Snap CEO Evan Spiegel blasts the metaverse

• Evan Spiegel dissed the metaverse, calling it the « last thing » he’d want to do after a long work day.
• Snap has chosen to AR projects instead of VR, which the CEO calls « more immersive. »
• Mark Zuckerberg has spent billions on his plans for the metaverse.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel slammed Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse on Tuesday at a conference with The Wall Street Journal.

« The metaverse is ‘living inside of a computer.’ The last thing I want to do when I get home from work during a long day is live inside of a computer, » Spiegel said.

Over the past year, Zuckerberg has overhauled Facebook into Meta with precisely that vision — one of a world where people connect in a digital universe using avatars. The Facebook founder has spent $15 billion so far on the project and has said that one day the metaverse will be the way that people « interact with the world. »

But, Spiegel doesn’t see it that way. The Snap founder has chosen to focus his company on expanding into augmented reality versus a virtual reality. While VR takes the individual into a completely digitally recreated landscape, AR combines computer-generated content with the real world — meaning that in AR digital content is superimposed onto an individual’s view of the real world. Last year, Snap unveiled its first pair of AR glasses.

On Tuesday, Spiegel said that there is « a clear fork in the road between VR and AR, » calling AR « more immersive. »

It wasn’t the first time the Snap founder has dissed the metaverse. Earlier this year, Spiegel said in an interview with The Guardian that his company refuses to use the word « metaverse, » dubbing it « ambiguous and hypothetical. »

« One of the big overarching concepts people have is that a lot of those tools are designed to replace reality, » Spiegel told The Guardian. « Our fundamental bet is that people actually love the real world: they want to be together in person with their friends. »