In 2008, JP Morgan received a $25 billion bailout from the Federal Reserve, part of a wider $700 billion bank bailout. A direct result of predatory lending and high risk gambling wrapped up in the easy-to-digest explanation of cheap credit, even as the 2008 financial crisis was unfolding, JP Morgan was working with hedge funds to bet against its self-made toxic mortgages. They were profiting from the very financial catastrophe they had created. What followed was the biggest economic collapse since the great depression.
Fast forward 14 years and JP Morgan – technically a blockchain division of JP Morgan, but let’s not split hairs – opened a virtual lounge in Decentraland. MANA rose 10% in the wake of the announcement, pushing the market cap of the decentralized metaverse platform to $6 billion.
Quite how JP Morgan entering anything could cause excitement was beyond me.
And the reason I took a holiday in the metaverse.
It nearly cost me my marriage.
And my mind.
At the time of writing, if Decentraland was a country, based on GDP, you'd find it between the Maldives and Montenegro.
“Why don’t we go to the Maldives instead of the metaverse then?” my wife says when I point this out.
“JP Morgan have built a lounge in Decentraland,” I say, shielding her from the graphics. “Who needs a sandy beach and cocktails in a hammock when you’ve got the metaverse? This is the future. All holidays will be in the metaverse one day. We’re vacation explorers. We’re like Thomas Cook.”
“I’m choosing the holiday next time,” she says.
“Deal,” I say as the screen goes dark and inoffensive music fills the void. There’s no rock n’ roll, no punk, no metal, no grunge. The metaverse is elevator music. Tedious.
Simplicity kills.
Brain cells.
CREATING A LONELY AVATAR
I have to create an avatar. A pixelated reflection of myself. Since I don’t give a shit what I look like in the metaverse – I’m here for the truth, not a fashion show. Unless the truth is a fashion show. In which case I’m underdressed – Scottish pirate-wrestler it is.
Decentraland won’t let me put a space in my name. I thought mass adoption was the biggest problem? I wanted to be called Bugsy Siegel. You can be anyone in the metaverse, but you can’t be called anything you want. Only one word. No special characters. BugsySiegel it is.
A ¾ jazz beat replaces the elevator music. I can’t work out if I’m happy or sad about that.
MY OWN PRIVATE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE
No check-in, no ticket inspection, no queues. I remember a holiday in Wales I took eighteen years ago. The road into the resort was cut off because of a landslide somewhere near Abergavenny. It took 72 hours to reach my log cabin. I’m in Decentraland in three seconds.
A ball-shaped droid named Alice joins me in the waiting lounge. She explains the basic controls, shows me a handful of useful shortcuts and explains how to interact with the world. Decentraland is set-up for a QWERTY keyboard. I’m using a French AZERTY laptop and bash my head into a wall.
Metaverse teething problems.
I’m floating on a cloud. In front of me is a small pool. There’s a vortex in the middle and I wonder if that is metaphor for life. Or maybe the emergency exit. The music is beyond irritating. My mind seeks escape through my ears. Motionless avatars called Peanut and Bongo and #dghdk spawn nearby. First timers, like me. They look lost, confused. They stand and stare.
I wonder how the fuck #dghdk got his special character.
"What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?"
W.H Davies
I click buttons, find the settings and turn down the music. I can’t work out how to invert the x-axis and y-axis and bang my head against the diving board.
I press the space bar and jump into the vortex. The vortex is neither an escape or the meaning of life, it’s the revolving door to my holiday in the metaverse. I land in a bar, which would be a great start if I wasn’t doing Dry January. There are CryptoPunks and Ethereum symbols on the wall. Strange NFTs, animals.
Jazz. Straight sixteenths. Swing.
The barman – who has an octopus on his head – mixes virtual cocktails.
On the lowly rendered wall is Nyan the cat, an NFT that creator Chris Torres sold for $600,000 last year. Right-click-save-as.
I float/walk/hover outside. There is a blimp with a slogan saying “The World Is Yours” on it.
It isn’t.
And where the hell is Snoop Dogg?
“Snoop Dogg lives in the Sandbox,” my wife says. “We’re in the wrong metaverse for gin n’ juice.”
“FFS. Isn’t this interoperable? What blockchain are we on?”
I feel like I’m on holiday in Leicester with a work colleague whilst all the cool people have gone to New York without me.
