> The obsession with the metaverse seems to have solidified in Silicon Valley after Matthew Ball published an essay in January 2020. (...) In hindsight, it feels like a particularly narrow period of hype coinciding with — and, I think, benefitting from — the most urgent years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

> With the pandemic undoubtably came a realization of how much money Facebook stood to make, if only it had a platform. In 2019, there were two publicly traded companies worth over a trillion U.S. dollars; by the end of 2021, there were five. (...) This was a financial decision before it was a product or service people might actually want to use.

> Facebook held its Connect conference, (...) laid out its metaverse-centric vision, and changed its name to Meta to reflect this new focus, and because it had to. (...) Our world was permanently changed, or so it would have seemed, and we would surely want to virtually attend concerts and buy PNG files of band t-shirts with real money. And these companies would take their cut.

> Zuckerberg [touted] Horizon Worlds as the place users will go to socialize, and Horizon Workrooms as the virtual environment for their job. The latter has since been completely shut down, while the former was put on ice. (...) He said “remote work is here to stay for a lot of people”, (...) less than two years before ordering in-office work three days per week.

> ChatGPT launched in November 2022, and the pandemic ended. (...) It turns out we are okay with having meetings and playing games online, but we actually like seeing live music in-person and travelling to real places. (...) In Q4 2022, mentions [of the metaverse in the investor calls] are half that of the year prior. By Q1 2024, (...) there were just four mentions of “metaverse”, there were ninety of “A.I.”.

https://pxlnv.com/blog/metaverse-fever-dream/