Facebook staff now to be known as “Metamates” | Hacker News Reader

Facebook staff now to be known as “Metamates”

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Honest question: what is Facebook trying to accomplish? What exactly is the "Metaverse?" Their Superbowl ad was just straight-up weird & confusing. I'm honestly not sure what their product team's vision is.

Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

I have an Oculus and other than Beatsaber and Alyx and a few other titles/apps, it's just not that exciting. The Nintendo Switch is at least an order of magnitude more fun.

I think it really boils down to, they need a near future myth for investors to speculate their stock price up. That myth is, ubiquitous, always-on AR is just around the corner, and they're going to be the platform it runs on.

Reminiscent of the Uber play - once it was widely noticed they couldn't drive costs down enough to achieve profitability, there needed to be another narrative to maintain optimism in the company.

And so the narrative changed, from:

"through the magic of {pixie dust technology} we can make providing chauffeur services so cheap it would be hugely profitable"

"we will replace all the human drivers with robots, any day now"

Of course, that future was much, much further away than purported, but it certainly was useful for pumping up optimism in a company where the present-day situation isn't necessarily favorable.

FB's money-printing products seem to be facing major headwinds. They're scandal-wracked, user growth is plateauing heavily especially in the most profitable markets, and a fast-moving competitor is rapidly eating into their most coveted growth areas and they seem unable to convincingly fight the trend. A narrative shift is certainly needed for them.

I would add this is as much about recruiting as the stock price. The scandals are crushing morale. Top engineers can go work at Apple and build the actual devices that enable FB, TikTok, etc. Or they can go work to transition the planet to sustainable energy at Tesla. Or go work on making life interplanetary at SpaceX. Or they can go build spyware, aimed at convincing people to buy shoes, at Facebook.

They needed a more exciting vision to continue to attract top talent, which is generally a prerequisite for a high stock price anyway.

Problem is, if Uber recent news are anything to go by, in the current environment investors aren't interested in promises, they want to see results and they want to see them now.

Uber literally just forecasted positive cash flow by the end of this year, and the stock tanked. FB banking on a far future R&D move is not likely to fly well with investors. Most certainly not in the near future.

Oh I fully agree, investors won't be nearly as credulous with FB as they were with past companies with wildly optimistic visions (and not nearly such rosy results in reality) like WeWork or Uber.

I think it's both a function of investors having been burned in the recent past with unicorns failing to deliver on their lofty promises, but also the reality that FB has suffered significant (read: catastrophic) reputation damage from the endless stream of scandals. FB employees seem to have an inexhaustible belief that they can weather any storm without permanent harm, but I suspect that isn't actually true.

More than that, the narrative shift isn't convincing. At least with Uber they had fancy robot cars to show off, even if they didn't work. What does FB have to convince us of the metaverse future? A lot of expensive CGI-rendered "concept reels" and very little actual product that is actually here (or imminent). The recent Superbowl ad did not contain a single frame of actual product footage - nor did the "fake" product in any way resemble anything FB has announced!

And the little that does exist (Horizon Worlds) is... really... really... painfully bad. The fact that FB has even let the public at these experimental products (rather than iterate internally) is baffling.

As someone who's been in the consumer tech space for a really long time the strategy here is just mind-boggling. The company continues to pitch no actual product - it has remained frustratingly vague about what the metaverse even is - but also insist at the same time that the entire company is reorienting around it. What little is released is shockingly poor - to the point where one wonders if these half-baked products will poison the well against a better thought-out and genuinely useful product further down the line. It reeks not of visionary thought and more dragging whatever you can out of the experimental arm of the company to try to cement the narrative shift.

which competitor are you thinking of?

Bytedance (TikTok) is the one most often discussed.

This seems like the most plausible explanation to me. But Zuckerberg does also seem weird and unsocialized enough to actually believe there's potential in the metaverse.

A future myth? They've been printing money for over a decade now. Their first positive net income was 2009. Apart from last quarter, they're still gaining users every year, sometime double digit percentages. They were able to squeeze multiple times the revenue out of their user base than other social networks.

If they execute on VR half as well as they did their core product than the hype is real

> A future myth?

Yes, a story about the future that he wants to generate a collective social belief in.

Yes, exactly. This is just like Uber and self-driving cars…only instead of “this will lower our costs and finally make us profitable!” it’s “this is another platform where we can have infinite growth!” It’s a tacit acknowledgement that the days of wild growth for their existing platform are over.

Playing devil's advocate, I think they're betting on the long game.

Eventually, when XR headsets become the size and have the practicality of sunglasses, they will become as ubiquitous as smartphones are today. It would be naive to think that the current smartphone design is the end-all-be-all of personal computing devices. We're already seeing small drops in smartphone sales worldwide, some of which are undoubtedly related to the global crisis, but let's be real: the design has hardly improved from the glass slab of the iPhone. We've lost bezels and the tech has seen iterative upgrades and small innovations, but in general it's a stagnated market with no clear path forward.

Current generations of XR headsets are still far away from mass adoption, but once the tech is drastically easier to adopt, possibly within the next decade, companies will flock to fulfill the demand, and Meta will already have an established platform.

