![]() ![]() As hostages to fortune go, Meta has created an almighty one. ![]() Of course, not even perfect, brilliant branding could fully compensate for Facebook/Meta’s unwise insistence on putting Zuckerberg front and centre of its communications, nor would it alleviate the risk of making its company name synonymous with something it hasn’t actually done yet. It’s also a cultural label signifying something that is self-referential, clever and cool, which doesn’t quite tally with Facebook’s naff metamorphosis. Alas, Meta can also mean “dead” in Hebrew, prompting the spread of the hashtag #FacebookDead. ![]() In a blog post, Meta said it chose its name because it can mean “beyond” – a word that has a joyful link to the concept of infinity thanks to would-be space ranger Buzz Lightyear. If it does, Meta will be watching: some logo-mockers have drawn pupils inside the loops, generating a pair of cartoon eyes in tribute to Facebook’s leading role in surveillance capitalism. We’ll all be in a Clegg-esque trance if it comes off. It’s an all-encompassing vision of the future that sounds like a cross between our smartphone-addicted present, a hallucinatory drug fantasy and any number of failed virtual reality experiments. Zuckerberg's goggles-assisted version will allow and encourage us, and everybody around us, to be both present and not-present. "Metaverse" was coined by writer Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash (which also popularised the term "avatar"). Like the Holodeck in Star Trek: The Next Generation, only not as good. The company describes this as the “next evolution of social technology” in which we can “share immersive experiences with people even when you can’t be together in person, and do things together you couldn’t in the physical world”. He’s here to declare his candidacy for supreme landlord of the metaverse. Meta’s infinity symbol is a reminder, most of all, of Zuckerberg’s infinite ambition. But the power of a few rounded edges to distract anybody from a dubious track record in the facilitation of hate speech, human trafficking and genocide seems doubtful.įor sure, the Noughties-era Like button logo Facebook/Meta has just removed from outside its Menlo Park headquarters in California didn't ultimately do much to sway people into believing the senior echelons of Facebook were merely a "thumbs-up" bunch of people just here to help us all make friends. When numerous studies point to social media being especially bad for the mental health of young girls, it’s useful to give the impression of being comforting and kind. So why do so many technology and media companies love a good squiggle? Branding experts with various degrees of credibility talk about curved lines conveying the idea of soft, cuddly values – “feminine” ones, no less – which you can see might come in handy for a company operating a platform too infinite to properly moderate and too profitable, in some instances, to seriously try. More tenuous comparisons have also been made to the logos for Disney's cloud service Movies Anywhere and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which have an extra twist. Web conferencing platform Webex by Cisco and Microsoft's app development product Visual Studio both use an infinity symbol, as does Virgin Media, which blows up the first of the loops. To be fair, what Meta intends the logo to invoke (other than “M” for Meta) is also right there: a toppled-over figure-of-eight is the mathematical symbol for infinity. And what says “cool new tech” better than the sad blue outline of a thyroid? Infinite squiggles In motion, it is admittedly less crap than it is in static 2D, but given we don’t yet live or even holiday in Zuckerberg’s metaverse, the static 2D image is how many of us will be confronted with the logo. Photograph: Paco Freire/Sopa Images/LightRocket via Getty The logo for Meta, the new name for the company formerly known as Facebook. I recommend a watch just so we all understand what we're dealing with. These interactions between Zuckerberg, his human avatar Nick Clegg and super-enthusiastic "Deb from our studios team" – clips from the Facebook founder's presentation at its Connect conference last Thursday – are savagely mesmerising. You have to hand it to the company formerly known as Facebook: it's got reach. Every second of Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg explaining why he has been programmed to build the "metaverse", whether we like it or not, is capable of triggering full-body shudders on an unprecedented scale. Yes, the medium of corporate video has struck again. Not only is its algorithmic amplification of "angry" content and capacity to worsen societal ills under belated public and regulatory scrutiny after some comprehensive whistleblowing, it stands accused of inflicting the world's deadliest collective cringe. Even for Facebook, sorry Meta, these are mad, out-there times. ![]()
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