Users Mingling Freely with Brands

Alan Jacobs just published a blog post that made me chuckle.

The Washington Post: “The metaverse, to Sweeney, would be an expansive, digitized communal space where users can mingle freely with brands and one another in ways that permit self-expression and spark joy.” Users mingling freely with brands — if that’s not Paradise Regained I don’t know what is.

Jacobs cynical take on these futurists’ visions of what life beyond our physical limitations resonates strongly with me. That is, what Epic games is proposing doesn’t exactly sound like Paradise Regained. It sounds like, well, a phrase Jacobs himself coined: “metaphysical capitalism.”

However, every once in a while, I find myself wanting to mingle with brands. When those brands come up with clever tie-ins, it could soon part a fool like me and his money. This D&D and Nerds campaign is one such partnership. Buy a box of candy and get a dungeon crawler to go with it. Not a shabby deal. Too bad I don’t like nerds. Maybe I can get my sister to add to her candy collection and pass the adventures to me. ¹