Meta on meta and Meta

In early 2023, Dan Olson at Folding Ideas made a scathing, smart, almost two-hour-long video essay about Decentraland, the metaverse that was one of the poster children of the web3 era:

Most of what Decentraland does, and what it fails to do, are things that would be considered forgivable or quaint in a Kickstarter MMO that had clearly bitten off more than the creators could ever chew, but given that this is a project founded on cryptocurrency, all of those foibles are laced with the language of finance and landlordism. Strolling down Decentraland’s spacious boulevards at 5 frames per second rewards the user with a seemingly endless parade of virtual billboards brightly proclaiming that the space you see is all available to rent.

In May this year, Nick Heer at Pixel Envy wrote a…