Mark Zuckerberg responds to metaverse memes with a redesign

() — Mark Zuckerberg, responding to a torrent of memes mocking the graphics of Meta’s latest project, listened to his critics and changed his selfie.

Zuckerberg unveiled Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality social app, earlier this week in France and Spain, sharing a somewhat flat and goofy digital avatar in front of an animated Eiffel Tower and Sagrada Familia.

The internet jumped immediately, mocking what many users saw as (hopefully) preliminary graphics for a startup Meta has spent at least $10 billion in the last year.

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose on Twitter compared the charts to “worse than a 2008 wii gameSlate used the term “buttcheeks.” Twitter was less gracious: “mind-bogglingly ugly” and “an international laughingstock.” Many compared it to the graphics of the early ’90s, noting how lifeless and childish the selfie looked. Zuckerberg quickly earned the “dead-eyed” designation.

Well, apparently Zuckerberg has seen the memes, because on Friday he announced that major updates are coming, along with new avatar graphics. On Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg posted an avatar photo of him looking more advanced.

“I know the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic – it was taken really quickly to celebrate a launch,” Zuckerberg wrote in the caption, adding that the graphics in Horizon “are capable of so much more” and that it is “improving very fast.”

Zuckerberg added that he will share more details at Connect, the company’s annual conference, which took place in October last year.

Facebook planned to spend at least $10 billion in 2021 on Facebook Reality Labs, devoting significant resources to its virtual and augmented reality products and services in last year’s third-quarter results.

Horizon Worlds, from Meta for Quest headsets, is now available in the US, Canada and the UK.