That's their bet anyway, and while I dislike everything they stand for, I can't say they're wrong in this case. Facebook might be dying, but they're seeing the writing on the wall and trying to pivot to an—as of yet—nonexistent market.

You might be a little overoptimistic! Remember you've been promised flying cars, but cars today look almost identical to those from 130 years ago.

By the same logic they should bet the house on nuclear fusion. It’s a sure winner and I’m sure they can connect billing to your Facebook Pay account or something.

There is a pretty good and short walkthrough of the XR term on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-specific-difference-betwee...

I have a really hard time seeing everyone would want to walk around with even sunglasses to augment their reality, though it could make sense for specific situations such as travelling to foreign countries.

But its really hard to be optimistic about some Metaverse or Second Life clone by Facebook (sorry Meta), where the difference is the use of XR.

If you are thinking about the future, why not consider using controlled robots as the movie Surrogates centers around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates

For gaming, XR or even VR will benefit a lot from smaller devices, but as with flying cars its still a long way off a photo realistic experience.

So far every venture that's tried this has failed due to the lack of smarts. If their smart speakers are even remotely as smart as their XR, this is dead in the water.

I agree. That's the inevitable convergence device, and it will rule the world, superseding the smartphone. I don't really see any other alternative.

But it might be five years away or thirty. I'm skeptical of Facebook's efforts in particular.

> Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

The straightforward answer is that FB leadership sincerely believes that yes, that will happen.

Conspiracy theories about alternative motivations may be fun, but this is precisely why they purchased Oculus in the first place and they’ve been pretty clear and consistent about this.

Seems more like a speculative investment to me. If it becomes big, they want to own it and be involved. If it isn't, ok. Some investments lose money.

The straightforward answer is that FB leadership sincerely believes that yes, that will happen.

Or pretends to, at any rate.

As per the incentive structures they may be presumed to enjoy at that payscale.

They'd like to own the dystopia's present in Ready Player One and Snowcrash. It's a cynical bet, at best.

Related: when was the last time Facebook had a non-acquired "good idea"?

Marketplace? In the ads space, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an innovation that didn't start at FB.

The radioactive waste dump that was the exclusion zone is where SF is putting all its middle class housing.

VR and AR solves every problem advertisers have with browsers. Browsers are: sandboxed away from the OS, are easy for users to manipulate with addons, lacking in new data streams to monetize.

Meanwhile in VR land: Root/super user/driver level access to the system (worst of drm and anticheat software), tons of new data streams (full camera, and microphone access to the room. Some day to have eye tracking, mouth tracking , and anything you fit on health tracking watches), and of course the user can only use the device through the advertisers own software (no skipping of engagement features, no more noscript, and a nice little walled garden App Store).

>Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

I do, although it's very possible current attempts are too early for tech reasons and will remain relatively niche for years. Fundamentally the appeal of vr isn't games, it's to have communication and control ability on the level of a real life activity (or even better) but online. I'm not sure if that can be achieved without brain implants (not for vision - that's likely to remain external for a long time - but for everything else, especially motor control, sense of touch).

If brain implants are needed Facebook's attempts are at least a decade too early.

Regardless of Facebook's/Meta's current attempts, in the future majority of work and social activity will happen in vr, but the timeline is unclear. Well - at least in the timeline in which technical civilization doesn't collapse.

Pretending like they have something for the future, which they don't.

> Pretending like they have something for the future, which they don't.

I've been following some of their research with their VR/AR hardware, and it appears to me they definitely have something for the future. They're investing massive amounts of money, and they seem to be miles ahead of everyone else (well, it doesn't seem like there is anyone else). To me, they clearly do have something for the future, with what seems like a very natural progression of technology and interacting with computers, with something like the Metaverse being an eventual end goal, maxing out that technology.

Maybe Metaverse isn't what people want, but there's so much between the computers we use now and the Metaverse that they can dip their toes in, along the way.

I'll say it with naive confidence: AR/VR is the future of display technology/use.

To be fair, most Big Tech companies stopped pretending a while ago.

Metaverse means they can bring real world limitations to a virtual world that has no need for them, so they can profit of these limitations.

It doesn't need to be anything. It's the FB equivalent of ActiveX or self-driving cars or "the network is the computer". A thing that spinmeisters can use to generate spin.

FB already has an equivalent to those things: Libra, the DoA cryptocurrency

Playing with VRchat, or some multiplayer video game on a VR headset (I'd recommend you try Population One), social interaction with other humans feels really natural, I've met countless strangers around the world, and started talking about random stuff as we've tried to hunt down enemy players. VR just breaks down some barrier that makes social interaction feel lot more natural than a text-based interface ever could.

When people get paid to do it. Younger me would rather be trading my data for training their ai, doing whatever quests they set up, hanging out in that environment if it can pay close to a minimum wage job. (Note this is easier to do in poor parts of the world, and they are just as human, with similar ai teaching potentials to those in the wealthiest nations.)

