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The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse

Folding Ideas

1.1M subscribers • 4 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 6 people: 6 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Dan Olson, video essayist
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

8.2M views3 years ago6 recommendations

Game developmentSecurityGame designCryptographyThe tech industry

Dan Olson presents a comprehensive critique of Decentraland, analyzing why the platform and the broader concept of the metaverse failed.

Clickbait Title: I spent three months living in the metaverse and now I'm starving The metaverse salespeople have a weird fixation with Animal Crossing, in specific. The number of times we saw New Horizons specifically cited as an example of the metaverse was bizarre, like it was their first time experiencing a multiplayer game that wasn't CoD and it melted their brains. Written by Dan Olson and Nathan Landel Produced and performed by Dan Olson Nathan Twitter: twitter.com/choice_au Dan Twitter: twitter.com/FoldableHuman Crowdfunding: patreon.com/foldablehuman Chapter 1 - Welcome to Decentraland Chapter 2 - The Metaverse Chapter 3 - The Dead Mall of the Future Chapter 4 - Clap your Hands or Tinkerbell Dies Chapter 5 - A Child’s Vision of Governance Chapter 6 - A Magic Circle

Why it's here

6 people recommend this, 2 dispute it

What people say. Recommended as an exceptionally thorough and entertaining postmortem of Decentraland and the flaws of the crypto-driven metaverse.

MilStdJunkieon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Hold the postmortem: The metaverse was never alive in the first place”

Folding Ideas (Dan Olson) did a pretty fantastic takedown of the Metaverse/Decentra failure nexus a little while ago, "The Future is a Dead Mall: Decentraland and the Metaverse". Like all things Dan, long as hell be he makes it very much worth it. link to this video
View on Hacker News

foobiekron Hacker News • Recommends

On “GameStop Ends NFT Marketplace, Is This Beginning of the End?”

Dan Olson covers NFTs very solidly in "Decentraland is a dead mall" ( link to this video ) and "Line Goes Up" ( link ). Both as well worth watching. Since this is also about GameStop specifically, his "This is financial advice" video addresses the GameStop cult, and to a lesser extent the bizarre cult around GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, really well: link Also, cue some apes/NFT investors coming in to ask "why do you care about my money?" and other oft-repeated talking points.
View on Hacker News

AlexandrBon Hacker News • Recommends

On “What went wrong with Horizon Worlds? Ex-Meta dev shares insider insights”

…king with individual blocks is half the point - it's what makes it fun - but it's not an efficient way to build or design or shop or even consume "content" if you value your time. So what's left? The metaverse itself as entertainment ? Maybe. But it's not going to be the next iPhone. At best you're aiming for the ubiquity of World of Warcraft. 1 link to this video…
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Shared404on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Court Ruling Could Affect the Future Direction of DAOs”

Slightly off topic, but I quite like this video over Decentraland/the metaverse: link to this video It's an in depth look/critique.
View on Hacker News

LapsangGuzzleron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Mark Zuckerberg abandons metaverse as shiny new toy appears”

…can walk through are much less efficient at actually allowing you to transact as opposed to a search page on an e-commerce site. I think it's easy to have romantic visions of how a VR world will look in the future. But if it's driven primarily by profit, as all of the most mainstream attempts have so far, it's going to be an empty crypto hell. 0: link to this video…
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well_actulilyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Amazon is filled with garbage e-books, this is how they get made”

Highlights include: - "In Search of a Flat Earth" (2020): link - "Line Goes Up" (2022): link - "The Future is a Dead Mall" (2023): link to this video
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mr337on Hacker News • Disputes

On “Court Ruling Could Affect the Future Direction of DAOs”

I have been out of the loop of DAO and how they are organized and manage changes. My first explaining of that was in Folding Ideas part of Decentraland 1. The DAO portion did not look so good. So still trying to figure out if this is just a phase or there is some legitimacy to a DAO. 1 - link to this video
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mojo74on Hacker News • Disputes

On “Silicon Valley doesn't understand the concept of fun”

The mention of Decentraland in this article reminded me of this link to this video The comment one viewer seems to sum it up: They made a virtual world so boring that you can't even find weird perverts in it.
View on Hacker News

PaulHouleon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: Was tech always so scammy?”

It's worse than it was. Here are some trends. (1) Big Tech in the U.S. is like the way the car industry was in the 1970s in the U.S. Still thinking it is the best of the world and many onlookers agreeing but deeply rotten inside. Facebook and Google, for instance, are still riding high on monopolies in two sided markets. Advertisers have nowhere to go because the audience is there, but without revenue from advertisers, new publishers and social media can't fund efforts that would get them an audience. Amazon, Netflix, and Uber on the other hand look "successful" because they are overcapitalized and able to lose money on all or some of their product lines. You'd have an easy time selling half…
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AlexandrBon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Apple Vision Pro review”

…retty limited and many other uses of these in games was a case of Nintendo shoehorning the technology into the game. I think the best pessimist argument is the one offered by Folding Ideas in his metaverse video1: Text is really, really useful, and a virtual 3D space is not a good environment for either creating or consuming textual content. 1 link to this video…
View on Hacker News