Captain Marvel star Brie Larson has joined the metaverse, and her fans do not seem to be on board with it.
Over the past few months, the Academy Award–winning actress has been moving into the world of blockchain, metaverse, and NFTs, recently changing her Twitter profile picture to a FlowerGirls NFT made by Varvara Alay. After seeing that move get ratioed—where a tweet gets more replies than likes because of its unpopular or controversial nature—Larson has now moved on to the metaverse.
“Welcome to my lil corner of the @some_place metaverse. Can’t wait to welcome you all in soon,” Larson tweeted on Thursday, alongside a video of her avatar walking around a room filled with NFT art.
Founded by Lana Hopkins and Juliana DiSimone, some·place metaverse is an online virtual reality world, where people can create their own avatar and display NFT art in their own space. Larson’s post was again hit with instant backlash from fans protesting her decision to get into the virtual space.
Why do people hate NFTs and the metaverse so much?
For some fans, Larson’s decision to promote the trendy world of NFTs and the metaverse was a sign of her lost authenticity as an actress. Her move from “indie queen” to Marvel star had “turned her into a corporate nightmare,” one wrote.
The metaverse is in essence a digital playground where, using an avatar, one can visit entertainment venues, workplaces, retail stores, and other cyber locations via virtual reality. While a fully realized vision of the metaverse is probably more than a decade away, investors are already grabbing up virtual real estate and creating digital versions of items from clothes and offices to financial products.
Much of the flak Brie Larson has received for her decision to enter the metaverse and the NFT markets can be put down to the number of scams and rug pulls—when a developer abandons a project after taking investor funds—that have been perpetrated in those markets, as well as the enormous amounts of energy they consume.
The underlying blockchain platform Larson used for her NFT is Ethereum, one of the worst blockchains for power consumption. Currently, a single Ethereum transaction consumes as much electricity as an average U.S. Household uses in a workweek, boasting a carbon footprint of around 140,893 Visa credit card transactions or 10,595 hours of watching YouTube.
Given the large audience celebrities can reach, many online are concerned about the consequences of A-listers like Brie Larson promoting NFTs and the metaverse.
Not all of Larson’s fans turned on her, however. Brie Larson gained 946 new Twitter followers on Thursday, according to SocialTracker.
At the time of publication, Larson had not responded to the online backlash.