful, it's just as easily accomplished with AR which has been available and quite useful in the Amazon and Wayfair apps for years at this point, and lets you see, for example, a piece of furniture in your given room by just looking at where you'd put it through your phone camera, which doesn't require a headset, motion sensors, and the visualization is better because it collaborates with your existing lighting and decor instead of existing in a void. And, the benefit of in-person shopping which allows the tangible examination of a product is entirely unconveyable in VR because while vibration motors in the hands allow you to experience a proxy of touch, your hands still go straight through it, and the vibration features quickly run up against a wall of limitations with regard to like, simulating the touch and feel of different materials which is basically all you'd want to inspect in this regard.

> The people using those tiny virtual communities are once again the nerds, enthusiasts and students who don't have a lot of reach outside of their own communities.

Right, and this is the problem for Facebook. Because the product we're all unable to look inside just... isn't very compelling and doesn't show any signs of being it. Being able to communicate with people all over the world about niche or even mainstream interests has obvious appeal, that was the entire reason for the rise of social media later, and internet forums before. I struggle to conceive of this same level of appeal for metaverse content because it's... the same thing, but worse in basically every respect: it's costly to engage with, the density of interaction is significantly lower, the content you can experience is much more vast if that content is 3D models, but vastly REDUCED in the same way if it is not that. If you watch, for example, a 4K video in a VR headset on a massive screen, you miss out on a TON of the fidelity of that footage, and even if you're wanting a social aspect to that, basically every major streaming platform has co-watching abilities already designed that use a much less cumbersome and much less costly device to accomplish the same task. Add to it, the only headset I believe that could even get CLOSE to showing a 4K video on a massive screen that would preserve that fidelity is the Apple Vision Pro, which is THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Edit: Sorry that's $3,500!!!

And yes I'm sure the headsets will get cheaper as they do with everything (though I have doubts about how much given the niche community around them about the speed of that) but again, if you wanted to watch a movie with friends... there are theaters, there's your living room, there are simul-stream services and webcams, there's discord with streaming functionality and video chat in the same app, there are just options upon options to accomplish this goal that don't require a thousand dollar bespoke video hardware device that amounts to a few pounds of electronics strapped to your dome.

Don't misunderstand, VR is incredibly cool and I really enjoy it! For games. And that's it. As a full remote worker the thought of having to gear up for my weekly standup meetings and doing code reviews in a shitty metaverse meeting room is just... shudder