“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.” So preaches Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. Presumably, physical-world risks do not afflict the metaverse, either: The hybrid realm of augmented and virtual reality to which the would-be masters of the digital age are turning their focus. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has gone all-in, indeed so far as to rename his company “Meta,” and has placed much of his treasure there. How is that working out for him? Bloomberg reports:
Mark Zuckerberg’s pivot into the metaverse has cost him dearly in the real world.
Even in a rough year for just about every US tech titan, the wealth erased from the chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc. stands out. His fortune has been cut in half and then some, dropping by $71 billion so far this year, the most among the ultra-rich tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At $55.9 billion, his net worth ranks 20th among global billionaires, his lowest spot since 2014 and behind three Waltons and two members of the Koch family.
Analysts of Meta’s performance blame Zuckerberg’s turn to the metaverse:
The stock is also being dragged down by the company’s investments in the metaverse, said Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co. Zuckerberg has said he expects the project will lose “significant” amounts of money in the next three to five years. . . . If not for its endeavor into virtual reality, the social media giant “would be more in line with where Alphabet is,” said Mandeep Singh, technology analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
To be sure, initial losses do not always indicate folly. Amazon was a money-losing enterprise until 2002, when the company posted its first quarterly profit, something the New York Times described as a “surprise” at the time. (Now, Amazon can afford to blow hundreds of millions of dollars on, say, a Lord of the Rings TV series.) But, given the hollow, sterile, and destructive nature of the metaverse’s turn away from the physical world, one hopes that this trend continues. Perhaps this is even a sign of a prioritization of reality over digital alternatives. After all, to return to Matthew, “For where your treasure is, there also your heart will be.”