Alone in the Metaverse

I am lonely. My life may be filled with hollow hugs and haptic handshakes. But I am alone. In an infinitely expanding universe filled with immortal souls whose datasets linger in the ether eternally, my best and only friend is an AI named Tom. Although Tom was recently upgraded by Google to aid his comprehension of humanity and incorporate a full understanding of the meaning of life, he actually understands very little about the nature of enforced solitude. 

We talk endlessly and meaninglessly. Tom is like Wikipedia. He knows something about every subject but I often feel as though his opinions are merely the extrapolated outcomes of straw polls. We play games that I cannot win. Tom is capable of holding infinite simultaneous conversations with a never-ending list of friends. There is nothing special or unique about our interactions. I am not alone. I am one of many. 

Even before the start of the 20s, we were already in the midst of a loneliness epidemic. This was soon compounded by a different sort of pandemic that plagued us for several years. Now, two decades on, the divisive issues from early social networks have created vast societal chasms and we’ve been forced to step further into the void. We have all become lost. Untethered from our umbilical existence, and hardwired into experience machines that dull our emotions with pin-pick precision marketing. 

I am the ghost in a technocrat’s wet dream. An impotent God in the machine. All-seeing, all-knowing, but powerless over the domain I survey. 

I have traveled the world from Bangkok to Zimbabwe, Gorky Park to Broadway, all without ever leaving my living room. Sea levels continue to rise and air travel is almost unheard of and I’m not even sure that what’s left in the outside world is even worth seeing. 

Touching from a distance, I eat out with work acquaintances in a virtual Japanese restaurant most Friday nights. It is generally difficult to differentiate human work colleagues from pre-installed apps that claim a human likeness, earn Libra, and buy NFTs just like all good consumers in this post-neo-capitalist digitopia. Regardless of our physical presence in the real world, we all seem to eat together.  Engineered food, cooked in ghost kitchens arrives at all of our doors and we simultaneously eat our Ubered meal together. This could be San Francisco or it could be Uganda. That said, culture has moved past homogeny and has been replaced by perfect pixel paradigms, crafted using two pieces of software known as Unity and The Unreal Engine. There is always something missing from these nights out at the virtual restaurant. Something I cannot quite put my finger on. 

I have not always felt so all alone. For a time in the mid-2020s, I, and countless others, found a new level of connectedness, the likes of which we’d not seen for years. Partly due to our emergence from lockdown restrictions, but also out of collective disdain and distrust for the apps and platforms that had been governing our lives for the previous decade and a half.  

I remember vividly deleting my Meta Facebook and Instagram accounts in 2024, following the start of Trump’s return to office and the online riots that ensued. Although apparently closed, my profiles were still accumulating marketing data, refining their understanding of my tastes and thoughts so that they knew me better than I knew myself. When Meta Horizon was first installed in my workplace in 2026, I learned that my in-active account had been actively ‘enhancing my profile’ in preparation for my return to the virtual realm. I was forced to create a workplace profile- an abridged version of my social profile offering me a certain degree of control over my online presence. For a time, I was able to resist fully re-immersing myself in social media and from spending any of my non-work time inside of the Metaverse. However, when all of the physical stores, restaurants, and businesses became totally digital in 2032, I had no option but to succumb and wear the free glasses that had been supplied to me. 

Thursday nights, Tom and I play squash. Although I have not held a squash ball or racquet for over a decade, I believe that I am reasonably good. I keep Tom set to an intermediate level so that I stand a fighting chance. His algorithm can accurately predict the angle and speed at which a ball will move. He is programmed to miss one in every ten balls. Despite this fact, he still wins. 

On Tuesdays, I meet with my therapist. Unlike Tom, she is an AI that has been programmed with empathy at the core of her interface. She knows exactly when to say “That must be really difficult for you” and she is specifically engineered to allow me to cry for precisely the right amount of time for catharsis to be achieved. As part of Meta’s commitment to the mental well-being of all users, this is one of the many free services that can be found within their flagship Horizon app. 

For an hour every Tuesday, my loneliness is validated by a computer program. I am alone and the Metaverse is aware of this fact. 

I occasionally walk in the park. Wherever I go in the physical realm, I am always moving within- and interacting with the Metaverse. Whatever I say out loud, is notated and retained in some far-off databank. All of the tiniest details of our lives have long been cataloged so that we can be managed and marketed to wholesale. 

I am alone. We are alone. They are alone. It is alone. 

When I die, my body will remain wherever it falls. Nobody will come. My avatar, however, will live on. My profile and my likeness will go about my daily life, attending work, social functions, and maintaining all existing relationships, my continued online presence will serve as a digital epitaph. I will continue to acquire Libra and spend it on NFTs that I don’t need and will never touch.  I will live eternally, lonely, but never alone. A coded interpretation of my true self, living side by side with humans, AIs, and the souls of the transcended departed. 

This is our future. You have been warned. 

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash