Elon Musk mocks Facebook’s virtual reality metaverse as putting “a TV on your nose”

Elon Musk poured cold water on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recently announced virtual world during an interview Monday, doubting it would become the future of the internet.

The topic came up in a discussion of current tech trends during the Tesla and SpaceX CEO’s interview with The Babylon Bee, a conservative satire website. Musk did not see the appeal of “strapping a frigging screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave.”

“Sure you can put a TV on your nose,” he added mockingly. “I’m not sure that makes you ‘in the metaverse.'”

His criticisms were not only for the physical headset required for virtual reality (VR). The billionaire also brought up how he, like many others, were warned not to sit too close to a TV screen growing up to illustrate how the user’s eyes could be strained over hours of use.   

Musk saw more promise in connecting the brain directly to computers through an implanted chip, like the brain-computer interfaces being developed by Neuralink, a company he co-founded.

“Long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully, fully in a virtual reality thing,” he told the Bee.

Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced the metaverse in October as an augmented virtual reality experience. Zuckerberg touted it as the next generation of the internet, one you “can be inside of” instead one you look at from the outside through a screen.

But even Meta’s vice president for global affairs and communications Nick Clegg admitted the hardware could get in the way of immersion.

“If I’m lifting my head, it’s because I’m drinking my coffee and this wretched headset is too bulky for me to drink my coffee without moving my headset,” Clegg said in a recent interview.