A version of this article was published in the TIME Into the Metaverse newsletter. Sign up to receive a weekly guide to the future of the Internet.

It’s hard to go online these days without seeing someone yelling about the metaverse, either in ecstasy or derision. Depending on who you ask, it’s either the inevitable future of the Internet or a billionaire’s fantasy; a gaming utopia, an “infinite office”, a brand strategy, an NFT playground, a sci-fi illusion. Virtually every media outlet, including this one, has published articles trying to make sense of it all. The noise around the term “metaverse” is now loud and constant enough to render it almost meaningless.

So what exactly is the metaverse?…