3mo ago

Smoking avatars and online games: how big tobacco targets young people in the metaverse

www.theguardian.com

32 comments

smuggled into virtual spaces
Words don't mean anything anymore.
- They're so desperate to make the real-life Snowcrash, Ready Player One, Matrix, they haven't even acknowledged how hard metaverse flopped, nor how there's no "smuggling" anything into a virtual "space". They can't stand the idea that what they really made was Worse Second Life 30 Years Later.
  
  Apparently it mostly appeals to young children, or maybe people pretending to be young children.
  more than half of the metaverse’s active users are aged 13 and below.
- The Meta prison purse®™
- The things being smuggled are ideas. "beyond the reach of regulators," see? It's the advertisement nature of what's being done here.
  
  Nothing is being 'smuggled'.
  They are just advertising. Regular old advertising which should have the same rules applied as any other advertising.
Bigger news to me is that people are using the metaverse.
- Do they have legs yet? Did they have cigarettes before they had legs?
  
  The avatars smoked so we could walk.
- maybe making news of problems that are "happening" in there are a way to, indirectly, trying to tell you "people is using this!! we are not wasted money!! we are relevant!!"
- I'm surprised it still existed
People use the Metaverse?
Both young people in the metaverse?
- Thats the thing. Adults talk shit about it. But it’s mostly the younger generations that are active in VR.
  You have your demographics backwards.
- people in the zuckerborg-verse.
lol what? I’ve been using VRChat for almost 10 years and I’ve seen maybe 4-5 people with avatars that smoke.
I’ve never touched Roblox tho… I’m a bit offended that it’s considered a Metaverse.
Yeah. I have had a real issue with the kids smoking in my Metaverse based VR app. /s
Don't let small tobacco off the hook! They benefit from this by riding on their larger comrades' coattails.

32 comments