Then when all my friends are there, "working" I'll have plenty social incentive to get me to strap on the Oculus and be part of the group even if I wasn't getting paid/or didn't live the game. I remember wasting soooo many hours of my young life watching my friends play boring games of fifa, just because I wanted to part of the group.

I really don't love meta, they are insidious. but I'd rather my kid work the metaverse for extra cash than work as a "essential" worker.

I was under the impression (from other HN threads) that the simplest explanation for their erratic seeming rebranding / behavior was related to some kind of red herring optics narrative manipulation for stockholders or something. Like I know what that even means.

He is trying to accomplish Ready Player One, it really is that simple.

I just find it funny how this whole metaverse thing has been around since worlds.com and Second Life. Now FB took that and slapped VR on top of it.

I think that sex workers will rejoice about this, nobody else will really care, and "metamate" will mean something completely different in future.

There's only so much to do when all your products are feature-complete but you're too scared to acknowledge this fact.

No, but, I see great trends in threat reduction in using stuff like Oculus in military and space applications -- let's build some crazy robots, get some low-latency links between the front line and an operating base, and let the COD trained kids go ape-shit on whatever enemy might be out there. They use Oculus' (or similar VR technology) to stay on base where they can be well protected, vs the (hardened) robots that are on the front line.

I've completely written off FB and IG -- deleted my FB account about 7 years ago, I still have a 'legacy' IG account that I might log into once a year with a name that nobody would be interested in...and that's my extent of the Meta I have in my life. I have zero desire to get into VR (until they come out with something that will work for the guys like me that have poor vision), but, who knows what the world might bring in the next 40 years.

Facebook’s CTO said in reference to Metamates (after saying “I love it!”):

> Also the saying is a reference to a Naval phrase which Instagram has used for a while "Ship, Shipmates, Self"

The fact that he thinks this in anyway justifies the ridiculousness of this is telling. It’s a primary reason why people are astonished by it, aside from how silly it sounds. First, it’s somewhat insulting to the Navy. Second, the context is not even remotely close. And lastly, the direct implication is that the company is above everyone else.

This person probably makes upwards of a million a year (probably much more?). These people are truly disconnected from society and reality.

When I was in the Navy, "shipmate" was a negative term because you only heard it when someone, most likely a khaki (senior enlisted or officer), didn't know your name and wanted to chew you out. "Hey shipmate! Your haircut is unsat!"

I can't think of any time, aside from maybe bootcamp, that I was ever called "shipmate" by anyone other than a green khaki, as you say.

I imagine it's kind of like when someone called me "kid" in elementary school

Yep shipmate is only used against people too new to know you’re actually insulting them (in boot camp and earlier schools it’s more of a cute jest), and when someone is so fucked up that they’re not worth reading the name on their uniform.

> This person probably makes upwards of a million a year (probably much more?).

From their SEC filing, Mike Schroepfer made ~$21 Million in 2019 and $16 Million in 2020 [1].

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680121...

For that amount of money I'd say i love it too.

Seems pretty selfish to keep all that money when he could give it back to Meta.

> insulting to the Navy.

You do realise these "naval terms" aren't exclusive to the military? I'm deliberately throwing quotes around that phrase for good reason; Zuckerberg, and/or his marketing clowns clearly haven't read any of Patrick O'Brian's books, or any nautical references.

As someone else has pointed out, this is all sounding a bit L.Ron H.

> … "Ship, Shipmates, Self"

I've heard that saying was what to do in an emergency. e.g. Save the ship! If you can't, save your mates. Once that's done, save yourself.

Well then this actually applies quite well in this scenario.

Maybe I'm spending too much time in startup circles when I read this yesterday, I was furiously searching to see when Naval Ravikant said this...

Lol glad I was not alone.

> This person probably makes upwards of a million a year (probably much more?)

$20m+ guaranteed.

Scientology has entered the chat ...

If Xenu isn't dropping by to destroy the planet in the universe, there's always the metaverse for dress rehearsals.

Wanna know the best part? The CTO also said that they got the term from....wait for it...Douglas Hofstadter.

Let that sink in for a moment.

I think ol' Dougie was trolling them and never thought they might actually run with it.

Edit: source for the incredulous https://mobile.twitter.com/boztank/status/149366154542687027...

Douglas Hofstadter also contributed to Metafont, which is the 80s version of the MeTaVeRsE.

Yea, I saw that too. And I agree, in that I wager too that Hofstadter is either having some fun or was unaware of the context or intended use or all of the above.

They also called us "seamen", fertile ground for much humor.

I saw a Meta employee post a “my company rocks” post on LinkedIn this week.

Almost all of the replies were from Meta employees, and almost all of them were hyper enthusiastic. It was almost like cult members reaffirming each other that they’re still in a high functioning group.

Now of course LinkedIn is gonna LinkedIn, but this post was cranked up to an 11.

This is genuinely how California/SV tech culture feels to people looking in, me included.

A lot of the time this stuff is just coordinated by HR for marketing/recruiting. It’s not just a SV thing (plenty of companies have these awkward forced “Yay I love it here!” posts) and not even just a tech or corporate thing (even fast food restaurants will do stuff like this), but I guess it is an American thing.

