Science and Technology

‘Searching for Friends in the Deserted Metaverse,’

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— Christopher Cox, features editor, New York

There’s that moment in the movie Contact when Ellie, having glimpsed the grand, glowing arms of a distant galaxy, says, “They should have sent a poet” to describe what she’s seeing. The metaverse, with its lo-fi graphics and legless torsos, might not quite measure up to Ellie’s celestial wonders, but we sent Paul Murray, one of the funniest novelists of his generation, to explore it for us anyway. Away from his Dublin home as a visiting professor at an East Coast college, Paul’s primary mission was to make some virtual friends to replace the real ones he’d left behind. “On my initial visits, the metaverse seems sort of desolate, like an abandoned mall, and ordinarily I wouldn’t be lining up to join the misfits still populating it,” he writes. But when he finally meets a crew he enjoys hanging out with, he finds himself exploring new corners of the metaverse that are far stranger, funnier, and wilder than he expected — even if he decides not to abandon the real world just yet.
Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse? Searching for friends in Mark Zuckerberg’s deserted fantasyland.
Photo: Paul Murray
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