In Adam McKay? ’s bluntly allegorical Don’t Look Up, a band of underdog astronomers attempt to compel America’s uber-powerful to prevent an incoming comet from obliterating earth. The film ends cataclysmically for virtually everyone except the elite few—some pandering politicians and tech billionaires who Irish exit in a rocketship (SpaceX? ?), too myopically self interested for planet earth to have ever had a real shot at survival.

Don’t Look Up explores the tug-of-war between authenticity and dehumanization—and data collection is eroding the foothold of the former. Namely, big-tech mogul Peter Isherwell (a fictional “frankensteining” of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and the like), intimidates Leo DiCaprio? ’s uncomfortably sweaty antihero by reducing him to a data point:

“Did you know that [my company] has over 40 million data points on you and every decision you’ve made since 1994, Doctor…I know what you are. I know who you are. My algorithms have determined eight fundamental consumer profile types. You are a Lifestyle Idealist. You think you are motivated by beliefs…but you just run towards pleasure and away from pain.”

The nature of Isherwell’s threat is not surprising in light of recent “milestones”: Cambridge Analytica played deus ex machina in the 2016 presidential elections; a leaked study on Instagram sparked public outrage not for confirming that the app triggers self-loathing—we already knew that—but something much more sinister: that the trigger itself is a fine-tuned algorithm; and we all remember the buzz around Target when it surprised teenage girls (and their parents) with coupons for diapers and baby cribs.

It is in this context that surveillance capitalism becomes particularly relevant. In an interview with Shoshana Zuboff, the author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as a new economic system that “unilaterally claims private human experience as a source of raw material.” And as the tech behemoth evolves, we are left to wonder whether any authentic and human experience is left sacred to just ourselves.

And whatever remnants of authenticity we have could very well be swept away by the “metaverse” movement. Facebook, which has opportunistically renamed itself as “Meta”, defines the metaverse as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” In his video keynote, Zuckerberg announces Meta’s grand plan to create a 3D world that is sophisticated enough to rival (and in some ways outdo) the world that we live in now.

So how exactly will the metaverse work? Thanks to Meta’s acquisition of Oculus in 2014 (courtesy of Meta’s “copy, acquire and kill” mantra), the first generation of the metaverse will be accessed through virtual reality headsets and hand sensors. Meta’s website features a picture of a woman in her living room with two curvy hand remotes and (what seems to be) a giant Wii strapped across her face—she looks like she could be surfing in the Maldives or fighting in a street brawl.

The concept sounds cool, and a lot of industry titans are jumping on the bandwagon: JPMorgan recently became the first bank to set up a metaverse office, and Nike’s been designing digital versions of its shoes and apparel. And pockets of our society have already transitioned into this digital frontier, particularly in gaming: when asked at the dinner table about his day, my brother answered casually, “not much, just pillaged a couple of villages with my friends.”

But the price of such an immersive experience is the nature of immersion itself: our physical and digital identities become a single being. In the metaverse, we are wired in and fully traceable, and we lose our rights over even our faintest thoughts: namely, Oculus’ Project Cambria is developing technology to track eye focus and facial movement. And sometimes we volunteer our vulnerabilities: according to an early metaverse user, it is not uncommon to find avatars crying openly in this brave, new digital world.

The promise of a great, virtual equalizer is intuitively attractive. In an interview with Marc Andreessen, an early Facebook investor and board member since 2008, Andreessen outlines the concept of Reality Privilege:

“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…[e]veryone 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.”

So according to Andreessen, playing pretend can be slippery when you dislike yourself. And so off we go, living as wildly as our imaginations (and VR software) allow.

Amidst all of this hype we forget that we are ultimately just occupants in Zuckerberg’s virtual tenancy. And as much as Zuckerberg’s inner child craves praise, Meta needs to turn a profit.

As mentioned before, commodifying human behavior is old news, but what’s so scary about the metaverse is the extent to which Zuckerberg is trying to mimic authenticity: in the metaverse, we can gaze romantically into the eyes of each other’s avatars, test the firmness of an apple at a virtual Whole Foods, and watch our tears saturate the ground as we weep in our Oculus headsets. We might even will ourselves into believing that all of it is truly authentic.

But look on the bright side: the full throttle of the metaverse is still far away, five to ten years according to Mark. And we can all learn from the infamous steak dinner scene in The Matrix, when Cypher betrays his comrades for a privileged life in a pretend world:

“I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. [But] [a]fter nine years, you know what I realize?”

Eats the steak, drinks the kool-aid.

“Ignorance is bliss.”

There's only sizzle here, no steak. Almost all your words are spent on not the subject. We get movie dialogue and magazine-writing descriptions, arch and vaguely knowing, along with (linkless) references to magazine interviews about authors rather than the works of the author's themselves. (If you can't be bothered to read 700 pages of Shoshana Zuboff, you might at least point your readers to her own New York Times capsule versions.)

But there's nothing like an idea of your own underneath the scrim. The "metaverse" and "reality privilege" is all technical nonsense, as Ethan Zuckerman and I and lots of others have pointed out. No, we are not ten years away from simulated reality neurologically indistinguishable from real. Absolute crap said by Marc Andreessen promotuing his investments doesn't cease to be crap because he said it. You report this solemnly (or as solemnly as your arch magazine writing style will permit. But we can't get to meaningful insights by syllogism on false premises.

So what are we left with? Surveillance capitalism is bad and politically dangerous, and if the parasite with the mind of God could directly attach to the human neural system with going through the eyes and ears attached behaviorally to the smartassphone interface that would be even worse. Yes, I agree, that's how I taught the asubject. Improving this draft means going further, not in the decoration but in the substance.