- In 2018, an Oculus executive named Jason Rubin wrote a 50-page document headlined “The Metaverse” that he sent to a Facebook board member and some top execs.
- The paper described in detail Facebook’s need to own the virtual reality market with a product that would shut out any future competition.
- “If delivering the Metaverse we set out to build doesn’t scare the living hell out of us, then it is not the Metaverse we should be building,” Rubin wrote.
The paper sent to Andreessen in 2018 now looks like the first draft of history. It imagined users floating through a digital universe of virtual ads, filled with virtual goods that people buy. There would be virtual people that they marry, while spending as little time as possible in the so-called “meatverse” — referring to the real world because humans are flesh and blood. Rubin used the phrase “shock and awe” 12 times to describe the desired experience.
“If delivering the Metaverse we set out to build doesn’t scare the living hell out of us, then it is not the Metaverse we should be building, it is not what customers want, and it is, therefore, meaningless,” he wrote. “Anything else is a Mini-verse.”
