The Meta Problem

Never in history has a $1T company launched a new category, new point-of-view this forward leaning. I can tell you first hand, the % of public company CEOs that would be a tenth as bold is miniscule.

But, there are at least 3 Meta problems here.

1) Zuck ignored the elephant in the room. Their exploitation (at all costs) of people in the service of revenue. Pretending that FB does not have a a self-inflicted existential wound, does not make it go away.

2) Zuck is clearly a mercenary, not missionary.

The Metaverse category point-of-view is 100% about FB. Not about solving a new big problem. Not about making a difference — For others.

Not about us.

Because we are NOT FB’s customers. We are their product.

Zuck makes this clear in his “founder letter”. He starts with: “We are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it’s the next chapter for our company too.”

This is classic mercenary talk. Me, me, me. Us, us, us.

3) FB is the least trusted tech company

Can one of the most nefarious companies in history convince the world to bet their future digital lives on a dubious distrusted bedrock? Without even trying to build trust?

As $1T market cap company they have the financial resources to brain wash the masses at scale. They also have the ability to control what 3 billion people see everyday in their feeds. This is extraordinary power to create their own narrative. And scale it.

Today, evil scales fast.

We’ve never seen a CEO be so courageous on one hand. And so cowardly on another.

With the Meta announcement, Zuck is announcing a monster new category and summoning the courage to swing for the fences, bet it all, even burn the boats. And at the same exact time, demonstrating shocking cowardice by not addressing the obvious reality that Facebook is perceived to be one of the least trustworthy and most damaging tech companies in history.

Zuck’s disconnectedness is shocking. Real leaders address real problems, head on and in a straightforward, powerful way.

So Zuck might just pull off the biggest new category launch in history and convince the world to give FB more data to monetize for their benefit, and parlay the new Metaverse category into a $2T market cap.

Time will tell. All of this reminds us of the sage words of French poet Charles Baudelaire.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”

🏴‍☠️👊

Christopher Lochhead

This post is based on the work of Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️