The Metaverse™️. These words bring to mind a world in which people, represented by Virtual Avatars, can inhabit the same shared space while being thousands of miles away from each other physically. They also mean “practically nothing," according to Andrew Bosworth, the vice president of AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) at Meta, who “is tired of being forced to develop another one of Mark Zuckerberg’s crackhead ideas” for the nearly seventeen years he has worked at the company. A recent article by the Associated Press has brought to light the possibility of a terror attack that utilizes the augmented, virtual, and hypothetically real space of the Metaverse to devastating effect. Luckily, we managed to secure an interview with someone who had much knowledge on the subject.
The head of the Taliban’s cyberwarfare division, Iithan Skut al-Baltim, has recently shared his excitement for the launch of Zuckerberg’s long awaited Metaverse. Al-Baltim says, “…it’s really thrilling, I genuinely believe the Metaverse will open a completely new front in modern warfare. I mean, if you think about it, these chumps are going to pay real world money to own what? A pixelated house in a mediocre role-playing game? Makes it that much funnier for us, to be honest, because they’re going to be so mad when we blow it all up in their faces. They’ll go from owning functionally nothing to owning literally nothing. Serves the bastards right.”
When asked if he feared a potentially severe U.S. response to this new cyberterrorism tactic, al-Baltim replied as follows: “The leadership and I actually discussed our concerns over a potential second invasion, and we came to a consensus that if U.S. invades again, we’ll just welcome them with open arms. Quite frankly I think a lot of Americans don’t realize how much we have in common! They just banned abortions; we never allowed them in the first place! Half their country wants a nationalist theocracy, we’ve already got one here! Gay in Afghanistan? Not for long you’re not [sic]. I don’t understand why they hate us so much, yet they try to emulate us at every turn. They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us, I suppose.” Frank words from al-Baltim.
Our field reporter was eager to hear the answer to one final question, asking al-Baltim if there was a current plan of attack in the works: “The art of online trolling is a fickle one, but the crux of the practice is to goad others into doing the work for you. Let’s imagine a child who enjoys playing the smash hit arena Battle Royale game known as ‘Fortnite’. This child enjoys the game very much and wants to show off the latest flashy skins to friends. Unfortunately for the child, he needs real money to purchase the imaginary currency 'V-bucks'. The eager little entrepreneur then somehow gets his filthy hands on his father’s credit card and sets to work. This does not last very long as, after a few months, his father notices several payments made out to the 'Epic Games Corporation' and cancels the card. If one were to promise the despairing child a near limitless quantity of 'hacked V-bucks,' you could get him to do nearly anything. Children make for the best terrorists if you ask me. One could tell him to enter a private conference server used by Meta executives, place him into a conference room with an ongoing meeting discussing 'logistical plans for Metaverse implementation going forward,' and then order him to blow up everyone in the room using his 'Anvil Rocket Launcher' (especially the bald man who bears a striking resemblance to a humanoid lizard. Especially him.)"
While we appreciate Mr. al-Baltim taking time out of his busy day to conduct an interview with us, the BUTT highly condones the activities of any former or active member of the Taliban. We think that he’d be much better off devoting his time to something else. For instance, he could use his skills to code flash games, host a Zoom lecture regarding cybersecurity in our modern, interconnected world, or improve the life of every student immensely by doing away with “Two-Factor Authentication” (by whatever means necessary, God Willing). With all this in mind, however, if one of our readers were to potentially carry out “a little trolling” in the Metaverse, we would be totally indebted to them forever.
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