11 Signs Of The Apocalypse Wrought By Facebook's Purchase Of Oculus Rift

Scenarios that will play out under blood red skies after the Four Horsemen deliver your new toy.

1. Reallllly immersive viral marketing

One moment, you're taking a quiz to see which Spanish-American War general you are, and the next, a SHARK is flying at your FACE to convey the simple message that new choco-sausage gummy snacks are AWESOME.

2. Movie theaters will die out

Kids will never know the smell of Popcorn Smell™ after Facebook's robot army dusts the Megaplex.

3. Nobody will ever go outside

out·side [ˈoutˈsīd]. noun. 1. The place on the other side of your front door. 2. The space with the crisp, shuffling air and the big, rising/sinking light that hurts so good to look at. (Often helpfully demarcated with colors: green below and blue above.)

If you do wander outside, Facebook will track you by your gait and Rue La La shirt and destroy you.

4. Direct transactions between banks and customers will fade away

As e-commerce sets up shop in virtual reality, users will be increasingly inclined to store their payment information with third parties or with the e-commerce sites, themselves, because NOBODY will have time to take off their goggles to read and type in, like, 20 million-billion numbers every time they want a cut-rate designer 2-in-1 wristwatch/mini-waffle iron. Not apocalyptic, you say? I hope you're right.

5. Kids will never learn that they will never learn to skateboard

That odorless, invisible gas that that Facebook pumps through the tubes and wires and shoots at our faces from our selfie cams to make us drop everything we're doing to see what everybody else is doing...it'll seem like BORING vanilla wafers compared to the intermolecular adhesive goo sealing the Ocubook Rift to our eye sockets.

For a tragic example of what will happen to kids who try to skateboard now that Facebook has purchased Oculus Rift, click here.

6. Karaoke will become a sober, alone-time activity with a programmable virtual audience

What used to be a harmless, once-in-a-lifetime drunken rendition of LFO's Summer Girls in a private room at a bar in Korea Town will instead become an addictively satisfying career in the performing arts as a starving singer surviving on 8-bit pizzas and birthday cakes tossed on stage by adoring virtual fans. For an early and comparatively quaint taste of what's to come, search "me singing" + your least favorite song on youtube.

7. Some weird sexual stuff

I'm not even gonna get into it, but somebody somewhere is gonna start seeing targeted ads for teacup piglets, rectal tubes, and jars of petroleum jelly on their newsfeed.

8. Users will be 10x more likely to fall asleep with their VR goggles on

Fears about the prospect of falling asleep while wearing virtual reality goggles and then waking up clueless about what's real and what's not are older than Doom II. But with Facebook's perpetual reconfiguration of its algorithm to show more and more paid content, things are getting boring and [yawn] our eyelids are growing very, very heavy.

9. The NSA won't have to hire gamers to monitor multi-player realms

Who joins the Rebels, and who joins the Combine. Who resists the Civil Protection Units in City 17. Who speaks of subverting the Overwatch forces -- who speaks of infiltrating them. Who displays sympathy for the Vortigaunts. Who checks out library books on the history and architecture of the Citadel, possibly seeking vulnerabilities in its security perimeter. (Hint: Try teleportation.) Who steals secrets from the Black Mesa Research Laboratory and distributes them to international media outlets. The NSA must know.

Fortunately, now they can just knock on Zuckerberg's door and ask.

10. Innocent kittens will be hunted and destroyed

...because Evil Corporate Overlords don't like furry things!

11. Instead of becoming a creative, human-driven metaverse, VR will principally serve data-miners

Read Jaron Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto here. We are entering a world of pure information, as opposed to pure imagination.

(Also, a lot good things are happening because of VR.)