One of the most sarcastic fights raging between our digital overlords is over a technology that doesn’t exist yet: the metaverse. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is so enamored with his promise that he changed the name of the company to Meta and staked his business on the idea. Despite widespread skepticism, he has kept the faith, racking up more than $27 billion in operating losses in the company’s metaverse division over the last three years. This week, Meta launched a new Quest Pro headset priced at $1,500 and announced a partnership with Microsoft.

However, as Apple CEO Tim Cook has acidly pointed out, it’s still not clear that ordinary people know what the metaverse means. Meta’s conception remains “ambiguous and hypothetical,” says Snap founder Evan Spiegel. The…