We have internal work software that can autopost to linkedin for you in a compliant manner.

It has prebaked responses to articles to be shared. HR gave a presentation on the shilling software and I couldn’t stop laughing.

I was really apprehensive about this kind of "cultiness" when I moved out to SF in 2014 for my first engineering job. Luckily it really dropped off after company onboarding and I hardly ever heard this kind of talk from my normal colleagues.

I see it all the time when someone from such companies is doing a talk.

- "it is great to be here"

- "I am inspired to let you know about.."

- "It is delightfull experience..."

- "It is such an amazing...."

- "What a great opportunity...."

" "It is my priviledge...."

There was a great bit from Conan O'Brien's "celebrity secrets" series in which David Bowie delivered the following dialogue:

> I was on tour in the United States back in '89, and we did a show in Cincinnati.

> During that show, I shouted out, "It's great to be in Cincinnati!"

> That was a lie.

That is, perhaps unfortunately, not a thing limited to tech companies.

My personal theory is that a lot of executives seem sold on this idea that they'll somehow hire a staff of people enthused to work there, for whom it's their dream job. People who act like that's true get ahead in those companies.

Yep, but when they're doing a talk they're playing a role. It's like when you're interviewing, you probably turn on the BS a bit. Most people don't do talks of any kind for their company so that group is already not representative of what it's like to work in company X on a day-to-day basis. That said, some things are true. E.g. Googlers are pretty self-congratulatory although there are plenty of internal cynics as well.

On the other hand, being honest on LinkedIn may not be wise. I have never seen anyone not being enthusiastic on LinkedIn.

Hold my beer. I'm starting an honest company.

The key is that I'm basically retired. Have no desire to hire anyone. Have no desire to seek funding.

My three company values are: (1) sleep, (2) slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, (3) freedom at all costs.

I'm probably going to get banned on linked in once I start promoting things, but the goal is to just shit post on all the inspiration.

Have you ever seen interesting, clever, sensible, empathetic and lovely people being silent on linkedin? Ignoring hype posts from their colleagues on linkedin?

The damper on LinkedIn as a social network in one sentence.

People don't be their real selves on LinkedIn. And once you know the artificiality of every post on it, you being to hate it.

This one creeped me out more. Taken from my LinkedIn feed from someone starting at Meta:

https://imgur.com/a/LOD7wMC

Socks? Okay, cute. Socks for the rest of your family, and they already know enough about the ages of your children to send those sizes as well? Holy shit.

The new employee probably filled out a form that asked what kind of start date swag/sizing they wanted

Just the kind of people who would embrace absurd cultspeak like "Metamate". They deserve each other.

Like the people who, legend has it, clap for minutes during Stalin's (or Saddam's) speeches, because they don't want to be the first to be seen to stop clapping...

It sounds like something straight out of HBO's Silicon Valley. It's a big problem with their 'Metaverse' idea in general. I saw some footage of the Horizon Worlds VR platform and it looks incredibly corporate and sterile.

If you look at how creative people are in VRchat or Minecraft or other user-centric ecosystems I wonder how Facebook is supposed to be attractive to users.

Bloomberg is dunking on this pretty hard

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-02-16/mark-z...

> Zuckerberg has encouraged his employees to call themselves “Metamates” instead of “colleagues” or “co-workers” or “Steve.” It’s nautical! We’re going on a swashbuckling adventure! Ahoy, Metamaties!

> But nautical adventures don’t always end well. Indigenous Hawaiians killed Captain James Cook. Even successful explorers spread disease, enslavement and general human misery through the world.

The more I have seen of Zucks interactions over the years, the more I am convinced he is seriously mentally unwell. He has a fantastic brain, but fantastic things can go fantastically wrong. Particulary when surrounded by sycophants.

As a neurodiverse person, that neurodiverse person creeps the hell out of me. I don't have much respect for his mental acuity either: his initial projects were the kind of thing "unpopular 13 year old me" would have come up with to get popular.

He got lucky and failed his way to success.

This reads like cope.

You can't seriously believe this.

> You can't seriously believe this.

That, in general, assholes rise to the top? There have been studies upon studies upon studies upon even more studies of how socio-/psychopaths have what it takes. That's not to say that Zuck is a sociopath or psychopath, but I'm pretty sure there's something going on, for which we don't have a word/diagnosis, that is a sibling of the former two.

Scraping the college yearbook website to populate a website for voting on the attractiveness of female students (which is what Facebook started as) isn't all that impressive. A marginally gifted 12 year old could not only code that up in a week, but would also have the requisite lack of emotional maturity required to plaster women on a website for voting.

He identified the very worst, and most vulnerable, of what we are: how we count likes, dislikes, and friends (when "friends" become nothing more than a token economy). Instead of desperately trying to connect with humanity (like the rest of us neurodiverse individuals), he chose to disconnect humanity as a whole.

> You can't seriously believe this.

And the inability to seriously consider what your fellow human is warning you about is just the tip of that iceberg.

Cope? What's "cope"?

I think it’s how Gen Z describes the fox who didn’t want the grapes.

