I don’t know about you, but I’d way rather be irl with wonderful humans than in any iteration of the “metaverse.” It made me so happy to give my first in-person keynote in two years at @visitcalifornia’s #OutlookForum a few weeks ago — where I got to feel the magic of sharing space/place with folks again for what felt like the first time in forever. Unsurprisingly, I was asked about my take on the “metaverse” during my remarks — and this is a brief clip from my response. I want to be clear though, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be talking about the #metaverse, #NFTs, #DAOs, #cryptocurrency, or any new technologies. I think it is really exciting that we are living in a moment where we are moving towards decentralization, community ownership, emboldened attribution, and democratization of power. That said, I think it is dangerous whenever we lean into the ~hype~ too much. It feels like, to me, that every tech bro is on a soapbox right now about how #Web3 is going to inevitably change the world for for the better — and that we aren’t taking enough time to consider the ways in which that might not be true. This isn’t even a critique of what is being said — this is instead a hope that we add more to the conversation. We were told a decade ago that social media would inevitably change the world for the better, and while it did empower many of us — it also had a lot of really perverse consequences. I think the metaverse/Web3 *might* also be able to make the world better, but only if we build for it to — only if we avoid making the same mistakes we did last time by talking about the potential pitfalls outloud right now.