The Metaverse: A Guide to the Future of Capitalism

Holiday Deal! Go to and use code TOMNICHOLAS to get 83% off a 2 year plan plus 4 extra months for free! A video about The Metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the future of capitalism. *Chapters* 00:00 Mark Zuckerberg 04:08 1. YouTuber Burnout 10:27 2. Platform Capitalism 15:07 Surfshark Spot 16:41 3. The Bare Extractive Minimum 22:15 4. Monopoly Men 29:16 5. Into the Metaverse *Some Copy about the Video for the YouTube Algorithm* In this month’s video, we’re looking at “the metaverse”. This October, Facebook (since renamed Meta), released a video presentation titled “The Metaverse and How We’ll Build It Together” to serve as the keynote for the social media company’s annual Oculus Connect conference. The presentation saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announce the company’s ambitions to build “the metaverse”, a proposed evolution of the internet in which Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies enable us to interact in more immersive ways. To be able to engage in debates surrounding “the metaverse”, however, it’s first important to have a decent grasp of how big tech has already reshaped the economic structure around which our society is built: capitalism. We therefore go on a trip through the history of what Nick Srnicek calls “platform capitalism” to consider how technology companies such as Facebook (or, Meta), Amazon, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft and even the Roblox Corporation have fundamentally changed the world in which we live—and what this might reveal about the intentions behind this proposed shift to “the metaverse”. This video is, in some regards, a spiritual successor to my video about Tesla CEO Elon Musk (The Fake Futurism of Elon Musk), as well as my more recent video about the science YouTube channel Veritasium and their partnership with Waymo (the successor to the Google Self-Driving Car Project). It picks up similar themes of techno futurism and the partial futures offered to us by our new tech overlords, and asks who those futures will really serve. Support the channel on Patreon at If you’ve enjoyed this video and would like to see more including my What The Theory? series in which I provide some snappy introductions to key theories in the humanities as well as video essays and more then do consider subscribing. Thanks for watching! Twitter: Instagram: Patreon: Website: #metaverse #Facebook #TomNicholas