It’s nothing new to say that our lives are more online than ever, so, on the face of it, the new venture from Facebook — sorry, Meta — the Metaverse, which has been described as a kind of 3D internet, seems like the inevitable next step. With the power to create immersive online worlds that aren’t constrained by real world difficulties like physics and geography, or (some have argued) money, the Metaverse could be viewed as a potential Utopia.
But comparisons to The Matrix are all too obvious, and lives spent largely online also bring to mind horror stories of disconnection and gaming addiction. But proponents of the metaverse are shutting down these criticisms as an example of a new term; so-called “reality privilege”. In an interview, billionaire and Meta investor Marc Andreessen explained “reality privilege” like this: “A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date […] Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks reality privilege — their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.”
The concept has been lauded by gamers, particularly MMPORG fans, who have long understood the concept of reality privilege but perhaps lacked such a succinct definition as Marc Andreessen’s. Andy*, a gamer from London, admits he uses online worlds as an escape: “Once, after a bad break-up, I got big into The Sims,” he laughs. “It was comforting to be in this ordered world, where I could control everything, where I knew there weren’t going to be any nasty surprises.” Perhaps unsurprisingly then, Andy doesn’t think the idea of reality privilege is necessarily a controversial one. “I think it goes without saying that online worlds can be better than the real world,” he says. “I can’t fly in the real world, or climb a mountain in the space of an afternoon, or choose an avatar that lets me completely flip my identity. And when times get tough, yeah, I probably take more comfort in these worlds.”
But on sub Reddit r/stupidpol, which is dedicated to criticising capitalism, users are coming down hard on the idea of reality privilege, pointing out that this kind of thinking may lead to greater divisions in the real world, as improvements in online worlds are viewed as equally valid to improvements in the real world. “This is cartoonishly evil”, wrote one user. Another pointed to the academically accepted idea that the world is actually improving according to metrics including decreases in global poverty and hunger and increases in education, but pointed out that “the people who roadblock yet more improvement are [Andreessen’s] very ilk.”
Meta seems to be pushing the Metaverse as a place where social constraints and inequalities fall away. But at the same time the Metaverse itself is an incredibly lucrative enterprise, one that Citi have bullishly forecasted a market value of $13 trillion. Can this really be compatible with a Utopian world of social equality? Sotheby’s sell art in the form of NFTs on the metaverse for millions. An unofficial virtual Birkin bag created by digital artist Mason Rotshchild went on the metaverse market at the start of the year, some selling for upwards of $40,000 (and sparking a legal battle with Hermès in the process). Other designer brands have happily jumped into the metaverse themselves; Gucci recently released an extremely limited collection of NFTs including a virtual bag priced at $4,500. Disney too, has already pre-empted a future of virtual theme parks, patenting the technology for metaverse theme parks, while performing artists are cashing in on metaverse ‘tours’. Doesn’t ‘reality privilege’ then simply translate into online privilege? Individuals with more money IRL are privileged online as well as off. And time-rich individuals too will be able to spend longer in the metaverse than individuals who have kids and work two jobs, for example.
Thijs Pepping, Co-author of Real Fake (Playing with reality in the age of AI, deepfakes and the Metaverse), explains that NFTs are a good example of an unpleasant side of human nature; the desire to create scarcity where it doesn’t need to exist. “While we have abundance in virtual worlds, we could make copies of everything”, he says. “NFTs bring exclusivity and scarceness to these worlds. Why would we want that? Because we are humans: we want to feel special, show off, enrich ourselves, protect the things we love.”
For Thijs, a virtual world completely divorced from the real world, and where we can start to see ‘privilege’ as a thing of the past, is practically impossible. “It’s like the meme with the house on fire and the dog drinking coffee,” he says. “Andreessen is offering the dog a VR headset so the dog can say ‘This is fine’. But it’s not fine. It’s not fine that we are experiencing record breaking heats, people are fleeing their country as climate change migrants […] It’s not fine that we are reporting about shortages of lithium, cobalt and nickel for batteries, and at the same time Congolese children are dying during the cobalt mining.” And it’s these same resources, he points out, which are used to make our VR headsets and gaming consoles.
A lack of reality privilege (or to put it more plainly, global inequality) props up the metaverse in many ways, and will continue to do so unless huge social shifts take place in the real world. “These real life problems show the point Andreesen is missing,” says Thijs. “The Metaverse and real life are highly intertwined. Don’t get me wrong: for me it’s a no-brainer that virtual experiences can be meaningful, transcendental even, and they can be high-quality alternatives and add-ons for aspects of our real life. But it’s just a broadening of reality.”
The danger of talking about “reality privilege” is that it positions the metaverse as a viable alternative to IRL experience, and shuts down anyone who tries to question this. The real world and the created world of the metaverse will inevitably blur further, but one is unlikely to completely subsume the other Matrix-style. “We need to become more mindful, reflect more, become more mature in navigating between these realities,” says Thijs. Rather than thinking of the metaverse as an escape from reality, we could use the things online worlds can teach us – abundance, flexibility, generosity – to help us learn how to improve the physical world we live in now.