The scorn denigrating VR and the Metaverse

I read the following article:

Companies Are Spending Billions on a Metaverse That Makes No Sense 

The idea of the metaverse has captivated the attention of rich executives and credulous pundits over the past two years.

Mostly I'm encountering ridicule and withering scorn that either Virtual Reality or the Metaverse will be an success. In the case of VR this goes back to 2016. In my experience all these enthusiasts must be keeping very quiet!  Personally I think both VR and AR (Augmented Reality) will eventually be runaway successes, although the latter will be used much more (but we're talking here about 10 years or more before they both get traction).  The Metaverse?  Certain aspects of it will be a success, admittedly not work meetings so much (although they will still have a role).

Anyway, the article says: 

Who will run this thing?

 Maybe the same guy or company that runs the Internet?

How will licensing be handled?

Same way as the Internet?

How will harassment be moderated?

With as much difficulty as the Internet. It's going to be a huge problem, but I don't think this will have much impact on whether it will eventually become a success.

 and technical limitations (Will full virtual reality suits be cheap and comfortable?).

Not for a fair few years.

The one question I keep asking is: Do people actually want something like this? So I asked Twitter. Out of 17,650 people who answered my survey, 64.5% said nope.

Back in 1990, how many would have said they would regularly go on the net once it eventually became available to them? There's also the question of what he means by "regularly". I would have imagined maybe an hour or two every day, or whatever. But later in the article he says "Few people want to spend all day strapped into an alternate world". Probably not many of those who believe VR and the metaverse will be a runaway success envisages that most people will want to spend their time in the metaverse all day (although some people undoubtedly will, just as some people now play computer games all day or watch TV all day).

Even the biggest advocates of VR headsets readily admit that they’re best enjoyed in small doses and that VR is more of a supplement to modern gaming than a replacement.

But the issue isn't whether VR is compelling and superior to normal gaming now. It's whether it will eventually replace the gaming on a 2D screen.