I recently spent part of my afternoon throwing giant Wendy’s bacon into a basketball hoop, and no one was there to see it.

When I walked into the Buck BiscuitDome, a low-poly stadium shaped like a giant hamburger, one of many mostly barren “worlds” to visit in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, and saw that no one was there, I wasn’t surprised. Recent reports revealed that Meta is bleeding hundreds of thousands of users, and that the company can’t even get its own employees to hang out in its VR metaverse.

As I entered the stadium and picked up the waiting Baconator, the emptiness allowed my mind to wander. How rare and precious it is, in these days of constant noise, to really be alone online, I thought. Throwing air balls into a cartoon hoop in…