Dear Lord Sugar Mountain,

Attention: to my Facebook friend who is building a version of the metaverse that nobody wants as a starter.

The last few years must certainly not have been easy. Your business model centered around polarization and, subsequently, outrage has ironically unified many of us against relying too much on your social media platform. Your government — whose sniper rifle accuracy you know all too well as they took out your ill-conceived stablecoin project shortly after your expensive global advertising campaign went live — has tuned in to the many whistleblowers exposing how your company captures and sells attention. It has called you in for questioning. Although to be fair, they also needed to speak with you to better understand the basics of digital ad revenue.

What do people do when they are cornered? One of two things: fight back or flee the scene. As the walls close in, it seems that you have chosen to flee. Instead of addressing the deep-rooted issues of your business model, you’ve simply renamed the company, borrowing from a cyberpunk term coined in a 1992 dystopian novel that’s all about escaping a decaying world and getting hooked on an alternative illusionary reality, only to completely disregard the shortcomings of the real world. That’s probably not the connotation you had in mind when you rebranded the company, but it is the more accurate version of what you are promising to build.

Related: What Facebook’s rebranding tells us about Big Tech’s ‘Game of Platforms’

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