6 Sociocultural Implications

The Metaverse will bring along as much change as the internet has done for human society years ago. It will create a bond between people from all over the world, but it will also pull people apart.

When people interact in the Metaverse, they bring their own values and culture into the mix. If people are allowed to design an outfit for themselves in the Metaverse, some people may be inclined to wear something that they would normally be too embarrassed to wear. They might go for traditional outfits, or flashy ones that are very expressive of the individual’s personality. In a way, the Metaverse, like the internet, allows people to be different, and embrace the difference. The Metaverse will eventually form sub-cultures of its own, like the internet did over the years. It will be “used as a route to access a community, to influence their experiences and it can also be a means of social communion, just like the TV and radio before it.” Countless new ideas and values will merge and form a cultural norm strictly in the context of the Metaverse.

The Metaverse will break down the geographical barriers in the real world, and create a universe without boundaries for people from different backgrounds. It brings about the interaction and overlay between the real and the digital. Like how the internet broke down barriers many years ago, the Metaverse is only going to magnify this effect. With VR technology, it will make sharing much easier and realistic. Right now we can only share pictures and videos, but with the help of VR headsets, other people can experience your content in 3D view. This will almost be like a more accessible and affordable traveling method. As a result, people can get to experience different countries, languages, cultures, and traditions without even stepping foot out of their house.

Some experts think that the Metaverse will cause devastating effects on the global cultural environment. The Western values and norms are dominating the international community. The ideas are exported to the other continents and countries through social media, the entertainment industry, etc. The Metaverse, created by Meta and supported by mostly western companies, will be constructed with Western values and norms as its foundation. If we use Metaverse on a global scale, everyone will be immersed in the same digital cultural environment, which will “hasten the decline of political and cultural diversity”.

Only a handful of superpower countries have more leverage in shaping the world’s shared culture. These cultural exchanges are unidirectional. In airports, you can only see ads from companies that are from politically and economically advantaged countries. The weaker countries only get to adopt the habits, traditions and even languages from the more powerful countries. And you may ask, how do some countries still have their unique traditions? In Spain, people are still maintaining their very different daily schedule. “One of the most powerful forces persevering distinct cultures and communities is their unique physical surroundings.” The unique physical surroundings give people the right place to practice their unique ways. Then culture is further strengthened through human interaction in the physical communities of those countries. From human interaction, we get the culturally-specific elements like food, fashion, entertainment, architecture, arts and literature, etc.

The digital medium of interaction is impersonal. Right now the majority of us still prefer meeting face to face rather than phone calls and FaceTime. If the Metaverse is widely adopted, it will reshape the cultural norms of many countries other than the US and Europe, from which the Metaverse’s own norm is constructed. We are already seeing examples of this phenomenon, from the usage of English across all international businesses, to the social media platforms like Instagram, facebook, twitter, TikTok, where the community guidelines are built based on the western norms, and all the users must adhere to them, no matter where they are from.

It is hard to say whether the political / ideological conflicts or differences between countries would cause individuals, communities, or companies to be banned from the Metaverse. For now we see posts being taken down on social media, but how will that materialize in the Metaverse? Will the individuals in question be banned from existing in the Metaverse, almost like that one episode of Black mirror? What will the cancel culture look like in the Metaverse? What does blocking someone look like?

The lack of variation and competition will eventually dim down the creativity and diversity of our global community. If someone is dissatisfied with their country’s values, they can leave for another one which they think is better. But what if the Metaverse leads to the unification of values in the world? People will lose the ability to pick and choose. Ultimately, the Metaverse will potentially introduce the unification of values, norms, cultures, “exacerbating the existence of universal groupthink and cultural homogeneity”