Metaverse Pilgrims Tear a Page From the Mayflower Playbook to Make It in the New World

On Thanksgiving, many people in the U.S. are reminded of 17th century pilgrims who left “the old world” and ventured to an unknown “new world” where life would be very different.

The modern-day analog to that historic passage is obviously moving to the metaverse — the next “new world” that is not only unknown but also mostly nonexistent at present.

It got us wondering how experiences of European pilgrims from long ago compare and contrast with what awaits pilgrims to the metaverse. In the spirit of the holiday, we’ve assembled a few tips to help travelers on the Metaverse Mayflower make their way in the virtual wilderness.

Food

Techno-turkey and computer corn? Let’s hope not. The pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock had a tough time finding food at first, and luckily for them the indigenous peoples came through. As there aren’t any metaverse natives, who’s going to feed the new arrivals?

We recently got a taste of what it will look like by way of Chipotle.

As food news site The Spoon reported, “For Halloween, Chipotle created a virtual restaurant inside the online game platform Roblox to give away $1 million in free burritos. Fans and gamers could enter the restaurant, experience a Halloween-themed Chipotle, and get a promo code for a free burrito in the real world.”

And while a real-world burrito still goes straight to the thighs, our metaverse avatars will consume virtual vittles that can be loaded with fat, sugar, salt — but gain no weight.

Money

Whenever you journey to a new world, you’re going to need money.

Having borrowed steep sums to finance their voyage, the pilgrims were already deeply in debt when they reached what came to be known as America. Once they found trading partners, those folks didn’t accept the English pound as payment.

As personal budgeting site Wisebread explained, “wampum was a remarkable innovative currency, with purple beads worth twice as much as white beads, and rules governing the quality, shape and size. It quickly became the defacto currency for trading with the Native Americans.”

The way things are shaping up, there’s no one “reserve currency” for the metaverse. The first pilgrims washing up on the shores of, say, Decentraland will need to arrange for some MANA — the native cryptocurrency for that metaverse. When Meta (formerly Facebook) finally opens the borders to its metaverse, there’s a good chance pilgrims will pay in Diem (aka Libre).

At least your avatar won’t be buying bushels of virtual corn with pixelated purple beads.

Shelter

We learn from the history site Mayflower.com that housing was an issue for the pilgrims who came to America in 1620. Thatched roofs burned easily. Trees had to be chopped.

Then, “the Pilgrims assigned out house-plots to the 19 family groups — each family was responsible for building their own house, as well as supplying labor to build community storehouses, a defensive fort, fences and sheds.”

It’s not all that different in the metaverse, except you won’t have to chop any trees or worry about embers flying out of chimneys because it’s all virtual, all the time.

If anything, worry about the cost of land in the virtual new world, pilgrim. Crypto investor group Tokens.com just paid $2.4 million for a patch of metaverse property on which it intends to put up a virtual office building.

Pilgrims who came to Massachusetts 400 years ago didn’t have to worry about buying land, but metaverse pilgrims probably will. Assume it’s going to cost you some crypto wampum.

According to Realtor.com, “Depending on whom you ask, the virtual real estate business could become the next big thing — or wind up the next big bust. It’s a bit like the early days of bitcoin. Some investors are worried about missing the opportunity to buy digital property in the most popular metaverses — like Decentraland, The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels and Somnium Space — while they still can.”

Neighbors

Indigenous peoples were at first quite understandably alarmed when a big ship (they’d never seen one before) containing a bunch of soggy strangers in funny clothes (they’d never seen that either) jumped ashore and called it “New England” (they’d never heard of old England).

That got sorted out eventually, and so will making friends in the metaverse, with some caveats.

English settlers and Native Americans had the advantage of knowing who they were really interacting with face to face. Avatars in the metaverse offer a level on anonymity that make anyone — nomad or native — more suspicious than they otherwise might be.

On the topic of being like a pilgrim and forming friendships in the metaverse, we have advice.

Megan Fitzgerald, head of Experience and Product Marketing at Facebook Reality Labs told Venture Beat, “What we’re seeing and what we’ve heard from people experiencing this today is when you have people forming meaningful relationships, they spend more time with those people, they spend more of their energy, they spend more dollars. And when you have people spending time and energy with each other, an opportunity to surprise and delight people is to give them more value in this experience.”

Going back to Mayflower.com for answers, we’re told that colonists Myles Standish and Isaac Allerton gifted “a kettle of peas” to Massasoit, grand sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, who in turn “gave to them ground nuts and tobacco as gifts.”

In other words, when you finally cross the digital ocean and arrive in the strange new metaverse, be a giver of gifts. There will be plenty of virtual stores to choose from — basically all your favorite brands will be there — which would’ve been really handy in 1620.