  I am convinced he is seriously mentally unwell

Facebook cancer has meta-stasized to his brain?

> He has a fantastic brain

His big idea was a hot or not clone.

It was pretty smart to buy out the then-emerging competition from Instagram. The price seemed absurd at the time, but in retrospect, it was cheap and prescient.

That move doesn't work anymore, though. The cat's out of the bag with TikTok, Snapchat, etc.

Mark has an ability to execute that very few people have (whether or not you think he is executing a good direction).

I wonder if he wears his ship captains hat to bed.

Usually the lower an employee is on the company totem pole, the more they are treated like infants. More "company values" to replace any values you might hold, more dumb names. Maybe they will make fun new uniforms for the metamates soon. That way the adults can quickly pick out when children are in the room and adjust accordingly.

It's going to be funny seeing employees laugh it off and use the name ironically, and watch in horror as the irony is gradually lost in translation to newcomers.

My company has also been pushing "company values" very hard, and I've always hated it. It feels cult like and condescending. Especially when they capitalize them. We have to show that we all believe in the value of Ownership here!

Yes, be an Owner in every way except the one in the ways that matter - decision making and a piece of the profits. I just ignore dumb propaganda like this. You have no obligation to accept the responsibilities of ownership if they don’t come with a proportional piece of the rights & rewards. Although if you are given options worth a fair amount of % ownership, this may be a reasonable request.

>an Owner in every way except the one in the ways that matter - decision making and a piece of the profits.

Ouch - that stings me with my past history of nearly 2 decades as a megacorp product manager. Of course I took ownership because that's how I am wired - not because of some corporate culture initiative.

It's interesting that Bezos basically left Amazon to have his mid-life crisis. He handed over the reigns for all the important stuff and went off to work on other stuff whilst he partied on yachts.

Facebook is so tied to Zuckerberg as a person that Zuckerberg's mid-life crisis is facebook's mid-life crisis. Facebook as a product has basically reached maturity, and it makes perfect sense that the company uses the cash they're throwing off to pursue other bets. But strategically refocusing the entire company on AR/VR is just bizarre. It damages the existing business which is still hugely valuable, it ties the new business to an existing reputation which is abysmal, and it makes the chances of success tiny - because you don't need to make something new that works, you need to make something new that justifies a trillion dollar market cap.

They can call each other “Hey, metamate!” to deliver backhanded insults.

https://www.reddit.com/r/navy/comments/gcrvry/are_sailors_st...

“I’m not your metamate, paypal!”

"I'm not your PayPal, BonziBuddy!"

“I’m not your BonziBuddy, Friendster!”

This isn't Reddit, you guys.

Please keep the discussion substantive. Thank you.

“I’m not your Friendster, Geocitizen!”

It is almost as if they want to hasten their inevitable irrelevance in the eyes of anyone under 40.

Or also those over 40

also those that are 40

Any wagers on how many additional BB in market cap gets lost tomorrow over this?

Yep. I don't think people over 40 are more enthusiastic about Zuck's metaverse than the under-40s, probably less if anything.

Didn't at one point Marissa Meyer read to the whole company a children's book, out loud? That was the best moment to quit imaginable, right in that meeting, just by interrupting "I quit!".

Might as well hear a pilot tell you the itinerary for the flight you're on was changed to the side of the tallest mountain in the range the plane had fuel for--and there was no need for the parachutes tucked behind the bathroom in the very back. You could call it "the Kool-Aid moment."

It's a beautiful gift.

"Metamates" sums up Facebook (the product) pretty well. No real mates, just meta-mates.

Meatmates or metamates, that is the question.

I think metamates are organised in meatteams.

We're the meatmates, and you Zuck.

Meatmates does not sound SFW

Good name for a dating app, though

They called us "sandwich technicians" when I worked at subway as a teen

"Sandwich artists" is what they call them in the UK.

I mean coffee pourers are called baristas. Programmers are called developers.

A well made latte is a work of craftsmanship, it is precious and should be regarded as such along with those who produce them for us.

I always hated this. Software architect is also really out there IMHO.

> last value, and I am not making this up: "Meta, metamates, me"

I can't get the "Is this good for the company?" scene out of my head[↓]. Maybe Zuckerberg is trying to set up the perfect environment for Office Space 2?

https://youtu.be/dA5rB63Mzc8

There's an evangelical Christian saying: "Jesus first, Others second, Yourself third" (it spells joy). Hard not to see this as a blatant ripoff.

It is in fact ripping off the sailor saying "ship, shipmates, self": https://mobile.twitter.com/boztank/status/149366154542687027...

The sign of a great company slogan is that it requires constant explanation in the face of mass confusion. Great job Metamates

Thanks for linking, I struggle to navigate these long Twitter threads without an account so I didn't see that.

It’s actually a riff on a Navy saying, according to folks at Meta.

And what is the difference between a rip-off and an homage? I think your underlying feelings leaked through what would have been an otherwise reasonable comment.

One of FAANG out of ideas?

