[nseggs]

I think this is partially right. The difference is Apple made the Mac. Microsoft made Windows. Facebook was the thing and then Facebook (the thing) made Facebook, the company. The relationship between owner and intention is something like retroactive. If Facebook could have called Instagram “Facebook” at the very moment of acquisition and got away with it I’m sure they’d have been thrilled. But that was similarly never the way of things. Facebook the company has always been trying to convince everyone that Facebook (the originating product and all it’s ill-gotten marvels) is a product of the thinking. But it’s the source. A tiny homebrew app for gossip didn’t suddenly will into existence Instagram and WhatsApp. The nature and timing of the product put the resulting company in a financial position to encourage us all to play along and believe they had anything to do with the purpose and utility of those things. Oculus was similar. The promise of infinite cash for the problem. Make it better faster. Fastest. The product existed, now please believe Facebook is why. Call it meta. The meta is why. Sure it’s a little on the nose, but is just here to assemble the pieces anyway, so who cares what it’s called. Now the carnivorous beast built of such crudely stitched limbs it so desperately tried to integrate has donned a hat. A hat on a hat. Unsurprising, yes.