Flip Phone.
The metaverse is causing an important change in perspective for everyone online. It’s a literal change that will have a profound implication for how we see each other in the future.
And it starts with how you hold your phone.
Our current digital playground is all about the recorded self. You pick up your phone, you activate your favourite app and then broadcast yourself.
We participate in the metaverse differently. Instead of sharing our recorded self, we’re projecting ourselves in real time.
That means we’re flipping the camera around and pointing it at our world instead of ourselves. The metaverse takes care of sharing us.
We put in hours and hours; spend thousands of dollars to “look right” in the camera. If we don’t have thousands to spend, we can fake it with a little softness here, a little glitter there. The apps we love are happy to help fill in the gaps in our makeup and hair talent with intelligent filters and lenses. None of it is real, yet the result certainly is.
An identity in the metaverse works differently. Identity is shared at all times once you’ve begun. But that identity is wholly digital. A creation by you, of you, as you wish to be seen. Our digital identity doesn’t have bad hair days, uneven concealer or discover that a favorite shirt no longer fits. Unless bad hair, concealer and ill-fitted shirts are part of your identity, of course.
And now the phone can flip. With the automation of sharing ourselves we turn our attention to the camera on the other side of our phones. On the other side of the phone is what we experience, what we create, who we love. The things that truly make our identity.
You can hear this change in the language of the moment. Influencers are out, creators are in. People want to be recognized for what they make as much as how they look.
But this also means identity is the most important pillar in the metaverse. If identity remains disposable then we risk people treating each other as disposable. We won’t amass creations that define our identity because the risk of losing it all will be too great. But if we create high value identities in this new, limitless playground we’ll have decades of collaborative, creative fun together. The promise of the metaverse depends on this.
This is why opportunities in Identity are the first place brands should explore as they find their place in the metaverse. If the value of Identity in the metaverse becomes high, then people will carry it with them everywhere.
Then the question becomes: How do brands contribute to identity in the metaverse?
