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14) It's not, uh, *positive*, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be less negative. And something weird and new and confusing and vague and exciting is in fact less negative than privacy concerns and censorship debates.

15) Plus, that negative sentiment was directed towards Facebook. What Facebook? Where? This is Meta!

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16) But my story still doesn't make full sense. Sure, maybe it explains why Facebook became Meta. By why spend $10b per year on fake legs? Remember Facebook's other problem: it couldn't grow anymore, because it had already grown the maximum amount physically possible.

17) How do you project growth on your forward looking financial indications when you've built the biggest possible social media company? You do something other than social media, I guess.

18) Something with the following properties: a) People think that maybe it could get really big. Like, $100b revenue big. b) If Facebook plows $10b into it people will be like "yes, that is how you make this thing really big, I guess, sure", and not ask any more questions.

19) You need something which is everything and nothing. Something which could be the whole world, but where no one knows what to expect or how to know if you're doing it yet. You need The Metaverse.

20) And so that could explain why Facebook did it: to distract from its reputational problems, and to project on a vague and unclear and futuristic enough space that they could convince people that maybe they were going to make another $100b from it, Facebook became Meta.

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21) Except there's one last problem. Investors have now decided that spending $10b per year on The Metaverse is dumb, and Facebook (er, sorry, Meta)'s stock is tanking. The vague meta guidance is no longer working. And yet Zuck keeps spending.

22) Which makes no sense if this is all a diversion. It's one thing to blow $10b/year on smoke bombs. It's another thing to blow $10b/year on smoke bombs that don't produce very much smoke. Why throw good money after bad?

10:57 PM · Oct 29, 2022Twitter Web App

23) So, to be clear, I *do* think that the above claims might be true: Facebook wanted to distract people from its reputation and its lack of headroom for growth, and so it became Meta. But I think there's probably something else, too. Something that explains the next $10b.

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24) Sometimes the easiest answer is the right one. Zuck is planning to spend tens of billions on building out The Metaverse because he believes in The Metaverse. It was a great distraction. But simultaneously it was also real.

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