We all know at this point what avatars are. Mark Zuckerberg, the benevolent ruler of the Meta’s Metaverse concept, seems obsessed with the idea of avatars that resemble us all in more favorable filters, fits, and expressions, becoming the way that we show ourselves to the world. While the Metaverse is nothing compared to how Zuckerberg teased it, he’s still adamant that avatars are the future. In that spirit, Meta is letting certain WhatsApp beta users test out Facebook-like avatars within the popular messenger.
Avatars have long been available in WhatsApp through third-party applications like BitMoji, but this latest move sees Meta making Facebook’s avatars canon to the WhatsApp messenger story.
Meta’s WhatsApp avatars don’t sound as advanced as other apps’, though. Instead of taking a selfie and having that be generated into an Avatar by Artificial Intelligence – and no, this is in no way slander toward Zuckerberg, we’ve been informed that he is, in fact, human – WhatsApp beta will serve you with a base Avatar which you’ll then customize to your liking.
The app will then serve up a host of stickers featuring your avatar, or as Meta would put it, your vehicle of better self-expression, which you can then send around to anyone who wishes to see you engaged in various activities, pulling faces you never pull in reality. It is, however, important to note that not all beta users will have access to the avatar function.
Since 2019, Meta has held the assumption that avatars would be of ultimate importance to the future of society. However, the world is not stable enough to move into the reimagined digital universe of infinite possibilities that Mark Zuckerberg has dangled in front of us. For the moment, avatars seem to be little more than a fad. A trend grasped when a new app comes out and then quickly forgotten about. Just about as efficient and useful as the 3-dimensional television sets of a couple of years ago – a novelty gimmick.
The company has recently added a highly-demanded feature for Whatsapp. It may be a good idea to see what it is.