GENESIS PLAZA
When a new player enters the metaverse, they start at Genesis Plaza. I explore, as I would the side streets of Rome or Marrakesh. I run around the park, birdsong is pumped into the air. Clouds float by. There are purple and orange and pink trees. It’s peaceful.
Very peaceful.
As if I’m the only person in the world.
I run to the auditorium to catch a show. Web2 animé is projected onto a screen within a screen. There are metallic hummingbirds and a wild-west shoot-out on a train in a cartoon dessert. It is a ghost auditorium. Empty.
In the top left of the Decentraland screen is a map. I open it to see what I am missing. It’s a vast world, 90,000 parcels of land, each with infinite potential. Most are empty.
Being this early is lonely.
WAGMI.
I remember a holiday in Paris and a pilgrimage to Père Lachaise Cemetery and the grave of Jim Morrison. I was going through my Doors phase. Inebriated and, retrospectively, very uncool. But that didn’t prevent me thinking I was Ernest Hemingway.
Whilst there I also reflected on the nature of creativity at the final resting place of Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, Colette, Geoachinno Rossini, Balzac and Marcel Proust.
I remember an article in Fortune and how it said the Metaverse is going to give us creativity and culture on a level humanity has never seen before.
Whack-a-mole at the Decentraland auditorium isn’t the Renaissance.
Is the cemetery the best place to make friends in the metaverse? Debateable, but what the hell, I’m on holiday, my rules. I arrive at the pearly gates. There are no cultural icons buried and no living people or avatars wandering the pathways. There are some ghosts but conversation is testing.
I open the map for a second time. Decentraland University is twinkling like a beacon of optimism in a world of FUD.
Education is important in the metaverse. Not banks. We must instil values in our children that allow them to make wise decisions; embrace these new technological and cultural frontiers of the Metaverse. We must give them a blueprint that will guide them.
Fuck JP Morgan.
That’s what Satoshi Nakamoto said.
Time to go back to school.
I click.
The Decentraland university is empty. Of people, and things to learn. I’m disappointed. I thought I would at least see a TED talk.
To quell my impending social anxiety, I skip to a jazz club. No holiday is complete without some live music. The evening is lovely, the dynamic Decentraland sky awash with the sunburst colours.
Ominous, glowing green boxes litter my path. Are these parcels of metaverse land waiting for utility? Waiting for millions of dollars and investors waving gold. Gentrification in the Metaverse. It reminds me of the outer reaches of Snow Crash. On closer inspection, my computer is not equipped to deal with the graphics of the decentralized metaverse. The green vanishes, buildings are rendered in.
MUSIC IN THE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE
The Jazz Club is at -70, 76. It looks nice. But there’s no jazz. And it is empty. So is the NFT fashion shop across the road, which I’m actually happy about. I hate shopping for real clothes, the idea of digital fashion fills me with existential dread.
There’s no life in the enchanted woods (-33, -44).
I need to go where the prices are higher. Land parcel 4247 was bought for a million dollars by a virtual real-estate investment firm. It’s in a part of Decentraland near Dragon City. “We can’t wait to announce our big plans for this estate,” Republic Realm, the new owners, said. “Our commitment to building and developing the metaverse is stronger than ever.”
Yeah? We’ll see.
I check it out and get excited when I see what could be life.
On closer inspection, it’s a bush.
Standing (all alone) at coordinates: -12,-2 - available for 8 million MANA ($725k) or $708 per square foot.
When I was eighteen I went to Palma Menorca with a friend. On the second day my bank blocked my credit card.
THE JP MORGAN ONYX LOUNGE
The Decentraland coordinates for the JP Morgan Onyx lounge are 94,21.
This is a holiday. The idea of going to a virtual lounge owned by a bank sounds as exciting as drinking water in a brewery, but it is the reason I came to Decentraland in the first place.
And besides, this is no ordinary virtual lounge owned by a bank. It added 10% to the value of Decentraland. That’s $500 million. This is a $500 million virtual lounge. Owned by a bank whose CEO threatened to sack employees who traded in Bitcoin, who called cryptocurrency a fraud. But we forgave them for 2008, so we can forgive them for this.
The most important thing is, WAGMI.
I wish I could tell you the ONYX lounge is incredible, that the virtual tiger and the off-oyster white walls are a marvel you have to see for yourself. I wish I could tell you there is all manner of interesting and exciting people milling around the reception, asking questions, speaking about the Metaverse and the financial freedom it will offer to the swaths of humanity who don’t have access to a bank account. But I can’t. It’s shit.
