Facebook's VR conference room is the most boring possible future

Boring VR.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock, Screenshot/YouTube/Oculus)

If the great science-fiction writers of yesteryear were to see us now, they'd be horrified. Not just because the future turned out to be exactly as apocalyptic as they imagined — mankind faces war, fire, and disease, while the elites eye fleeing the planet — but because it's honestly so boring.

Case in point: Mark Zuckerberg's big, much-hyped reveal about "the future of Facebook" on Thursday turned out to be the invention of … a conference room. While the room admittedly exists in virtual reality — accessed by wearing one of those dorky Oculus Quest 2 headsets, and intended to disrupt the workspace by bringing together physically disparate employees in the form of legless digital avatars — it's also illustrative of the imaginative bankruptcy of today's tech giants. Facebook literally had the time and money and manpower to create anything it wanted, but it chose to replicate a drab, soul-sucking office space?

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.