PKD was all over this like a fly on shit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stigmata_of_Palmer_E...

>The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate bid to preserve humanity and ease population burdens on Earth, the UN has initiated a "draft" for colonizing the nearby planets, where conditions are so horrific and primitive that the unwilling colonists have fallen prey to a form of escapism involving the use of an illegal drug (Can-D) in concert with "layouts." Layouts are physical props intended to simulate a sort of alternative reality where life is easier than either the grim existence of the colonists in their marginal off-world colonies, or even Earth, where global warming has progressed to the point that Antarctica is prime vacation resort territory. The illegal drug Can-D allows people to "share" their experience of the "Perky Pat" (the name of the main female character in the simulated world) layouts. This "sharing" has caused a pseudo-religious cult or series of cults to grow up around the layouts and the use of the drug.

Honest question – how do you know this? Have you actually traveled around a decent chunk of the wold and seen this for yourself?

It doesn't have anything to offer. A world where all you can do is look and listen is of very little marginal interest to almost anyone. We all have televisions and stereos. I don't dream of having larger TVs and louder stereos.

It's a lot easier to have a shitty life online in VR than to have a shitty life in real life. In real life you can have a sandwich, and it's a richer, more fulfilling experience than anything VR has to offer.

It's gamers (and buzzword investors) who love VR, and they'll get bored with it. Not every game should be first person; it's kind of a local maxima and a contemporary rut.

> The vast majority of people in the world live shitty lives.

I'm not sure this is even close to true. How shitty your life is or is not is based on an individual's perception. You can have a person who should be happy - wealth, relationships, fame and are so miserable they nearly killing themselves daily with alcohol and other drugs. You can have a person, who by all abject means of judgement should be miserable, and has somehow found a way to be happy with their life.

> Metaverse doesn't seem so bad for some.

This is probably true, but the question is, will it really be all that different than real life anyway?

How many of these people can afford to buy into the metaverse?