Meta accounts are here!
Hopefully the end of the confusing Oculus-Facebook-Meta VR saga
I've written before about my appreciation for VR. It's always intrigued me. I loved the idea of buying a proper VR headset once they became relatively affordable. The Oculus Quest 2 was a personal Christmas gift to myself a few years ago. Justifying it that way made me feel a tad less guilty about a device that would be mostly used for leisure time and couldn't really be shared with the rest of my family.
Oculus accounts & my Facebook journey
One thing that struck me when setting up my Oculus, was how darn confusing it was to get my account set up. I had already created an Oculus account for a project I was working on a while back. But things had changed at Oculus. It was now fully owned by Facebook. With previous Oculus headsets, you could separate your Facebook and Oculus identities. With the Quest 2, they decided that you needed to login using a Facebook account to maximize your virtual experience. Or you could tie your existing Oculus account to a Facebook account and sort of merge the two? Again, it didn't make a whole lot of sense.
I'm someone who hasn't intentionally logged into Facebook in about twelve years. After loving "The Facebook" in its early days when I only used it to connect with college classmates, it had just become too challenging to keep up with the incessant noise. I explicitly recall not logging in for a few days and then seeing tons of messages that had gone unread. One was from an old high school track buddy who was passing through town for only a few days and I felt awful for missing my window to see him. Of course, there were also plenty of other nonsense spam messages that I missed as well.
The point is that it became too time-consuming to separate the wheat from the chaff as it were. Rather than try to thread that needle and keep being a somewhat engaged Facebook user, I just pulled the plug. I pulled the plug as in not having any Facebook apps on my devices and never checking the website on my computer. But my account still existed if people wanted to find it. It didn't feel necessary to completely delete it entirely.
Just let me VR in solitude
So fast forward over a decade, and here I am trying to connect my new Oculus headset to a dormant Facebook account that I want nothing to do with. Oh well, it's in the name of modern technology I thought. I wasn't happy about it, but who cares? I'll connect my Facebook account if that's what's required.
But in the back of my head, I was still angered by this. Just let me experience the magic of this new technology! It's a darn shame that pretty much the only company really making progress in this space, is forcing us to connect to their silly social media platform that hasn't been relevant to my generation in years.
Now, when I pop on my headset for a quick VR workout using Supernatural or do some productive work using VR Desktop, I see pop-ups suggesting new friends or attempts to rekindle old friendships from Facebook. These are easy enough to ignore, and yes I know they can be turned off but that's really not the point. I know that adding a social component to VR is important for Facebook's bottom line, but I find it to be a pretty solitary endeavor. And that's ok too! Let me just sit alone in my house with this ridiculous contraption strapped to my face please.
Meta accounts are here
Where am I going with all this? As you know, Facebook is no longer the parent company of Oculus. Facebook is now just a fellow company under the grand umbrella of a new company called Meta. Technically, Meta has changed the name of the device I own from the Oculus Quest 2 to the Meta Quest 2. All of the logos and menu items in the interface have been updated as well. Oculus is pretty much dead for all intents and purposes.
Then, just last week I received a glorious email from the folks at Meta. This exact quote really sums it all up:
"You’re no longer required to log into your Meta VR devices using a Facebook account. You’ll need to set up a Meta account using your email address or Facebook account in order to continue using your VR device. Meta accounts give you more choice when it comes to how you log into VR and whether Facebook and Instagram are part of your VR experience."
Hmmm, this seems like a good thing right? Sure, I'll need to create another account for something which is always annoying. But then I'll be free from the shackles of Facebook "friends" made so long ago. I won't have to see what they're doing. They won't get notified when I complete a VR boxing workout. We can just go about our lives like the relative strangers that we’ve become. I don't want Facebook or Instagram to be part of my VR experience at all. They have as much business being in my VR experience as apple slices do in a bag of halloween candy. They don't belong together.
Conclusion
The Oculus-Facebook-Meta saga is probably not over. I'm sure more things will change and get more complicated. They'll branch out other products within the VR ecosystem. There will be new ways to login to everything, more passwords or biometric markers to check. Let's face it, it will never stop being profitable for companies to connect their users in an effort to spend more time online or in VR.
Let me just savor this moment where I can separate my current life in VR with my past life on a dying social media platform. No offense to all those old Facebook friends. Hope you're doing well and enjoying the VR experience!
Has anyone else out there gone through a similar crisis trying to live peacefully in the new VR world?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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