Elon Musk mocks ‘Metaverse’ idea, says nobody wants a screen strapped to their face

When asked about the Metaverse, Musk’s response was, “I don’t know if I necessarily buy into this Metaverse stuff, although people talk to me a lot about it.” He further added that he does not see a future where people want to stay in this virtual reality that companies such as Meta are pushing.

Musk said he does not believe that people would abandon the physical world and replace it with a virtual one, especially with a screen on their faces.

“You know when I grew up it was like ‘don’t sit too close to the TV it’s gonna ruin your eyesight’ and now TV is like literally right here (puts his hand very close to his face), I’m like umm what? Is that good for you?” Musk joked about the absurdity of having a screen close to your face for long periods of time,

“I don’t see someone strapping a friggin’ screen to their face all day”, he said bluntly.

In his view, Neuralink is a better solution compared to VR glasses, “In the long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully in a virtual reality,” he said. Neuralink is also one of Musk’s companies, which is trying to build brain and human machine interfaces.

Musk’s comments around Metaverse come as Facebook has rebranded itself to ‘Meta’ earlier this year to pursue the idea. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called this a much more real, natural way of experiencing the internet. In a recent Fuel for India event, Zuckerberg also said that India is going to play a huge part in building the metaverse.

There have been a lot of concerns in the tech space after this announcement, mainly about the dystopian implications of something like Metaverse and the privacy concerns over data considering Facebook’s tainted history.