I used to work at Linden Lab, makers of Second Life back in the day. We were the poster-child for "look how cool the metaverse is" hype in the 2000s. We spent a lot of time and effort with IBM to push the idea of how the metaverse is useful for business meetings.<p>Even we didn't tell people they had to strap a thing to their head that made them nauseous.<p>About 15% of the people I know who bought an Oculus say they still use it for gaming. 85% say their Oculus is in a box in the back of the closet. I literally know no-one who owns a Hololens, Magic Leap or Google Glass device, despite having shared office space with their developers over the last decade. Sure... plenty of prototypes, but no devices which have been bought through consumer retail.