I think often the internet, the messages that it gives and the incentives that it provides,

you know, always posting everything is content. Other people are the extras in your great show.

That really is constraining. That is not a human thing, actually, because humans are,

we want connection. That is fundamental to who we are. And I think a lot of the internet,

despite all the promises and pitches of connection and all of these ideas,

it does really isolate us and it encloses us within ourselves. It kind of flattens us into

performances of ourselves rather than simply ourselves as we are. And then I think it encourages us

to see other people in that same way. I'm John Fabro. Welcome to Offline.

Hey everyone, my guess this week is the Atlantic's Megan Garber, who's recently been writing

quite a few pieces that are right in the offline wheelhouse. From internet sleuthing to the

everything is fine mean. But there's one piece Megan wrote that a few of you have tweeted at me

about. It's titled We're Already Living in the Metaverse. But it is not about Mark Zuckerberg trying

to make us wear VR headsets. In fact, Megan makes the case that our understanding of the Metaverse

as VR headsets and legless avatars is wrong. She argues that immersive entertainment promised by

the Metaverse has already arrived and it's currently blurring the line between fiction and reality.

In our television, our politics, and our lives. Megan offers all kinds of examples of this blurring

in the piece. The way we talk about losing the plot or being cancelled, the fact that there's

now a streaming series for every scandal that's hit the news like the dropout or inventing Anna,

and of course the election of a reality TV star to the nation's highest office. When everything

becomes entertainment, what remains of our reality? Megan and I had a fun conversation about this

piece. We talked about the ways American politics has become entertainment, how people have come to

think of themselves in terms of characters and co-stars, and how we focused on George Orwell's

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