Even the tiger looks bored, pacing around like some kind of broken zoo animal. The whole thing is a dreadful mistake, and no way to spend a holiday.
And, yes, it is empty.
That 10% increase in price makes me feel dirty.
$500 million?
SATOSHI PALACE
Debauched gambling will clear my head. I go to Satoshi Palace. It is not empty. There are green frog men. Croupiers waiting for punters. Waiting for life to populate the decentralized metaverse. Even the frog people have been sold a dream, a future they neither wanted nor needed. They look sad. I open a New York Times article on the Metaverse, to remind myself why I am doing this. It’s behind a paywall, I sneak peeks of ‘the future’, ‘our digital lives’ and ‘hype’ before the pay wall slams shut.
I’ve read all manner of bunk, baloney, opinion and sense on the metaverse, I’ve never read about how damn empty it is.
THE ATARI CASINO
Once the domain of nostalgic t-shirts and the halcyon days of game consoles, Atari has been re-born in the Metaverse. The jewel in its crown is The Atari Casino – a crypto casino offering roulette and poker and blackjack, an open, expansive entertainment centre powered by the ATRI token. I’m excited, this is where all the people are, the degens, the gamblers, the chancers, three days into a million dollar poker game where the stakes are life itself.
I’m on foot. A lone train rattles by. It’s dark. It’s foreboding. I arrive at the gates and it’s empty. No doubt because everyone is at the tables, placing bets, chatting with the croupiers and drinking Singapore Slings on the velvet carpets of the casino. I rush inside, open-armed, ready to embrace the future.
But there is nobody here.
There are some fruit machines, they have ‘Ready Player One’ on the screen. I speak to them.
With money to burn, I crawl to another casino. Gamble, gamble, gamble.
THE TOMINOYA CASINO
Not my casino, but one of the most popular places in Decentraland, in the wider decentralized Metaverse. I arrive and a person spawns before my eyes. The world stops, angelic fanfares cry from the ramparts. I’ve found my people, some people. A person. I want to take them in my arms and waltz across the Metaverse.
A flash of light.
And my computer crashes.
I have to reload.
And when I get back to the Tominoya, that magical person has gone and I’m all alone again. I wonder if it happened or whether my mind, desperate for connection, was playing tricks. A frog person appears, only now it’s dancing and I am stuck inside a blackjack table. The floor starts to merge with the surroundings, the frog has teeth and its clawing at me, drinking long island ice teas through the descending digital exo-plasm drowning my avatar.
RTFKT
Am I doing something wrong? I check the settings. Look for the ‘Make People Appear’ button. It isn’t there.
I go next door to the RTFKT building, recently acquired by Nike for an undisclosed sum. Their NTFS are selling on OpenSea of for the price of Gabon. There must be someone in there, I think. This is the home of Clone-X.
The RTFKT building is empty. Not even the frog people are here.
People could be in bed, I guess.
But surely the metaverse doesn’t sleep?
I go to OpenSea. There is a parcel of land for sale, a snip at $15,000. If I sell half my possessions I could buy this. I use the /goto option in the chat box and spawn to this parcel of land. It’s under construction. There is nothing going on. It looks like the future only the future is the past and has bad graphics and is empty.
My attention is grabbed by flashing lights far in the distance. Like a moth to the possibility of human interaction, I drop any ideas of investment, and run. There’s life. The decentralized metaverse I’m looking for.
SHONBEBE
It’s Shonbebe, a new way to express music in the metaverse.
I run into Shonbebe. As the graphics catch up with my ambition, drum and bass hijacks my audio senses. Neon lights and flashing bolts of yellow and orange and blue render in. The music builds, crescendos. Guitars come in, distorted, out of tune. My avatar raises his arms in the air. The music breaks down to snares and hi hats; rhythm at its most simplistic, in tune with the neurons of human existence.
There is nobody here, but the music builds again, ripping down the peace and rebuilding the musical landscape with raucous drums and guitars. And then I’m trapped behind the walls, a glitch causing my avatar to spasm uncontrollably.
Fighting virtual gravity is not easy. Eventually I escape. A free man, on holiday, having a great time. I run outside, my lungs working as they should. I breath deeply from the micro-particle-free air. One thing about the metaverse, there’s pollution, no microparticles. It’s like being in the Swiss Alps. Only it’s emptier than the Swiss Alps. There are more people on the fucking Matterhorn.
