The Delusion of the "Titans": Why VR/AR Failed by Ignoring Reality

The Delusion of the "Titans": Why VR/AR Failed by Ignoring Reality

​The post-mortems are out. The "tech experts" and "industry titans" are writing backward-looking reviews about why the virtual revolution stalled. They talk about "latency," "haptics," and "interoperability."

​They are ignoring the reality that stared them in the face for a decade: Men built worlds women didn't want to be in, and then they watched in silence as the women trying to fix it were destroyed.

​The "Prank" as a Design Flaw

​In one of my first experiences in a professional VR training session, a "prank" embedded in the code by a male developer stripped my avatar naked in the middle of a training group. It wasn't a glitch; it was a deliberate, sexualized assault on a random woman—a jab to assert some kind of dominance by some loser techbro coder with a "Security Guard of the Patriarchy " mentality. The avatar was already a problem, a porn-star fantasy forced upon a professional user.

​The industry’s response to these "pranks" and our comments, talks, articles, and advocacy for a safe and inclusive Metaverse was a collective shrug. They ignored us. Utterly. The whole greater half of humanity was excluded in the building of the Metaverse so far.

Who cares if women hated these nasty pranks and harrassment? Who cares if they made all women enemies of the tech at the front door?

The Ultimate Failure of Protection

​While these "Titans" were busy playing with their digital toys, the real world was crashing in. As the head of AR/VR Women and Allies, I wasn't just fighting code; I was fighting for the lives of the women in my group, for a vision of promise and opportunity that this tech could provide in so many arenas. The future looked so bright. we were all so excited. Until it really didn't and doesn't and won't until we end the power of men over women.

​When the leader of a major advocacy group is kidnapped and forced into sex slavery, the "community" shouldn't just feel "scared"—the industry should be on trial. The women in my group knew something horrific had happened to me. They felt the vacuum where leadership and safety should have been. And yet, the "industry reviews" never mention the trafficking, the exploitation, or the fact that the virtual world was being built by the same mindset that enables these crimes in the physical world.

​The Myth of the "Titan"

​Industry is supposed to be about solving problems. If you aren't addressing reality, you aren't a Titan; you're a pretender.

​A real leader looks at the data:

• ​Reality: Women won't buy a headset if the environment is a digital locker room.
• ​Reality: Women won't participate if their advocates are being trafficked while the tech world looks the other way.
• ​Reality: If you lose the women, you lose the market.

​The Cowardice of the "Post-Mortem"

​And now, these men wonder why the lights stayed off. But instead of looking at the wreckage and actually analyzing it, they write these completely made-up narratives to explain their failure. They invent technical excuses and market theories because they are too arrogant to admit the truth: they were incompetent.

​They look so f***ing stupid pretending the problem was "screen door effect" when the real problem was that they built a house where women were assaulted at the front door. They aren't visionaries; they are failures who would rather lie to themselves than solve a problem.

​The Bottom Line

​VR and AR didn't fail because the tech was too early. It failed because the leadership was too backward. They ignored the fundamental requirement of any civilization—digital or physical: Safety and Autonomy.

​This same dynamic is happening in AI. The same blindness. The same delusions. The same blind spots that turned the Metaverse into a ghost town are now being coded into the "brains" of the next generation of technology. If the creators don't understand basic human safety and autonomy, the result will be the same: expensive, biased failure.

​"You can't fix stupid."

​I've done the work, I've led the groups, and I've called out the rot: my points have been proven over and over to the tune of hundreds of billions lost. If the "Titans" want to keep lighting billions of dollars on fire because they’d rather be "right" than successful, that’s an expensive choice they’re making.

​Effectively, humanity will be stalled out on all real innovation until we end the stupidity and barbarism of the patriarchy. Your delusions are not reality, no matter how much or how hard you pretend they are.