* Change the name of it

* Change (brand) color(s)

* Modify icon (slightly) and have it as the major news of a release

* Do something seemingly stupid to get press coverage

It'd be way more cool if Meta was doing an A/B test of different corporate cultures on employees.

Serious q, will we start using MAANG from now on?

Edit: MANGA? MAGNA?

If you switch the F to an M you should also switch the G to an A

MAAAN

I’ve seens it as MAAMA. Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon. Netflix is not a tech darling anymore.

Could be. The others are each building their favourite vision of dystopia for profit. Netflix are selling entertainment shows. Hard to see them as the same class of dangerous but equally doesn't seem to have the same scope for revenue.

Change Meta back to Facebook. Throw Intel in there and we can have MAAFIA.

These days, it's more like a list of the companies that ruined tech and the internet. Microsoft certainly belongs on that list. Netflix made it better for a while at least.

Or GAMMA for Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon

The whole point of the Metaverse in Snowcrash was that most people's lives were so incredibly bad and depressing, that people wanted to escape into the Metaverse where things may be better for you.

Facebook is betting on people's lives getting worse, partly because their original product has done such a great job of making that a reality for the last decade.

I heard this as part of "You should think of Meta, Metamates, self", as in "Ship, Shipmates, Self".

My first reaction was "So, where does you family fit into all this?"

This sounds like someone who read the history of WeWork, but skipped the part at the end.

Is there no one there at all who would tell him this was a terrible idea? That it's an absolute parody of working in a corporate hell? If I had any kind of stake in FB, that would be the most worrisome part of this.

There was probably quite a project and initiative to come up with this. Likely some (non-tech) team's big goal for the year..

Sure, I don't think he actually came up with it himself. I'm saying it didn't happen without Zuck's sign off. If no one told him it was awful, that's worrisome. If they told him and he ignored it, that's even worse.

Somebody is rewarded for this cross-org high-visibility work.

I suspect not.

A guy who gives out business cards at the start saying "I'm CEO Bitch" and then takes over the world is probably surrounded by complete "yes people" at this point.

Everything about the Metaverse pivot smells to me like a team that thinks their best interest is to just agree with the Emperor.

How embarrassing. I couldn’t even begin someone asking me to refer to them as a metamate. I don’t think I am capable of taking that scenario seriously.

Employee names are always cringy at first. You have to get over the irony hump and then Googler, Xoogler, Softies, Twits, Yahoos, and Amazonian become normal after a bit.

You know CEX the train company — they’re CEX workers.

Man, I'd work there just for the business card. Some things you really can't buy.

> Googler, Xoogler, Softies, Twits, Yahoos, and Amazonian become normal after a bit

I’ve worked in the tech industry for 8.5 years now — including two as an “Amazonian” — and those are just as cringey to me as they ever have been.

sigh... I thought things like "customer engagement expert", "associate", or "experience consultant", etc. were bad enough.

Lol. I worked at CEX.

this is how authoritarian regimes and cults work; they make you do and say ridiculous things as a shibboleth. this serves multiple purposes:

- alienates you from outsiders

- costly signal of in-group membership

- breaks down your sense of self-worth

- creates a false group consensus

evergreen dalrymple quote:

>the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

this isn't just limited to communism, it's a pathological feature of many groups. your embarrassment is a feature not a bug.

Runner up was Metabros

That legitimately surprises me. When I worked there a few years ago, the big thing was removing gendered language (such as “ninja” and “pirate” and “Jedi”).

Aren't ninja, pirate and jedi all gender neutral?

One would imagine so, wouldn't they!

There is a fair amount of sarcasm across these comments, due to the ridiculous nature of this topic.

I’d protest by pronouncing it “meh-TAH-mah-tees”, like a Greek patronymic.

It'd fit with the ship theme.

I read somewhere that in college, Mark Zuckerberg was a big admirer of Homer, whom he read in the Ancient Greek.

I find it amazing how many people that don’t work for the company have an opinion about something that has nothing to do with them.

I have empathy for people in all kinds of horrible situations. I have empathy for every metamatie who gave up their soul for money, who might only now be starting to see the problem.

Ironically, social media wouldn't be a tenth as successful if people behaved the way you wish them to do.

Meta (and all social networks) rely on us giving opinions on any and everything we see.

Facebook has inserted itself into most people's lives, making it have plenty "to do with them".

Meta calling its employees Metamates has something to do with you? How?

I wonder how much compensation Carmack required to join this company.

I think he never truly joined. More like do whatever he wants for a lot of money.

Sounds like a portmanteau of meta and inmates.

to me it sounded like meta + primates:

"At Facebook, we have finally created the perfect high-tech workforce: genetically engineered apes that we call 'Metamates'. Tireless. Genius intellect. Loyal to the death. And...completely non-unionized!"

I can see it now, Meta branching out into the privatized correctional facilities sector.

Metabates is catchier.

Like "inmates", why not

It will likely track a similar use arc. A versatile word of neutral connotation was attached to a new, derogatory meaning, which displaced all the others: today its only meaning is "prisoner".

"Inmate" used to encompass things like "hotel guest" and "hospital patient".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inmate#Usage_notes

Huh, inn mate? Never noticed that. Neat.

