Alpine Lunatics in the Metaverse!

Or, Monsters in Gucci, or Welcome to the WEF's Global Collaboration Village

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Davos, Switzerland

There is a real Swiss town called Davos. In this real Swiss town, a lot of lunatics with more money than they know what to do with gather once a year, protected from the rabble at the gate by an army of security guards.

There, they wax eloquent about what they’re going to do to make the rabble’s lives better in the coming year—even though the rabble don’t deserve it. In fact, the worry is growing that, given the chance, the ungrateful wretches might tear their benefactors’ arms and legs limb-from-limb.

I mean, what could the elite have ever done to deserve that?

The WEF’s exclusive gathering has been going on for a long time—over 50 years—and each year attendees moan about how everything is getting worse but not to fear, they have the solutions! If only they had more money! Really, this time it’s true, all that’s stopping them is a bigger pot of gold in their Swiss and offshore bank accounts.

You might be forgiven for calling these jetsetters lunatics, seeing as how they live in a totally make-believe world in their own minds. Well, that world is about to get even more delusional.

Welcome to the WEF’s Global Collaboration Village.

You think the elite are having a blast running around Davos? Just wait until they start meeting in their magnificent virtual village, powered up by an exciting new collaboration with Microsoft.

People are saying the fact that so many government officials skipped Davos this year means it’s becoming irrelevant. Not so according to the powerful CEOs in attendance. Richard Edelman, CEO of PR firm Edelman, told a crowd of clones—I mean other business leaders—that “companies are standing into the void left by government. And there’s a real distrust of government because of the pandemic. People don’t believe experts, they don’t believe government officials, and therefore, we have a void.”

Mega-companies filling that void? “A company newsletter is more trusted than mainstream media,” says Edelman.

Seriously? Which companies is he talking about? Maybe Nestle the biggest food company in the world and also one of the most hated, thanks to a long history of “child labor, unethical promotion, manipulating uneducated mothers, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling.”

I’m sure everyone reading this has their own, personal most hated company that comes to mind, so I know you get the idea. The CEOs that run these companies are as arrogant as Klaus Schwab in their disrespect for the people who make them wealthy beyond belief by buying their products. Remember when it was, “The customer is always right?” That’s what I learned when I got my first job in college at a boutique women’s clothing store. No matter if elderly women squeezed themselves into $500 jeans by lying on the floor so they could pull up the zipper, wheezing as I helped them to their feet. I was supposed to tell them that they looked “fabulous” so they would spend the money.

I lost that job very quickly. In fact, I was told I had the worst sales record in the history of the company. I couldn’t play the game. It’s a big reason why I decided always to be self-employed.

But let’s face it, even if we hate their products, even if we know that they are poisoning us or using slave labor in far-off lands, we all contributed to the monsters these companies have become. Now the ones who lied and exploited us the most, like major banks, Amazon, Walmart, Pfizer, you name it, are simply “too big to fail”. So, shut up and buy its products or else.

It’s CEOs who run the world now. Not idiots like Biden or puppets like Zelensky. And the rabble will fall in line. They will have to if they want the products that they’ve been conditioned to crave.

People may complain about how they hate Facebook, or they hate Twitter, but they still use them. Meta Platforms Inc. might suck your data like a vampire and censor what you see and hear but it still has 2 billion active monthly users.

The Microsoft-Activision $69 billion merger has set the record for the biggest tech deal ever. It’s still on rocky ground, but it’s doubtful anyone can stop it. In 2021, Microsoft made $167m a day in profit, EVERY SINGLE DAY. And you wonder why Bill Gates can indulge his fantasies to vaccinate every single man, woman and child on the planet.

Guess who Klaus Schwab and the WEF are partnering with to create their Global Collaboration Village?

That would be Microsoft Mesh. In order to become major players in the race for relevance in the Metaverse, Microsoft has joined hands with Accenture to create 'Nth Floor', described as a “virtual campus for employees to gather for coffee, presentation, parties, and events irrespective of their locations.”

Never again will the corporate elite have to worry about party crashers like Japanese journalist @ganaha_masako accosting them at Davos as they rush from one meeting to another. Masako tweeted about trying to talk to Klaus Schwab. The minute she tells him she’s an “independent” journalist, Schwab shuts her down, showing his absolute disdain and disinterest in anyone who might dare challenge his views.

@walterkirn pointed out “how little disagreement there is” as Davos.

The largest matters on earth are at stake (supposedly) yet the conferees don't argue. They don't debate. All points seem smugly settled. It's an ego orgy, a great self-satisfied mutual grope.

