Among the many aphorisms Mark Twain is known for, there is one that comes to mind especially when thinking about recent developments in online spaces. “Buy land, they don’t make it anymore,” Twain once said, a phrase that the rise of the metaverse might very slightly undermine. To be fair, that also depends on your definition of “earth” – he could buy the earth of an entire planet in the metaverse, but he can’t physically stand on it.

All of which makes a recent Curbed interview with Jessica Stocker so interesting. As Curbed’s Bridget Reed points out, Stocker founded a company, Digiland, whose app was used to buy and sell space in the metaverse. Stockler’s primary work is in the physical real estate world, and based on comments she made on…