Ready Player One movie had a private prison owned by the facebook equivalent. Seems legit.

where’s my loogie gun?

It's supposed to be a twist on "teammate"

All in good time!

Were they known as "Facemates" before?

I think it was "ushers of a totalitarian corporate surveillance state."

I kind of think Bookmates would have been cute.

Is Meta doing anything cool with hardware? I can't see their vision succeeding unless there are substantial hardware innovations. Specifically, they need to solve the walking problem, they need to get some sort of haptic feedback down, and they need to make the headset as small and simple as a pair of sunglasses. Without these, the Meta-verse will never reach the mainstream.

"Anything cool"? They've made a standalone, wireless, battery powered VR headset with built-in inside-out tracking, and are selling it for about the price of a Nintendo Wii. It's an astonishing technical feat. Facebook have done more to bring VR to the masses than anyone else so far.

It is definitely neat, don't get me wrong, but there's really not that much of a difference between these new headsets and the Gen 1 HTC Vive. There's a lot more distance to cover before Meta reaches the "ready player one" vision.

Hardware -and- software. It's a massive, massive challenge. One with questionable demand.

Meta doesn't really have a good track record here, either. But ten years is a long time...

The whole thing looks like a dead end to me.

Mind you I'm often wrong about this stuff, I thought the same about the Apple watch.

I'm with you, and I was right about the apple watch. This(vr in general) feels like a one-off of the next big thing, like the pda was to the smartphone.

With markets the way they are these days, I wonder how much $FB would skyrocket if Zuck announced they were acquiring Sweet Baby Ray’s.

Not as much as if he'd announce his retirement!

This reminds me of when Steve Ballmer retired from Microsoft and their stock price soared!

Instead we get Sweet Meta Rays.

(Not to be confused with Manta Rays)

We can all laugh at how stupid these moves sounds, but Facebook is an incredibly profitable company not in the habit of burning through cash on doomed projects. It really sounds like they’re buying hard into the meta-verse and the most terrifying thought to me is. What if this pays off?

Facebook has had a good streak of successful ideas, but basically operates at the whims of Zuckerberg, and nobody has exclusively good ideas.

There will probably be something like meta-verse that eventually gets popular, but I suspect that success is not going to be something achieved by throwing money at the problem.

You're right.. Go long on $FB

Probably more PC than Metastases?

> Zuck says employees are not supposed to “nice ourselves to death”

Was that ever a thing at Facebook?

pronounce as four syllables for maximal amusement.

I immediately went to rhymes with kubernetes

Oh no! What have you done! I can not unsee this now.

met-ah-mate-ees?

Or met-ah-mar-tay, which would be Maori for meta-death[0].

Which reminds me of the "Hello, death" Coke machines[1].

[0]https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?&keywords=mate

[1]https://twitter.com/waikatoreo/status/1051264259089264640

met-ah-mah-tees; i went more greek and less pirates

came here for this, seemed the most natural pronunciation

The inevitability of nautical references terminating at "Titanic".

https://nitter.kavin.rocks/alexeheath/status/149365851757152...

“metamate” is a straight up embarrassing thing to be called. If I worked there I don’t think I could get that out of my mouth without gagging or heavy sarcasm.

It's official: Zuckerberg has lost his effing mind.

Nah he's just living in some alternative reality. A virtual one perhaps

I'm starting to suspect drug abuse.

By his blood boy.

Supreme Leader is trying to make sure that only true believers remain at FB/Meta.

Does anyone else think Mark might have had a stroke? I'm actually concerned.

Anagram for team meats.

edit: Welcome to the Meatverse

Human resources, or Meat Teams?

They're made of meat!

  "They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

  "That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

Such a good story. For anyone interested:

https://www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/think...

and they're smoking these meats

Charcuterie coterie

Or "tame teams".

I prefer Zuckers...

Motherzucker for a little extra spice?

I'd prefer "Metameat"

Smoked meats

As funny as that video is, it really made me feel bad for Zuck.

He really has no idea what acting natural is, his whole life really is just tied up in "They just give it to me, the dumb f----". Regardless of how much power/money he has, that feels sad.

> He really has no idea what acting natural is, his whole life really is just tied up in "They just give it to me, the dumb f----". Regardless of how much power/money he has, that feels sad.

I've never really thought about about it in quite that way before, but there is a weird way in which Zuckerberg comes off as genuinely tragic character. Which is really odd, him being a wildly successful billionaire and all.

Yep. It's really sad that he ended in a position where he'd been able to inflict the most damage he possibly could. In a better world he'd be workaholic middle manager annoying 20 or so reports instead of billions.

On the spectrum I think. He really has minimal EQ.

Metastasized

metamites

You can't stop me from calling them Fookers.

Sounds like a brand of condoms

Metastases was a close secondary contender.

Reminds me of Siemens Healthineers

I guess when they get new jobs they metastasize.

Eh, this is just very standard corporate nonsense.

This is... not a good idea.

I really hope that was actually a joke and he just dead-panned the delivery and people took it seriously. If not... Wow. Just wow.

That would be the most epic deadpan of all time.

