The clipping thing is out of control. Like, it's fun to go on these other podcasts. It makes me not want to go on. I don't blame the TVBN guys, but it's really annoying.
Yeah, it is tough because it's happened with my back honesty thing, too. Like it's like the quipping...
Well, every couple hours I will see you responding to someone new on Twitter being like, "Actually, I've written the exact opposite of what you just said. I said, so stop mischaracterizing me." I don't want to mischaracterize you. As far as Meta Connect, all I'm saying after these...
What I'm saying is don't stop. What I'm saying is...
As annoying as this week of clipping has been...
Do you know the basis on which I met Mark Zuckerberg for the first time?
So this was in 2020. It was the week before everything shut down. And he invites me in, and the reason he wanted to talk to me is he wanted to understand why for six years, however long it had been, I had been relentlessly opposed to what they were doing with the metaverse and Reality Labs.
And by the way, it increased my respect for him a ton. He didn't want to argue with me — he did argue with me, but it was a Socratic sort of like, 'I want to really understand what you think.' I obviously didn't change his mind about it at all. But he's like, 'I just want you to come and meet because I want to really understand your thinking about this, because I want an outside perspective — like, why do you think I'm doing the wrong thing?' And we went back and forth, had a good discussion, and then he's like, 'Okay, you know, great to meet you,' and then kept doing the same thing, which by the way is very Mark.
Which is fine. All that to say is my discomfort with and issue with Meta doing this whole space and spending all this money and doing hardware when they're a horizontal services company that should be serving everyone, and hardware diverts you and sets you into competition with folks that should be your partners. All of which happened, by the way. And then you get on this podcast and say — you, who have been defending their glasses effort all along. It's unbelievable. I didn't even get clipped. YOU CLIPPED THE OTHER PODCAST.
All I'm saying is in those podcasts after past Connect events, I have felt like the wet blanket who has to come out and say, 'Look, I don't think anybody's actually going to use these and there's not anything that...'
I've been enthusiastic about the technology. I've always had a problem with Meta specifically doing it. And in fact, I think there's an argument that Meta actually killed the technology by virtue of bringing all the talent in-house. It didn't develop organically. It didn't develop in the broader ecosystem.
Anyhow...
But after this year's Connect...
TVPN, I'm like Stark right now. Random people on Twitter who've been driving you insane for the last 72 hours. I was sitting there last night thinking, 'Holy crap, they nailed it with the VR glasses.' Like, what did you think of Meta's VR headset? I just look at this now and I'm like, they're nailing it on all these different vectors, and I'm wildly impressed with where the company is only a couple months after everybody was freaking out saying, 'What the hell is Meta doing?' You wrote a script for Mark Zuckerberg to get his messaging on point, and now here we are a couple months later, it's the hottest company in technology. So this is a... there's a sport you might have heard of called basketball. So like, I tried to come up with a way...
In basketball, there's this interesting dynamic that happens, like when a player is injured or when a team acquires a player, say at the deadline, where you can have a team that seems woefully deficient, and you add one more player and they get way better. Not just because they added that player, but because everyone slots into a role that's much more suited to them, right? Like, of course you know what a number one needs to be. Everyone knows it's coming. They still score. They draw the defense, they kick it out. You need a number two who can carry the offense when the number one's on the bench, who can be a secondary ball maker, needs to depending on if number one is a distributor or not. If they're not, they need to be a distributor. If number one is more of a distributor, number two needs to be a scorer. And then number three is basically the guy who you can put on the best player to defend and will knock down every single open shot. And then you have the dirty guy who does all the dirty work, grunt work...
It's like imagine the Knicks without Karl-Anthony Towns. Karl-Anthony Towns is their second-best player, and then he allows their role players like OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges to slot into their proper roles, as opposed to asking those guys to do too much and being inevitably disappointed.
Exactly. So the problem is that if you're missing your number two, then your number three seems worse because he's a bad number two. Your number four seems worse because he's a bad number three. It goes all the way down the chain. You can slot just one guy in and a team gets massively better because everyone is now in their proper position.
Mhm.
Meta's problem is they were missing a number one.
And what I mean is the reason why the glasses seem compelling is not just because they're small and thin and, you know, even the VR ones — I thought it was a great reveal. Actually, they've been sitting out here the whole time and you didn't notice because they look kind of like that was the best part, just from a showmanship perspective.
Because he kept saying, 'Oh, look, here's all our glasses, here are our glasses.' He was kind of setting it up the whole time.
Once you have Muse, and Muse is the thing now, you're not selling VR glasses, you're not selling AR glasses, you're selling Muse delivery devices.
And it's so obvious Muse is something that wants to break out of the phone. You see it in your little app up in the little corner typing away and doing work for you. It's like, 'Oh, poor little Muse is stuck in my...' You're not thinking this clearly, but you're getting a sense of, 'I would like Muse in more places. How can I get it more?' Oh, Meta has devices on which I can interact with Muse. It isn't ethereal AI glasses. These are now Muse glasses. Your little Tamagotchi is a Muse Tamagotchi. And that is why that keynote comes along and feels so focused. It's why you feel so excited. It's because they had VR as their number one player.
Not a number one player, right? They had kind of VR... they had AI as their number one player.
Also not a number one player. Your number one player is a product that resonates, and the product doesn't need to be pushed on people. People pull it because they want it. And once you have that pull effect, everything else slots into place. Muse is their number one. Their AI models, number two. Beta and the VR glasses, great, number three. Klay Thompson, not a number two. Terrible number two. Can't dribble the ball. The best number three in history. Locks down the opposing guards. Doesn't miss a shot.
