It’s hard to decide which recent “metaverse” headline has felt more unreal.

For one thing, consider Facebook’s rebranding as Meta, a nod to shared virtual spaces where the company thinks its future lies. In this vision, large groups of individual users will come together in an immersive, simulated digital environment, where they will work, study, create, and build relationships that mix avatars and real-world elements to varying degrees. On the other hand, there was Meta’s subsequent 60-second Super Bowl commercial, which featured an animatronic dog meeting his animatronic friends in virtual reality, and cost the company an estimated $13 million.

Either way, they both proved that the hype behind the metaverse is real, even if the metaverse itself isn’t yet…