I want you to walk me through this. So I'm in this and there's obviously people here and they're being

respectful and the first thing that I want to do is just push the guy. Yeah. No, I'm not going to. Don't worry.

I'm not going to. I'm not going to. Okay. So what you're hearing here is me inside the Metaverse with my

compa Dave Moss. Yeah. So welcome to the Metaverse with my compa Dave Moss.

Yeah, so welcome to the Metaverse, I guess.

This is a graffiti simulator called Kingspray Graffiti VR.

So you should have gotten a message for me saying, come join me, and you just need to click on that.

Dave's the Investigations Director for the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he's also a huge fan of virtual reality. Oh, that's me. Oh, wow, I have more hair in the virtual world than I do in real life, and it's curlier. I like New Me. I want to jump over this wall. Come on, Metaverse. I want to jump over this wall now. Oh, wait, wait. I don't think you can. But you can grab this basketball over here and shoot hoops with it. Actually, I want to get that tire there. So to pick up the tire, there is a button that you are. Oh, there you are. Hi. Hey, I was going to have a little close. Everybody's talking about the Metaverse right now, but I didn't just want to talk about it.

I needed to experience it firsthand.

So Dave was my guide to one big part of the Metaverse, virtual reality.

I'm Gustavo Ariano.

You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times.

It's Monday, February 7, 2022.

Today, I wander around a few virtual reality environments and basically make a fool out of myself

to get a better understanding of the promises

of potential pitfalls of the Metaverse. I know I'm frustrating you, Dave, but this is the type of the internet person I am. Oh, you just drank a beer. How do I, okay, so how do I drink this beer here? So you can either bend down and pick it up, but there's a button under your middle. So yeah, picture me in this big, clunky looking headset, making me look more like a nerd than I am,

and I'm wandering around my living room, but also wandering around virtual video game-like spaces

at the same time. And my producer, Myron Kaplan, they're following me around with their microphone

and making sure I actually don't bump into a real wall.

So when do we rip off a car and just like start playing Bob Seeger music?

I don't know.

I'm not sure there's cars in this particular map.

...