I've already lived in the metaverse, and it was a little sad

THE strangest thing I experienced in 2021 was the "metaverse" taking off as a buzzword, as if it were anything new. It isn't.

In 2003, Linden Lab launched Second Life (SL): a 3D virtual world. I signed up a few years after that. There, I had 2 best friends. One was a young woman from the Netherlands, who went by "Mystique". The other was a man from Germany - I forget what he called himself - who liked to stand around in a pirate suit, building things.

We mostly hung out in a club owned and deejay-ed by a guy named Frank, with a gravelly voice and a grumpy disposition. Mystique worked as a (virtual) stripper, so she spent a lot of time on the poles. I played Texas Hold'Em on the gaming tables meanwhile, until a 2007 crackdown on online casinos put an end to that.