Anna Nacher
The Metaverse and Contemporary Dystopias: a Quest for Critical and Involved Virtual Reality Recipients
Main reactions to Facebook CEO’s most recent decision to transform the corporation into a company with a focus on developing a Virtual Reality platform, and change its name to “Meta”, were ones of scepticism and widespread criticism. In principle, the decision was interpreted as an escape from the critique of previous strategies, wherein the business side and desire for profit took precedent over accountability for the shape and form of communities evolving within the platform and its outreach. Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions included the introduction of the concept of “metaverse” – a term coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash (published in Poland as Śnieżyca, 2020). Zuckerberg’s decision was based on a blatant increase in VR’s importance to film, journalism and entertainment over the past five years, and on Facebook’s ownership of Oculus (a leading and hugely popular hardware platform) since 2014.
In view of experience drawn from the brief yet tempestuous history of social media impact on the process of forming social imagination, and basing on past extensive debates regarding VR and forms employing the so-called Mixed (Mode) Reality, often as not referred to jointly as XR (Extended Reality), a more profound consideration of critical, conscious and involved recipience has become a necessity. What kind of skill should a conscious recipient be equipped with when encountering dystopian metaverse announced by Facebook policies and disclosed in revelations by Frances Haugen and other whistle-blowers? What, in general, is critical VR content reception all about? Does a critical approach involve selected specific content parameters, such as topic, methods of developing the narrative, multi-sensory engagement, commencing immersive reception and affective recipient response? Such are the specific questions I intend to focus on while pointing out that the stakes in this particular discussion extend well beyond the academic realm, and may be of significance to VR evolvement in the context of its social role.