THE DOGE HEAD
The oxygen is so pure my eyesight momentarily falters. I stumble into a giant Doge head. It’s looking at me. At least it’s a connection. A connection with a giant dog head. But connection. I speak to it.
I ask what happened to the one dollar Doge.
“Wen one dollar Doge?” I say, harking back to the glory days of early 2021 and the Saturday Night Live Elon Musk sketch which was going to change the crypto world. Yet didn’t.
Doge doesn’t respond.
The sun is high in the sky, the early morning warmth ramping up to a midday heatwave.
Maybe it’s the heat speaking, but give me a dystopian hell scape with lava for roads if you must. Just give me people.
Seeking shade, I levitate and glide gracefully to NFT marketplace Niftys, home to eco-friendly NFTs, Space Jam and the Matrix avatars, 100,000 NFTs launched last year to give fans of the franchise access to a dystopian world of story and intrigue. Using Epic Games’ photorealistic MetaHuman creator, Nifty’s Matrix NFTs are said to be almost life-like. There is no sign of life here, life-like or otherwise.
What there is is an amateurish billboard offering me advertising opportunities. I’m not sure who I could advertise to. It reminds me of a holiday I took to Blackpool when I was twelve.
CULTURE FOR EVERYONE
Culture, education, art for everyone. Access to the great museums and art galleries of the world, a Metaverse of cultural enlightenment and refined artistic opportunities. Remove the background hum of the mighty dollar and define the metaverse as something deeper, more human. And what is more human than culture? And what says ‘holiday’ more than a visit to Tate Modern, MOMA or the National Portrait Gallery?
THE MUSEUM DISTRICT
Excited, I go to the Soho art gallery. Nobody there.
Art is the common ground which connects humanity. From the Palaeolithic cave paintings of Lascaux and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt, to the renaissance art of the enlightenment and the decadence of modern art, the human condition has been painted, etched, sketched and drawn. Being a visual medium, the Metaverse will open this culture to everyone on Earth, from the Himalayan foothills to the backstreets of Leeds, the barriers of location and access will be eviscerated by the metaverse.
I’m not saying the art isn’t wonderful and transcendental and explosive, because some of it is. Some is raucous and challenging, opaque and bold, other pieces are childlike. The whole gamete of human artistic expression is hanging from the virtual walls.
NFT HALLWAY
NFT Hallway has links to OpenSea where I can buy the NFTs hanging on the wall. Oh right. But it’s empty.
The ‘Make People Appear’ button still isn’t there.
In the Monster Hall I find flying sheep and atmospheric music of violins and harps. I also find beauty, the intricacy and the creativity washing over me. But it’s empty, lifeless.
I start to panic.
A drink. I need a drink. Some amber nectar to still my beating heart. Is this what the end of the world feels like?
DRINKING IN THE DECENTRALIZED METAVERSE
I find a bar. It has pool tables and game machines and a robot bar man who stares at me, then tells me which beer I should drink. I really don’t care. I drink it all. It tastes like metal.
My foot taps manically against the wooden bar stool. In real life I get a message from Samsung saying I am due a phone upgrade. I text Samsung back and say I’ll meet them in the metaverse.
Times are getting desperate, the idea of a holiday long since eviscerated. There was a story about an NFT and owning a part of Decentraland and Bugsy Siegel and Vegas in the 1950s and the celebration of the future of mankind. Bugsy Siegel was shot dead outside his casino a year after opening. He never got to see the Vegas dream he craved. I’m never going to have the metaverse holiday I craved.
THE SAMSUNG 837X EXPERIENCE
The Samsung 837X experience isn’t going to save me. And I don’t tell my wife we swapped hammocks in the Maldives for a visit to the Samsung shop in Decentraland. The Samsung website says, “Samsung 837X is a fully immersive experience, featuring quests, NFT prizes, product reveal events and live performances. You can buy and sell exclusive digital assets, like land and wearables.”
I don’t want a fucking wearable. I want human connection.
I teleport out. Back to 0.0. There were people there when I arrived. Staring into the abyss. I arrive at the beginning and the place is deserted. I fall head-first back into the vortex, returning to the Plaza. I see someone. In the distance. Walking slowly. My heart skips a beat.
