PERSPECTIVE
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
STEVEN POOLE
So that you don’t have to, I recently read two books on the Metaverse in order to report on what some self-appointed experts on the Metaverse think the Metaverse actually is, even though it literally does not yet exist. The results were confusing when not actually alarming, but for the benefit of the Edge readership in particular I can happily report that one thing the Metaverse definitely seems to be is a giant rebadging of gamification for the credulous 2020s.
As you know, gamification was once a hot rhetorical trend according to which all manner of difficult social problems could be solved by simply turning everything into a videogame, with stars and points and leaderboards and whatnot, this process being sold by some hucksters as a panacea for everything from mental health to education. Now we are being encouraged to believe that what we really want is to strap on some VR goggles and pilot an avatar around an imaginary bank branch whenever we need to check our current account. The shop-soiled term ‘gamification’ won’t do, so let’s say this is the kind of exciting thing you’d do in the Metaverse!