A tech founder born in the Soviet Union compared metaverse hype to the communist propaganda he experienced as a child
Phil Libin, the founder of the note-taking app Evernote and the CEO of the videoconferencing company Mmhmm, made the comments in a podcast hosted by the tech journalist Eric Newcomer released on Tuesday.
Libin expressed deep skepticism of tech companies touting the metaverse and drew a comparison with his experience growing up in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, Russia.
"I went to first grade in the Soviet Union," Libin said. "I was subjected to a lot of Soviet propaganda, and I was told as a little kid repeatedly: 'Communism doesn't exist yet. We haven't built communism yet. We're building towards communism. But it's not communism yet. What you see around you, this horrible, horrible place, isn't communism. We're building towards it. It's going to be great when it gets here.'"
Libin continued: "You know, you can smell a bad idea before it's fully built. So I don't want to hear 'Oh yeah, the metaverse doesn't exist yet. No, no, no, all this stuff, all this stupid, useless, crappy stuff that exists right now, that's not the metaverse. The metaverse is coming — it's coming.'"