It’s an old man with a sack on his shoulder. This must be the Metaverse Buddha. He has been here a long time, maybe since the beginning. Since 2017. He seems decrepit, uninterested, aimlessly walking around the Metaverse looking for something he can’t imagine.
Or someone.
I turn on my microphone and shout at the decentralized metaverse Buddha.
He ignores me.
I say hello in the chat box.
He ignores me.
I jump in front of him, tell him about my visit to the cemetery.
He ignores me.
I give up, sit down in a deckchair and watch a virtual ferris-wheel go around and around and around.
I check CoinMarketCap.
And wonder.
THE CENTRALIZED METAVERSE
I am worried. Worried about the future of the decentralized metaverse, worried about the volume of media coverage of something which, if you just take some time to explore, is empty. I’m worried that six billion valuation is always hovering, impossible to ignore, impossible to ignore, impossible to ignore.
With the world spending its way into impending ruin, should it be ignored?
I’m worried about the disconnect between what I have been reading and what I’m experiencing.
Echo chambers.
I’m worried the Metaverse is a smoke screen, a beautiful and elaborate ruse, a story to keep us distracted as the real story is created behind our backs, to be laced upon our eyes later on. I’m worried the metaverse is a vehicle for the mass introduction of VR glasses, augmented realities layered upon what we see around us. A screen replacement. No more televisions, computer screens or laptops. Just whatever replaces them.
But that seems fanciful. Elon Musk cast doubt on the assertion we would walk around with headsets and glasses on. My wife said as much, and she doesn’t want to go to Mars.
“People don’t wear glasses to help them see,” she says. “Why would they wear glasses to help them see something which isn’t there?”
It’s a valid point. “But the geeks are going to inherit the Earth,” I say.
What comes after glasses? Eye implants? As soon as you start mentioning eye implants people get all scared and call you a dystopian peddler of broken nightmares, forgetting how far and how quickly technology has progressed from their own childhood.
DECENTRALIZED GROWTH
Yes, it will grow. Yes, it will grow. Yes it will grow. We still early. I get it. There are plans afoot for fashion shows and fight nights. The Metaverse Festival, four days of music, culture and creativity in October 2021 brought exposure and real musicians to town. And there is always gaming.
Web3 and the decentralized internet upon which it sits will uncouple finance from government, data from the data-gathering vampires, and creativity from the gate-keepers. It will allow us all to be the best versions of ourselves. But life isn’t made up of grandiose one-offs, it’s the day-to-day where life is made. The routine and habit, of the little things. And right now, it’s a pipe dream.
DECENTRALIZED HOPE
But all hope is not lost. As Metaverse Buddha hobbles off, something hits me, a realisation that I have been missing the whole holiday, something so powerful, so mesmerising I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. I know where the people are. I know where the connection and the community is; where the like minded are congregated, laughing, joking and telling stories. Living and breathing the metaverse.
I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. There is no doubt in my mind, the metaverse dream is down by the river.
The record breaker, the trend setter, the biggest status symbol and raucous joyous party in the history of degenerate apes. $542 million in sales, a token dropping in days. The front of Rolling Stone, every news outlet fawning over them or knocking them down. Something special is happening, something transformative.
I want to hold hands with Neymar and dance around the metaverse with Stephen Curry, Serena Williams, Shaquille O’Neal, Justin Bieber and Eminem and Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Hart and Paris Hilton and Logan Paul and Snoop Dogg, the catalysts to the mainstream adoption, the energy pulsating at the heart of the NFT world, and by association, the Metaverse.
I pick up my pace, certain I’m falling into the beating engine at the centre of the metaverse, the billion dollar justification for it all.
Finally.
THE BORED APE YACHT CLUB
The BAYC Riverboat casino: Decentraland coordinates, -111, 120.
Half delirious, half crazy, half maniacal, I run like a gazelle fleeing the jaws of death towards the beating heart of Decentraland. I fling myself across the wooden gangplank and into the bowels of the 18th century paddle steamer.
And stop.
I’ve missed the boat.
I’m too late.
Just the remnants remain.
An empty bar, banana skins scattered across the floor like empty gun cartridge casings. Wine glasses and beer bottles. Someone has painted FOMO in giant letters on the underside of the staircase which leads to the upstairs dance floor.
I sink to my knees.
And I’m reminded of a quote.
“Will the last person out of the decentralized metaverse please turn off the lights.”
Oh, is that me?
