Mark Zuckerberg’s turn toward the “metaverse” claims to put an extra digital layer on top of the real world. But Facebook’s new Meta brand isn’t augmenting your reality — it just wants to suck more money out of it.

On Thursday, Facebook changed its name to Meta, as part of a broader shift toward the so-called metaverse — a network of interconnected experiences partly accessed through virtual reality (VR) headsets and augmented reality (AR) devices. In Zuckerberg’s own words, “you can think about the metaverse as an embodied internet, where instead of just viewing content — you are in it.” The most recognizable examples of this in action are virtual office meetings with VR goggles, playing games in an expansive online universe, and accessing a digital layer on top of the real world through AR.

As owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and the virtual reality firm Oculus, the holding company now known as Meta plans to create an interconnected world in which our work, life, and leisure all take place on its infrastructure — monetizing all aspects of our lives. For now, this is still the stuff of fantasy. Yet it’s also the fantasy of one of the most powerful men in the world — and for this reason, it deserves our attention.

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