Elon Musk has made it clear to metaverse fans he has no time for the idea of virtual worlds and living life as an avatar.
"I don't know if I necessarily buy into this metaverse stuff," the Tesla CEO said Tuesday, in an interview with satirical site The Babylon Bee. "Although people talk to me a lot about it — Web3."
Musk is not convinced, and he poked fun at the suggestion people would willingly wear virtual or augmented reality headsets for big chunks of their day, just to wander a futuristic virtual landscape.
"Sure, you can put a TV on your nose," he said, mocking the idea this would actually transport a person into a different world.
"I'm like ... uh, what? Is that good for you?" he said.
Musk added he couldn't envisage anyone strapping a screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave. "It gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time."
"You could do a video game on your computer console, or whatever, and you can get a first-person game and move rapidly and not get motion sickness," he said.
"But if you try to do that with VR goggles, you get motion sickness. It doesn't feel like that's the answer, necessarily."
"I think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse. This sounds just kind of buzzword-y."
And in response to bitcoin proponent Jack Dorsey, who this week criticized venture capital's influence in the space, Musk asked whether anyone's seen Web3, saying he "can't find it."
In the hourlong Babylon Bee interview, Musk acknowledged he might be seen as rejecting the metaverse in the same way many dismissed the internet in its early days of the 1990s.
"There's some danger that that's the case. But I currently am unable to see a compelling metaverse situation," he said. "I don't get it. Maybe I will, but I don't get it yet."