In October 2021, Meta Platforms, Inc, released a “trailer”, hosted by the company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, to provide a visual tour of its recent expansion into the Metaverse, the immersive virtual reality world expected to be the next great iteration of our Internet technologies.

It was a curious job. The trailer began with Zuckerberg standing in a living room with a fireplace, a stunning mountain view, and other conventional indicators of wealth. The Zuckerberg who greets us first appears to be the real one; he quickly proceeds to summon a nearly life-size digital avatar of himself, and then runs through a sequence of possible costumes to clothe his…