I’d love to see an interview with Klaus Schwab where he’s asked questions like this:

Do you have a dog?

What’s your favorite TV show?

How do you relax on the weekends?

Do you have any hobbies?

Have you ever been to a Rave (do you know what that is)?

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?

Do you have a pet name for your wife—does she have a pet name for you?

Maybe if he answered these questions, he might seem a little more human—or maybe it might make everything worse; expose him as an extraterrestrial who never can seem to get his human persona quite right. The answer isn’t to make himself and his causes more accessible. It’s to hide everything even further in the Metaverse.

You thought Davos was exclusive? Dissenters will never be a problem in the virtual worlds these lunatics are building for themselves—although how long it will take for some fourteen-year-old hacker to crash a meeting? I’d like to see that.

Some of the perks to look forward to in the Global Collaboration Village are Virtual Collaboration, Training Together Anywhere, Remote Expertise, Designing in 3-D.

Participants in meetings will have access to fun stuff like":

Holoportation: Project yourself as your most lifelike, photorealistic self in mixed reality to interact as if you are there in person.

Avatars: Customize your virtual appearance to represent yourself as you like.

@SikhForTruth posted a great clip of Schwab at Davos, all flushed and excited about his first experience of using an avatar.

"I got so fast accustomed to it, for me it’s the next big phase of the development into the virtual world.”

Think of it. You can live in your 15-minute city and never have any reason to leave it. If you want a change from your matchbox living quarters, just step into the world you and your tribe have created online. You won’t be invited into Schwab and his cronies’ paradise, but you will be kept quite busy trying to make your own little paradise, gradually living more in the metaverse than out of it. You thought debt was a problem now? Just wait until you find yourself buying stuff you really don’t need because it’s not even real.

All while wearing something like this, because when attending your virtual meetings or having private conversations with your friends in the metaverse, you don’t want a single sound escaping from your mouth into the real world.

Easier conversations than face-to-face, you say? Better communication?

Yes! Get with the program!

Just think. If you’re lucky enough to be a participant in the Global Collaboration Village, you can visit a virtual ocean hub, where you can “dive into the ocean’s depths and explore why and how marine ecosystems must be protected to preserve both life on land and in water.” 

Am I missing something? How is this better than exploring the real ocean and seeing first-hand the problems that need to be solved? I’m not saying it isn’t cool to explore worlds virtually. I tested an Oculus program once and got to fly a spaceship to distant planets. I loved it. But it will never replace the real thing—even though I will probably never have a chance to experience that in real life. I recognize there is a difference, and one is better than the other and I think you know which one I mean.

Thinking that everything will improve if we remove ourselves even further from reality is crazy. Isn’t that what people do who have mental health problems? Lose touch with reality?

It’s a joke on all of us. But there is a part of me that enjoys knowing how the Davos Metaverse that Schwab is building is a joke played especially on the wealthy. Just like they clamor to attend the real Davos conference and pay outrageous fees for the privilege to do so, they will clamor to be a part of these virtual conferences. Imagine getting dressed-up for the Davos virtual meetings and parties, with celebrities and all the press in attendance (not that pesky Japanese lady, of course). Attendees will spend money buying Gucci and Prada to dress their avatars. They will go to expensive hair salons in create marvelous coiffures for their avatars. They will drive their gas guzzling million-dollar cars and not feel one bit of guilt. They might even start wearing fur coats again. And the after parties? Anything can happen. It’s not real, you see.

Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Accenture, promises: “…over time [the Metaverse] will enable companies to create innovative new consumer products and services, transform their manufacturing and operations, and reimagine the way we collaborate and work.” 

Remember that old saying, “The customer is always right”? You can forget about that! Now it’s “The company is always right”.

The pressure we’ve all been under to buy new products in order to stay relevant in the real world will be transferred to the Metaverse.

It’s worth sacrificing that piece of synthetic meat you are allowed once a month in the real world to buy yourself that latest style of Nike shoes in the metaverse. After all, your neighbor on the street where you live in your virtual world has a pair already, so you simply have to have them, too.

And that’s the bottom line. It’s not for your health and safety. It not about saving the planet. It’s about sucking even more lifeblood out of the rabble because, honestly, that’s all they deserve.

The World Economic Forum tells us that the Metaverse can have a “multi-trillion-dollar market impact, with billions of users in the coming decade. This new form of technology-enabled human interaction is on track to become ubiquitous in our personal and professional lives.”

Billions of dollars are being invested into developing the Metaverse, which is projected to become an $800 billion market by 2024.

Welcome to Alpine Lunatics in the Metaverse, 2024?