Zuck wasn't marketing VR to the average consumer or even the tech enthusiast. He was marketing it to middle managers who wanted to regain control of their WFH peons. During covid, those types lost a lot of control while the workers continued without much change. Now that back to the office is being forced, the target demographic isn't interested.
John Carmack had some choice words when he left Meta.
"We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy.
"It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover."
Imagine getting John Carmack on your project and ignoring him. Like, what was the point? Zuck got lucky in the beginning and was cut throat enough to hold on to it, but he has no entrepreneurial talent.
A lot of modern problems can actually be blamed on Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays.
an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". While credited with advancing the profession of public relations, his techniques have been criticized for manipulating public opinion, often in ways that undermined individual autonomy and democratic values.
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
Strawberries.