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After spending two soul-crushing years locked up at home, companies like Facebook-now-known-as-Meta are trying to sell you on a new vision of the future: strap on a bulky VR headset and experience expansive virtual worlds filled with joy and legless, cartoonized avatars of your best friends.

If that doesn’t sound like something you want to be a part of, you’re not alone. Here are our favorite memes about the concept.

1. MEAT-A-VERSE

Some folks are worried Mark Zuckerberg and his company Meta might have ulterior motives in the metaverse. After news broke that one Turkish farmer was putting his cows in VR headsets to show them images of green fields and pastures to increase milk production, one Redditor posted the “Meta-worse” meme showing Zuckerberg commandingly striding past rows and rows of audience members testing out VR headsets.

Some, however, seem less concerned about the consequences and are just happy to forget a bleak reality.

“If I can escape my miserable life in the form of VR i would do it 100 percent,” one user commented below the post. “I already do with TV shows and video games anyways.”

2. THIS IS FINE

Remember the “This is Fine” dog sitting at a kitchen table inside a burning house? One Instagram webcomic artist remixed the meme to feature an original character in a burning house, oblivious to the flames because of the VR goggles on their face.

It’s the sharp-elbowed reminder, in other words that VR can easily distract us from everyday problems that require immediate solutions, like climate change, for instance.EMPAVELI™ (pegcetacoplan) – Resources for PhysiciansSee Prescribing Info & Boxed Warning. Read How EMPAVELI May Help Your Patients. See www.empavelihcp.com

3. LET’S MAKE A DEAL

What do VR users get in exchange for hours of their life spent inside a digital world? According to one meme-maker, not a lot.

“I receive: Hours of your life wasted,” the caption of a meme showing a man dressed in a business suit reads. “You receive: A funny little box.”

4. CHUMP CHANGES

Who needs real change when you can just pick a new name, right? At least that’s what the above Twitter user seems to be implying when Facebook changed its name to Meta.

5. POSSIBLE PRISON

Can you even imagine doing time in a “metaverse prison?” A Reddit user posted this video featuring two players using VR headsets and flailing wildly in full-body control suit situations — and it popped off with more than 51,000 upvotes.

6. UNREAL ESTATE

This tweet seems to be a dig at real estate agents spending millions of dollars on virtual plots of land. Sure, you might be broke after and not able to afford reality-based housing — but as long as you’ve got the headset you’re home sweet home, right?

7. IT’S ALL TOO MUCH

Some metaverse memes remind us about the bigger picture. Sure, VR can be scary, but what about everything else going on in the world? We can’t forget those pesky supply chain shortages and COVID variants.

Sometimes memes make us feel better, and sometimes they make us feel worse. But if you’re feeling a little blue after this roundup, just remember, there’s still some good being done in the world.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/19/meta-wants-to-track-peoples-facial-expressions-in-metaverse/

Dozens of recently filed patents suggest Meta Platforms Inc. wants to use new technology to monetize the metaverse,. New York Post photo composite

Meta Platforms Inc. wants to monitor people’s facial expressions, eye movements, and body poses as well as create “virtual stores” that sell ad-sponsored digital goods in an effort to monetize the metaverse, dozens of recently filed patents suggest.

The company that began as Facebook and which has recently rebranded itself as Meta filed hundreds of patents recently with the US Patent and Trademark Office. These filings shed light on the company’s plans for the internet’s new frontier.

The patents, which were first reported by the Financial Times, indicate that Meta wants to use biometric data in order to create a more realistic digital avatar using virtual reality or augmented reality.

Meta also plans to collect data on users so that it could tailor specific ad content while they immerse themselves in the metaverse, the patent filings suggest.

One patent filing shows a sketch of a “wearable magnetic sensor system” that the user places around their torso for “body pose tracking.”

Another patent can detect a user’s facial expressions through a headset. The system would then compute the expressions and “adapt media content” based on its findings.

The company is essentially following the same business model that translated into tens of billions of dollars in profit through its social network.

Meta also filed a patent for a headset that is equipped with cameras and sensors that ensure the user sees brighter graphics depending on where they’re looking.

The firm is also said to be developing an “avatar personalization engine” that can create three-dimensional avatars based on a user’s photos.

“For us, the business model in the metaverse is commerce-led,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s head of global affairs, told FT.

“Clearly ads play a part in that.”

Some of the patents appear to have originated in a science fiction movie. In December, Meta was granted a patent for the “mechanical eyeball 100,” which is said to be a “robotic eye designed to resemble a [human] eye.”

The eye is designed to “mate” with an animatronic robot head in an effort to make the eye “appear authentic to an observer,” according to Insider, which first reported the patent filing.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said his company plans to invest $10 billion per year over the next decade to develop metaverse technology.

The race to metaverse supremacy has set up a clash of tech titans as Apple and Microsoft have also indicated they plan to spend considerable sums of money to grab a share of the market.

Meta’s push to collect more data could trigger a backlash, particularly in light of claims that the company disregarded its own engineers’ advice and bombarded Facebook and Instagram users with targeted content that was known to be harmful.

Shares of Meta rose by more than 1.2% in the first hour of trading on Wall Street on Wednesday.