[adeon]

I was at an event where people were making these avatars, many first time users. One person who gave feedback at the end said he was frustrated he could not get the avatar to look like him.

I think whatever the hell Meta is doing with their weird alien humanoids is far from "normie" appeal as well. The furries and anime girls seem more normie in comparison.

I don't know if there is some middle ground that would actually be appealing to some definition of a "billion normie"s. Maybe actually photorealistic looking humans? Making the graphics not look like it's from 2003? Or going the other way: make them look like the Mii characters with Nintendo? Something totally different? Maybe appealing to the furries and anime girls would be actually a good idea at first, to build up some "power users" or whatever, and then attract more casual users.

I share the sentiment of the Instagram users in the article and the grandparent; it is baffling to me why the product looks so terrible, with so many resources poured into the Metaverse.