The Insane Lies Men Tell Themselves and the World to Hide From Reality

(Response to this insane stupidity and lies. Anyone who actually was there knows this is bullshit. But other than me, they keep silent: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/social/pedro-domingos-to-mark-zuckerberg-right-idea-at-the-wrong-time-is-the-wrong-idea-its-too-early-for-the-metaverse-and-too-late-for-/amp_articleshow/126564541.cms)

The tech industry loves a clean alibi. When something fails, it reaches for a phrase that sounds analytical but asks nothing of anyone. Too early. Too late. Wrong timing. The phrase lands like a lab result, sterile and final, absolving everyone in the room.

“It was too early” is the industry’s favorite lie.

It soothes investors. It flatters founders. It erases victims. And most importantly, it prevents any reckoning with the actual systems that caused the collapse.

A recent example comes from prominent machine learning researcher Pedro Domingos, speaking to Mark Zuckerberg about Meta’s ambitions: “The right idea at the wrong time is the wrong idea. It’s too early for the metaverse and too late for LLMs now.”

It sounds incisive. It sounds wise. It is wrong.

AR and VR did not fail because of timing. They failed because of people, power, violence, exclusion, and narrative control. Timing is the lie men tell when they cannot admit what they destroyed.

The Timing Lie Exists to Protect Power

Timing explanations do something very specific. They relocate failure from human systems into abstract chronology. No one harassed anyone. No one excluded anyone. No one hoarded capital or silenced competitors. The calendar just did not cooperate.

This is comforting nonsense.

When AR and VR were gaining momentum, the technology was advancing rapidly. User interest was real. Creators were entering the space in large numbers. And critically, women were arriving with energy, skill, and world building vision. Entire women led creator ecosystems were forming. I know this because I was building one at the center of it.

The collapse did not arrive slowly or naturally. It was abrupt. The momentum did not fade. It was shut down.

The question is not why the world was not ready. The question is why the industry was so determined to make sure certain people were not allowed to shape it.

AR and VR Did Not Collapse Because They Were “Too Early”

“Too early” suggests immaturity. It suggests a technology ahead of its time, waiting patiently for culture to catch up.

That is not what happened.

What happened was that as women entered the AR and VR ecosystem in meaningful numbers, the social environment turned hostile. Funding failed to reach them. Media platforms refused to amplify them. Industry spaces became unsafe. And the people with narrative power pretended none of this mattered.

This was not a technical failure. It was a social one.

Immersive technologies are not neutral tools. They are social environments. They succeed or fail based on who feels safe building inside them. You cannot build a future world while violently excluding half the population and then act surprised when the world collapses.

Narrative Gatekeepers Shape Failure Long Before Products Die

To understand why timing is a lie, you have to look at who controlled the story of AR and VR.

One of the most influential early platforms was UploadVR. Founded in 2014, it positioned itself not just as a media outlet, but as an ecosystem hub. News, events, coworking, industry access, narrative legitimacy.

UploadVR received early and meaningful funding. In 2015, it raised a $1.25 million seed round led by Shanda Group, with participation from Silicon Valley investors. This capital mattered. In a young industry, funding does not just buy operations. It buys authority. It decides whose work is seen, whose events are legitimized, whose voices are amplified.

And here is the structural truth. UploadVR had money, media power, and influence. Women led creator ecosystems did not. Despite proven traction, real communities, and actual innovation, women builders were left unfunded, unsupported, and invisible.

This imbalance was not accidental. It was structural.

The UploadVR Lawsuit Was Not a Scandal. It Was a Symptom.

In 2017, UploadVR was hit with a lawsuit filed by a former Director of Digital and Social Media. The allegations were severe and detailed. Sexual harassment. Gender discrimination. Wrongful termination. A hostile workplace culture described as a boy’s club built around sexualized behavior.

According to reporting based on the court filings, the office allegedly featured a room with a bed used for sex, referred to internally as a kink room. Condoms and underwear were reportedly left behind. Female employees were allegedly paid less, demeaned, marginalized, and fired when they objected. Women were reportedly expected to clean up after these events.

This was not rumor. It was sworn testimony.

What matters is not shock value. What matters is what this reveals. The same organization that held narrative power in VR operated within a culture that treated women as disposable, decorative, or silent. That culture did not stay internal. It shaped the ecosystem.

Optics Over Talent Is How Industries Collapse

While UploadVR refused to support women led creator communities like AR/VR Women and Allies, despite our size and visibility, it did something else instead.

It promoted a group of “models in tech.”

