Some of this is people wanting to recreate the artificial scarcity of the real world so that they can profit from it, see the recent land rush in some nascent proto-Metaverse platforms, where people are betting that their purchase will have some medium-term value and an appreciating long-term value.
But this is also similar to the idea that some people want their MMORPGs to have a single, non-sharded instance, where everybody can play at once, which sounds hellish to me TBH. Millions of people all competing for the same items, quests, etc. If you were offered a VR version of Disneyland, which would you prefer? One where there were very few people and you could walk more or less directly onto the rides? Or one where the streets are packed and the queue times are multiple-hours long?
The rush to reproduce these less desirable experiences in VR is utterly depressing, and for that matter the descriptions of The Street in Snow Crash didn't sound that appealing to me either.