Oh, for the love of Christ, you’ve got to be kidding me.
The world has gone bonkers.
We’ve got Sam who wants ChatGPT to become a SoMe company. . .
And he wants to be selling AI gadgetry as well. . .
Then there’s Palantir who wants to build a database on every citizen out there. . .
And Skum’s bot who is lying straight in your face, which it cannot help, cause it’s a hard prompt. . .
Engineers at Amazon who have become poop scoopers for the AI. . .
Agents that will control your spending. . .
And Brazzers buying Polygon. . .
Now just when you thought the world couldn’t get any more absurd, here comes the news that Mark Zuckerberg, the pale, robotic emperor of carpal tunnel syndrome and De Quervain’s tenosynovitis (yeah, that’s a real thing*), the man who built a trillion-dollar empire by convincing your aunt that her essential oils could cure cancer, has a brilliant new idea.
He wants to be a farkin’ shopkeeper.
He’s going to open up brick-and-mortar stores, like he’s some kind of common merchant from the 90s hocking gadgets in a mall.
I personally think this is a darn cry for help.
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Do you want an AI strap-on?
Let me tell you what happened.
So Zucky wants to become a store owner.
Like, real-life, walk-in stores.
Think Apple Store, but instead of iPhones and MacBooks, it’s gonna be headsets, smart glasses, and AI-powered gadgets with cameras that probably watch you blink.
He has already opened one little store on Meta’s California campus, and wow he wants more, because you can’t sell this kind of tech, like them virtual reality goggles or AI Ray-Bans, you know, that kinda stuff, just through a website.
People want to try them, touch them, and see how weird they feel on their face before they spend 300 bucks. So instead of just flooding your feed with ads, Meta wants to flood your mall with stores.
Ha!
He could’ve just pointed his traffic to a few of my posts for an honest to God review.
Here you go:
Have I become a glasshole? My experience with the Ray-Ban | Meta AI glasses
How to ID Strangers in seconds using Rayban Meta
I like the Vision Pro so much, that I bought the Quest 3
The RayNeo. Where AI meets AR.
But. . .
Why now?
You gots to know that Meta is betting big on AI and “wearable tech” and 2025 is their “make it or break it” year because everyone and their grandmothers are currently investing in wearable tech. Meanwhile, Apple and OpenAI are teaming up with design genius Jony Ive to launch their own stuff, and Zuck doesn’t want to be left behind.
The problem is that most people still think of Meta as “that place with fake news and Temu drop-ship stores” and not a cool gadget company. So now Zucky’s trying to change that image, by going physical on us.
Would you like a bag with that?
Now, for years the man was telling us that the future was inside the computer, that real life was a sad and irrelevant meatspace that needed to be replaced with his digital “metaverse”, but he is now finally admitting that his grand vision is so forking unappealing he can’t actually sell it to you online.
They need to lure you into a physical location, which of course is gonna be a clean, white room that looks like an Apple Store’s sad, desperate cousin, just to get you to strap on one of their face-huggers onto your skull for two minutes before you get motion sickness.
One “technology founder” (a title that means absolutely nothing) who ratted about his megalomaniac plans, had the gall to say this with a straight face: “They aren’t opening stores because they want to, but they’re doing it because they have to… It has to be experienced. It’s like trying to describe childbirth to someone who’s never felt it”.
Em, whatnow? Childbirth?
Are you frockin kidding me?
Are you’re comparing your VR headset that lets you have meetings in a low-poly boardroom to the biological miracle of creating life? After using it for a few weeks on end, it felt more like a migraine, or the slow, creeping nausea of food poisoning.
It’s a feeling, sure, but not one I want to pay for big time.
Zucky: “Our smart glasses show you the world in 3D, and they reframe it”.
And other experts are even worse.
One genius says Meta faeces an uphill battle because “the brand isn’t associated with a ‘physical’ brand in the minds of consumers”.
You don’t say.
Let me put this corporate bullshit into plain English: Nobody trusts these assholes, and people rightly associate their brand not with cool gadgets, but with political scandals, teenage mental health crises, and that one guy who’s unhinged and ranting about chem trails.
They’re not a hardware company!
They’re a digital Skinner box** that sells your data to the highest bidder, and overcoming that “perception” is impossible.
But my favorite, the absolute peak of this mountain of horseshit, comes from some “Managing Partner” who claims we’re entering a “story over storefront” era where companies win by creating “visceral, in-person magic”.
Story over storefrond?
Visceral, in-person magic?
What the ever-loving fcuk does that even mean?
Is a wizard going to pop out from behind the display and turn my water into wine?
Would be about fcuking time!
But heck no, this is the kind of meaningless, self-important corporate garbage people say when they have absolutely nothing of substance to contribute. It’s not magic, you dillweed. It’s a retail strategy born of pure desperation because your primary product, which is the metaverse, is a ghost town, and your new products are things nobody asked for.
So, Zucky the shopkeeper is setting up his little stall in the marketplace, hoping you’ll come in and “experience” his wares, and it is not a bold new chapter in Meta’s history, because it is the pathetic last gasp of a company that conquered the world online and now has to beg for your attention in the one place it has always feared and despised: reality.
Signing off,
Marco
* Repetitive thumb motion like flicking, swiping, tapping can inflame the tendons in your thumb and wrist.
** A Skinner box is a small box this guy B.F. Skinner used in the 30s (yeah, the good ol’ time for weird experiments on living beings). Now, inside this box, a rat (or pigeon, or human) would press a lever or peck a button and, depending on the setup, and get a reward (like food) or avoid a punishment (like a mild electric shock). Push the lever get the cheese. Don’t push, starve. Classic
I build AI by day and warn about it by night. I call it job security. Let’s keep smashing delusions with truth. We are the chaos. We are the firewall. We are Big Tech’s PR nightmare.
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- Prediction: OpenAI will go public, and here comes the greedy shitshow | LinkedIn
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