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in reply to @hthrflwrs's post:

Personally I think teh dictionary should go goblin mode and let peopl vote for itf anyway, meowf

If push comes to shov we will just say that "goblin" won, as goblin should

Goblin Mode is obviously the right answer. Even at two words it's still a noun. #IStandWith is a partial phrase, and Metaverse is hilariously failed corporate marketing bullshit by someone who couldn't understand why people use VRChat/Second Life/The Sims. #WhoBoughtMetaverseAnything?

To be fair, "metaverse" was I believe coined by Neal Stephenson for the novel Snow Crash back in the '90s to describe a virtual reality internet interface akin to a more anarchic Second Life and was only coopted by crypto dimwits fairly recently. Not that Stephenson himself is perfect—he's pretty STEMlordy—but he at least had imagination.

Right, the term has a history, and it's an interesting one too, but Snow Crash isn't the big contributor to why so many people are talking about it now.

Maybe the term will come back into popular use if VR ever becomes more properly mainstream. AI has had multiple surges and winters.

I completely agree. It would be interesting to see some good-faith attempt at a small-m "metaverse" in the sense of a highly customisable, widely and freely available VR Internet interface system divorced from the ghastly intellectual, aesthetic and environmental dead end of cryptocurrency and Zuckerbergian idiocy, but I feel like we'd have to, y'know, maybe kill global capitalism first?