this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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John Carmack had some choice words when he left Meta.
Imagine getting John Carmack on your project and ignoring him. Like, what was the point? Zuck got lucky in the beginning and was cut throat enough to hold on to it, but he has no entrepreneurial talent.
that whole episode was a waste of a perfectly good Carmack
Facebook would make considerably more money if he stayed out of the decision making processes and just let talented people do it. But ego is going to ego I guess.
I like to think of the average tech billionaire as Dustin Hoffman from Rain Man specifically in the Casino scene. He's a savant at counting cards, and Tom Cruise's character (the investors) see that and help him rack in a shitload of money at blackjack.
Then Hoffman's character decides he wants to try a roulette-type game, a game for which savant-like card counting skills offer absolutely no advantage, and the investors, unable or unwilling to see how roulette is nothing like blackjack just blindly sign on and Tom Cruise quickly loses $3,000.
Why the fuck do we think the dweeb who made Facebook in college and hasn't lived as a normal human for two decades would have any particular insight into how people would use VR?
The scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk7eA4gVDno
Zuck wasn't marketing VR to the average consumer or even the tech enthusiast. He was marketing it to middle managers who wanted to regain control of their WFH peons. During covid, those types lost a lot of control while the workers continued without much change. Now that back to the office is being forced, the target demographic isn't interested.
The middle managers don't even matter in this scenario. No executive wants to buy hundreds or thousands of VR headsets just so their employees can meet in a video game instead of Teams. Actually moving any part of the workplace into VR comes with a massive upfront hardware cost and I have yet to hear anyone articulate a real benefit that justifies such an investment.
Facebook bought Oculus in 2014.
Yes and?
Facebook was marketing their virtual office space stuff during covid. In the infinite wisdom of Zuck, that's the best use of the tech today.
My point is ...what was the plan before COVID? What did VR have to do with social networking?
I don't think he had a plan in the beginning. These people aren't pioneers. They got lucky once, get labeled as a trend setter and then you have to try and maintain that image. VR was going the next big thing, so Zuck bought a company without a plan. Tech companies do that all the time. They see themselves falling behind on something and just buy some random company to appease the shareholders/press.
The VR office thing was just the limits of Zuck own creativity and saw covid as an opportunity to keep their product relevant.
Zuck bought Instagram and WhatsApp and they weren't mistakes. His purchase of Oculus is similar.
I suspect the losses on VR will eventually be offset by AR and smart glasses.
He also bought giphy, onavo, parse, ctrl-labs, eyegroove, daytum, and like a dozen other companies, maybe more. Some of these are totally a waste (onavo and parse were shuttered relatively quickly, giphy cost almost a half billion and got basically no roi, etc). It’s more that you’re bound to hit a few zingers if you can just keep trying because you basically have an infinite money glitch.
Also ctrl-labs is neural interfaces. Creepy name for that right? Especially when fucking meta owns it. Yuck.
I suspect only creeps will buy his peep glasses for rapists and pedophiles. They should be banned and if they are not they should at least be like the apple ones, which are basically a gigantic sign that says “this person desperately wants to follow you and your child into the bathroom and videotape it. They want it so bad they spent $3200 and walk around with this stupid asshole shit strapped to their face”
I don't understand this. Even voyeurs benefit more from the optical nature of glasses than the camera part.
They were at least in the same wheelhouse. Close enough to be seen as a threat to FB. Oculus was just a total shot in a new direction.
Communication would be the underlying theme.
Did zuck personally buy these or did a team of analysts doing research make proposals and he picked some?
Zuck seems quite hands on for big purchases e.g.. I'd lean more to the former than the latter, but I'm sure there's a team of lawyers and analysts somewhere.
He had it. Once.
After that, he's just another mogul with tons of money trying to impose his products by abuse of predominant position.
Zuckerberg was paying for the Carmack name but thought he knew better.
Well obviously!
One of them is a celebrated, accomplished developer. And the other is Zuckerberg.
I do remember a youtube video on C programming language had comments arguing about whether Dennis Ritchie or Mark Zuckerberg is the better programmer.
how embarrassing to compare one of the absolute titans of computer science with some web dev lmao
I remember watching that episode in the Silicon Valley series.
Still wild to me that someone like Carmack was in all this. Like, how did he think this would turn out? I guess the salary must have been enormous.