As someone who worked at Reality Labs: the Metaverse had real legs but was obliterated by middle management completely out of touch with how young people actually use technology. I built a V1 tool that game developers genuinely needed, and the moment it was done, it got shipped to a team in London (to die), and I was reassigned to a "higher-priority project" that zero developers asked for. Multiply that by every team, and you'll understand why this never took off yet cost 80 billion.