Women were present at events, not as builders, leaders, or creators, but as curated visuals. Hostesses. Optics. Safe femininity that did not challenge power or demand resources.

This choice was not cosmetic. It was strategic. It sent a message about which women were welcome and which were dangerous. Talent was sidelined. Image was rewarded.

This is how ecosystems rot. When appearance replaces competence, when narrative control replaces innovation, when safety for power replaces safety for people, collapse is inevitable.

The Collapse Was About People, Not Products

Here is what actually happened, in order.

Women entered AR and VR because the opportunity was real.

Harassment, exclusion, and structural hostility pushed them out.

Media and funding remained concentrated in male dominated institutions with deeply unhealthy internal cultures.

As women left, the design worldview narrowed.

Immersive environments became less welcoming, less interesting, less humane.

Adoption declined.

This is not ideology. It is cause and effect.

You cannot build social worlds by excluding social reality.

“Too Early” Is the Industry’s Emotional Defense Mechanism

When men say AR and VR failed because of timing, they are not making an analytical claim. They are protecting themselves from accountability.

Timing explanations do three things very efficiently.

They remove violence from the conversation.

They treat technology as separate from culture.

They allow the same people to fail upward into the next cycle.

Timing did not chase women out of AR and VR. Hostile systems did.

Timing did not erase creator ecosystems. Narrative gatekeepers did.

Timing did not empty virtual worlds. Exclusion did.

The Refusal to Name Structural Failure Is the Real Constant

Postmortems of AR and VR rarely mention gendered violence, harassment, or exclusion. They talk about hardware costs. Consumer readiness. Market cycles.

This is not oversight. It is training.

Patriarchal systems survive by refusing to see what would indict them. If violence is never named, it never has to be addressed. If exclusion is never acknowledged, it can be repeated indefinitely.

And that is exactly what is happening now with AI.

This Is Not History. It Is a Warning.

AI is following the same pattern.

Capital concentration.

Narrative control.

Dismissal of early warnings from women and marginalized experts.

Sanitized failure explanations ready in advance.

If these systems fail, men will again say it was timing. Or misuse. Or inevitability.

It will be a lie again.

Conclusion: The Truth Timing Was Meant to Bury

AR and VR did not collapse because the world was not ready.

They collapsed because the industry refused to include the people capable of building worlds worth living in.

“Too early” is not an explanation. It is an eraser.

The real explanation is this:

Immersive technologies collapsed because women and diverse creators were systematically excluded through violence, structural hostility, and narrative suppression. The industry rewrote the story to avoid accountability.

If this bullshit is not named, it will be repeated.

And it already is.

Coda: Why Men Make Terrible Capitalists

There is one final lie sitting underneath the timing excuse, and it explains far more than the collapse of AR and VR.

Men make terrible capitalists.

Not because they lack intelligence or ambition, but because modern capitalism requires a brutal intimacy with reality, and patriarchy trains men to flee reality the moment it becomes uncomfortable.

Good capitalism depends on accurately identifying pain points. Not theoretical ones. Not sanitized ones. Real pain. Who is excluded. Who is unsafe. Who cannot participate. Where friction actually lives. Where trust breaks down. Where human behavior diverges from spreadsheets.

But if you are invested in lying to yourself, you cannot see pain points. If your status depends on pretending harm does not exist, you will misdiagnose every failure. If acknowledging exclusion threatens your power, you will call it timing instead.

This is why male dominated industries keep building products no one wants, platforms no one trusts, and systems that hemorrhage users while executives congratulate themselves on execution.

They are not failing at innovation. They are failing at perception.

AR and VR did not fail because the market was immature. They failed because the industry refused to see the most obvious pain point of all: half the population was being driven out by hostile systems. That is not a cultural footnote. That is catastrophic market blindness.

A capitalist who cannot see pain cannot monetize solutions. A builder who refuses to listen cannot iterate. An investor who dismisses reality cannot allocate capital intelligently.

The timing lie is not just an excuse. It is evidence of incompetence.

When men rewrite structural harm as bad luck, they are admitting they do not understand their own market. When they dismiss women’s warnings as noise, they are discarding the most valuable signal available. When they protect narrative power instead of fixing systemic failure, they guarantee collapse.

Capitalism does not reward denial forever. It only delays the reckoning.

If the tech industry wants to stop repeating these failures, it will have to abandon the fantasy that power knows best and start listening to the people who are actually experiencing the system.

Until then, men will keep calling their own blindness “timing” and wondering why the future keeps slipping through their fingers.