Hearing the N-Word in the Metaverse Is Just the Beginning
By Naomi Nix, February 24, 2022
I heard the N-word in the metaverse, but first…
Today’s top tech news:
EBay says it’s losing customers as people return to stores.
Cloudflare agreed to buy Area 1 Security in its biggest-ever deal.
Food delivery heats up with U.K. startup Gousto raising $230 million led by Softbank.
Some things are too real
I can still remember the first time I heard the N-word uttered aloud. I was just a kid having fun on the playground of my elementary school, when a Black boy I didn’t know well used the word in passing. Though I knew he meant it innocently, I felt startled by the exchange. That moment would jumpstart a yearslong personal exploration of how Black people suffer from, respond to and repurpose words designed to demean our humanity.
The last time I heard the N-word was a few weeks ago, after I emerged from a brief appearance at a 2 Chainz concert in Horizon Venues, a live events app on Meta Platforms Inc.’s Quest virtual reality headset. Another user — who was Black, at least by the appearance of his avatar — called out to me, using the N-word as he invited me to travel to another part of the app. We were both legless cartoons in the virtual world, but hearing the word from his real voice unsettled me just as much as it did on the playground decades ago.
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