Facebook/Meta employees, if this still isn't your cue to resign, I don't know what is.

It's not clear how much this is going to stick. When Google became Alphabet the leadership came up with the idea that employees would refer to each other as "characters", but I can count on one hand the number of times I saw that in 4 years at Google. Also, Microsoft's demonym is "Microsoftie" which is no better and didn't seem to be too popular among folks I knew there.

> Microsoft's demonym is "Microsoftie" which is no better and didn't seem to be too popular among folks I knew there.

It is certainly popular enough in the Seattle area at places that are not Microsoft. There are enough ex-MSFT people floating around (really, a lot of them) that you hear it often.

Small price to pay for 400-500k TC

^^^ this.

For all the other comments, as an employee, would you really care?

It might sound dumb, but it’s also fun, self-deprecation humor if one worked there.

No, the point is Zuck said it straight-faced.

lol, how else would zuck do it? (given his past, straight-faced public speaking events that don’t really change in delivery) ;)

Will 'meta' increase their employees comp to compensate for the tanking stock? If you were making 400-500k 6 months ago, you're only making 300-400 now.

Lol.. that's new grad pay right now

This is expected and a total outlier. You would obviously have to sell your soul for years to get that compensation.

This is Meta's way of keeping you in to continue destroying lives.

That's annual comp – you just need to sell your soul at one-year increments for however long you feel it's worthwhile ;)

Why? Probably no one will take it seriously. Hell, people probably still call it Facebook when Mark isn't around.

The best clue so far is that “Meta” is likely short for “Metastasize”.

lol tumor joke

I don't work there, but if I were an employee, I think I can hold out until bunny ears become a mandatory part of my uniform. /s

the trick is to ask for a raise every time they ask you to debase yourself in a new way

These cultish identities are always fake. Nobody authentically believes in them and usually they only pretend to in order to signal dedication. I`ve only seen this work at Musk`s companies with new hires.

Similar deal to most other corporate culture.

I thought "metamate" is some kind of polyamory stuff?

I wonder if there is a compendium of what different companies call their own workers internally. Do all companies do this? Also kinda interesting how it doesn't seem Googlers ever became Alphabeters or whatever

They're "characters." Because they're members of the alphabet.

They're doing all this to distract from regulation for their bread and butter businesses. That and they see not owning the platform their apps run on (iOS and Android) an existential threat.

They'vevbeen running ads demanding regulation on cable and streaming services for a hot minute, I don't think they want to hide or distract from it.

Company Policy: No metamating with your metamates in your metaverse.

Sailors are not allowed to have intimate relationships with other shipmates...so this is a thing.

Going out on a limb here, read far worst brand/product names here in HN, so this doesn't surprise me, no matter how silly it sounds

Abandon ship

First abandon ship, then abandon your mates, finally abandon yourself. It's a crypto-roadmap!

The whole Facebook to Meta thing reminds me of Blackwater renaming itself to Xe etc. Juvenile attempt at trying to shed taint and boost morale.

This is sure to be a laughing stock and provide endless jokes among team members, who will continue referring to themselves as team members/mates.

At this point, it's pretty clear that someone has blackmail material on Zuck and he's being embarrassed before outted.

Got me thinking: hmm, making new Facebook just gone easy :) But still some mega scale infrastructure building is needed. So plan could be: 1. gather some funds (for straight few years of burning them); 2. place 2 page ad somewhere visible saying: "Hey FB emplees we redoing it, come to us ! This month we need: nix admins and network specialists, next: frontend developers for state of artetcetc"; 3. release early; 4. ...

But do such targeting ads" are legal ? ;)

Metameats.

Ew.

For me it brings to mind a brand of prophylactic- from Quite a while back, not sure they’re still around!!

Metamucil?

Since Facebook views themselves as part of the in-crowd maybe we should refer to them as inmates?

I wonder why they didn't choose something trendier like metanauts or metassociates or metaheads

I might prefer Metamastermates.

That's just Metamaster bait.

I prefer to call them MetHeads.

Negative,I am a Metamates -Bruce Willis The 5th element

The Metaverse already exists. It’s called video games.

In official communication only I have to believe

But you just know some employees will lap it up.

I am sorry. This too will pass.

Please read Dan Lyons’ book Disrupted about what life is like working for a cult-y startup and seeing the insanity while having to wait for your options to vest.

The chapter on the bozos is worth the cost of the book alone.

Chaos Monkeys (and the section extracted by Vanity Fair here: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-...) is probably a more relevant comparison.

"Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring into a blue-bannered window with a Facebook logo. Which, if you think about it, is much scarier than simple greed. The greedy man can always be bought at some price, and his behavior is predictable. But the true zealot? He can’t be had at any price, and there’s no telling what his mad visions will have him and his followers do."

That seems like a reinterpretation of the classic C. S. Lewis quote:

"Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”"

And if you would prefer parody, try Dave Eggers' "The Circle" and "The Every". The latter is particularly relevant, and had me laughing out loud.

It's a shame that his follow up, Lab Rats, was written like he was apologizing for having made Disrupted

metamorphs?

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