The idea of being painted as a literal second class citizen if you have lower end hardware is gross, but it's also the natural destination of progressive enhancement if e.g. facial expressions only work with the expensive thing.
Snow Crash is getting closer and closer it seems, the distinction between the rich folks with their outrageous avatars in the inner city and the plebeians who access the 'net through some public terminal which provides them with a nondescript black-and-white avatar - which is not allowed to enter the inner city - is a clear feature of its world.
Many if not most things in life can be improved by spending more money, in ways that give you practical and social advantages. It's not as if VR is unique in that respect.
On the Internet, by default, I have no idea how nice your car, house, computer, or food is. We're talking on a website that would comfortably load on 1990s hardware.
Meta is just one small corner of this and as such doesn't perhaps deserve particular blame, but it's sad to think about how we've slowly eroded the Internet's fundamentally democratic, equalizing nature.
The lowest common denominator poses heavy limitations of what can be done. I agree with you but also sympathize with those who want to go beyond text and still images.
I agree! The Internet can be way more than a text forum like this. My point was merely that we don't have to build an online world that reflects our real world's democratic leakages. We can simply choose to do better, so long as we're willing to say no to some (but not all!) forms of profit.
There's a big difference between driving a lowend car and literally not being able to express yourself.
I am well aware that status and appearance are already things in real life, but it becomes a whole different thing when it gets intermixed with your identity. Your actual person is worse because you didn't buy the upgrade. That's way different than not having a cool shirt or whatever.
This is something to worry about when we're at the level of VR adoption where people are conducting their daily business in the metaverse. At that point, camera based face and body tracking will likely be dirt cheap and included with even the most basic headset. Having a good network connection will be a bigger divider since that technology is improving much more slowly and unevenly.
If we weren't already talking about a luxury item such as a VR headset, I might agree. But I can't feel sorry for someone who buys a non-essential item and then feels hard done by because they didn't buy a better non-essential item to be honest.
