Introducing Explorers of the Metaverse
A new era awaits
In a universe where truth is often fumbled for falsehood, sometimes unintentionally but more often deliberately, you deserve better.
Kia ora, and welcome to the Substack of Explorer of the Metaverse, where we can make that dream of high-quality, fact-checked news a reality.
What’s going to be here?
This excerpt from the About section should sum it up.
Explorers of the Metaverse was founded based on one key principle alone - you deserve to get closer access to the content that you love the most, in the metaverse, so that creators and users can team up and achieve their dreams. Our products are designed to facilitate this handshake between these two social groups.
Firstly, the very website and newsletter that you’re reading this on is intended to give you the facts when the events happen. We try our hardest to get accurate information, vet this information and send it out to you as quickly as possible so that you’re in the loop. Unlike most places where bias and tribalism run rampant, we distinguish as much as possible between the news pieces and the opinion pieces because opinions are opinions but facts are current matters. If current affairs don’t tickle your fancy, we also publish reviews about the content we consume (often experiences) and what could be improved about them, highlighting the “hidden gems” whilst pointing out flaws to be aware of.
Pages here are currently rather rough around the edges, so please be patient as over the coming days, content gets written, edited and revised to conform to the quality of editorial content that you would expect from any other writer on this platform.
Why Substack? Why not Ghost/Medium/your own solution?
I am well aware of some people’s animosity with regards to choosing a platform provider which has welcomed misinformation with open arms under the guise of “free speech and transparency”. However, please do hear me out on why I have chosen the path that I have taken.
First of all, Substack is a platform geared for the news of today involving social participation not to mention the fast-flowing nature of news today. Whilst static blogs are genuinely great for sharing your own creations, they are slightly less great when you have to MacGyver your own social interaction and moderation solutions. Sure, you can set these up, but this leads into my next point:
Most of you are probably overestimating my technical skills at setting something like this up. Sure, I probably could learn to set this up, after pouring time into learning a language powering a framework that backs the program and do everything else associated with web development. I only have to look to see one of the other recent blogging platforms to see that their website, a self-host of Ghost was completely down. I don’t want to risk downtime in an environment where downtime is harmful. Not to mention that if I decide to pursue a self-hosting option, whilst there are free options out there, they are severely limited. It’s why the number of “news” accounts on Twitter and YouTube have exploded. Saying that, this doesn’t mean that once this is large enough, it won’t move elsewhere. The events of tomorrow won’t be exactly the same of the events of today.
Now, onto the dead cats in the cupboard: those pesky dis-informers seeking to twist the truths into lies. I absolutely understand your resentment for not tolerating discrimination and misinformation. However, in my experience on Substack, there are a few factors which limit how much of this ends up in your inbox such as the need to subscribe to these newsletters in the first place1, creating closed-off environments which generally stay insulated from your own newsletters; the social and moderation features that Substack provides to writers; not to mention the tens, if not hundreds more writers who do in-depth reporting which also benefit from these same policies, especially the ones here (in New Zealand) who have done pieces which have been picked up by everyone else. Safe to say, it's not all doom and gloom; like with any platform, there will be undesirables, but they're largely mitigated by vetting who you meet, hear and watch, just as always on the internet.
Why not stay on Twitter?
Full-scale blogging/writing/”journalism” is much different to the microblogging that Twitter and similar services provide and it’s a shift that I have been wanting to make for a while. This change was always going to happen, it just happened more quickly than anticipated as a result of recent events. Dependent on how the rest of the community reacts, I’ll either stay on Twitter, jump into the federation of Mastodon or both. Of course, I’ll let you know where things head.
Why metaverse? Why not Robloxia, etc.?
It’s the name of the Roblox group that I used when first developing Explorer. Metaverse is also a generic term used to describe social ecosystems such as Roblox. Robloxia contains a trademarked term inside of it and other generic alternatives didn’t exactly flow well with the name (Explorers of Social Worlds, anybody?).
How do I keep in touch? How do I help you?
Great question! You should absolutely subscribe to this Substack by clicking that magenta box. Doing this will get you the latest posts as they come, hopefully weekly.
If you’re not too keen on certain types of posts, you can always adjust your subscription by going to the button with a hamburger menu and your profile picture and click “Manage Subscription”. There you will see a list of categories, which you can check and uncheck to your liking.
And don’t forget to shoot a link off to someone who you know who might enjoy this. Maybe they’ll be hooked on longform pieces about Roblox, something that’s been done numerous times before yet none of them rather successfully. Hopefully this time it’s different?
1: Yes, the Discover tab exists. I never use it because of how useless it is.