Briar Prestidge spent 48 hours in the metaverse. Here’s what she learned
I journeyed across 33 metaverse worlds for two consecutive days. This is what I learned.
Courtesy of Briar Prestidge
I hadn’t tried on my Oculus Quest Two headset before my 48-hour journey into the metaverse. I wanted to experience it for the first time as I jumped from one world to another, interviewing 21 metaverse experts in 33 spaces. I’m not new to the metaverse—I launched an NFT spin-off of my power suit collection, BRIAR PRESTIDGE—The Label, at the first Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), and I’m gearing up to launch a metaverse fashion brand, Oltair. Still, I hadn’t accessed the metaverse using a VR headset for 48 consecutive hours. The metaverse is intriguing. I wanted to experiment and participate while encouraging women to show up and take part so that the future of the metaverse is built with us in mind, without bias.
My Oculus felt heavy at first as I entered AltSpace. I was blown away by the vibrancy of the colors and details of CampFire, a community meeting point that now ceases to exist following layoffs by Microsoft. I struggled to move my avatar until a stranger named Kenneth helped get me up to speed, and soon, I was walking, running, and flying. Kenneth and I made friends with other avatars over metadrinks, a practical lesson in what I would later learn at Nudgeverse– people are more outgoing in their anonymous, online personas.
Briar Prestidge, 48 Hours in the Metaverse. Courtesy of Briar Prestidge
Jumping between AltSpace and Spatial.io, I discovered that worlds and platforms are fragmented, with different log-in information, avatar and outfit setups for each one. In Spatial.io, I appeared in a Ready Player ME avatar with my own face but with a male body. It is not an entirely seamless process.
Next, I entered Roblox. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are growing up living a second life on platforms like Roblox, which has more than 59 million daily users, 67 percent of whom are under 16. Purchasing NFTs is ordinary for them. My friend’s child asked for an NFT Halloween costume. He didn’t need a real costume because his friends would be trick-or-treating on Roblox. Soon, these kids will be adults with disposable income and legitimate purchasing power. The brands that can capitalize on their online habits will be the biggest winners. After a game of basketball in Roblox’s Nikeland, it was time for a lunch break in real life. Eating while wearing an Oculus Quest Two headset is no simple feat, and I spilled most of my food.
Decentraland was next up—I’m already familiar with this platform, thanks to MVFW. Accessible only by laptop, I dropped by the Fashion District, a Parisian-like high street with digital stores for the likes of Dolce & Gabbana and Elie Saab. Fashion loses its boundaries in the metaverse. You can dress as fantastically as the platform allows—physics and fabrics fly out the window.
A screenshot from the documentary 48 Hours in the Metaverse. Courtesy of Briar Prestidge
After a detour through AltSpace, cybersickness set in. I had hot flashes, sweats, and dry retching, but I dug my heels in. I went somewhere familiar: a digital twin of the Al Wasl Dome, the centerpiece of Dubai Expo 2020. I’d been to the physical dome, and save for lesser visual fidelity, the scale and awe of the virtual experience were nearly identical to the real one. Digital twins have immense potential in the metaverse – I also explored Australia’s historical Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, a recreation of the park in collaboration with UNESCO, where I learned about the indigenous tribe, its history, customs and languages. Not everyone can travel across the world, and these experiences can connect us with new cultures and traditions.
After a quick stop at a virtual 1:1 recreation of Burning Man, it was time to tuck in for the night, so I headed to a “sleeping” world in VRChat with other avatars and called it a night, with my headset still on. The next morning, I met Lance Powell, a cognitive scientist and the CTO of VedX Solutions, and we traveled to Rec Room, a colorful claymation-style platform that is home to 29 million users. He explained the safety implications of allowing children to enter the metaverse – immersion brings heightened risks of manipulation, bullying and abuse. But it can also be a safe space, as I learned from Metanurse Heather Bucalos, a two-time cancer survivor who provides chemo support meetings in VR, providing a therapeutic space for patients with any illness, regardless of their mobility or financial means.
Following a workout in my 7-inch heels and a cup of VR coffee in a 19th-century cafe, I was down to my last 10 hours in the metaverse. Cybersickness reared its head once more as I met Juliana Loh, an XR artist who hand paints VR worlds, and powered through another night with the headset on. Even after 48 hours in the metaverse, it’s difficult to pin down an exact definition. In its simplest form, it’s the evolution of the internet. Talking about the metaverse right now is like talking about the internet in the ’90s. At the time, Bill Gates described the internet as a “business directory of sorts,” but it became much more than that, completely revolutionizing how we live, work and socialize. Given time, the metaverse could do the same.
Click to watch the full documentary of 48 Hours in the Metaverse.
