This strangely accurate short haircut, the black long-sleeved shirt, the piercing look of the blue eyes: it is very clear who is being targeted here. In an Icelandic tourism video, a visit to “Islandverse” is advertised – one Allusion to the video, in which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the renaming of his group to Meta last month and gave insights into his latest idea: In the “Metaverse” physical and digital worlds are to merge with the help of virtual reality (VR).
In the usual cocky Silicon Valley fashion, Zuckerberg promised that you could do almost anything there that you could imagine. As expected, the video, in which, among other things, a virtual image of the group boss immerses himself in surreal worlds, plays cards with a robot and meets flying carp, caused great amusement online. Lots of memes and satiries could be admired on the social media channels. With a little more effort, representatives of the Icelandic tourism industry have devoted themselves to this task.
“Today I would like to introduce you to a revolutionary idea without coming across as super funny”, the Zuckerberg double welcomes the viewer in a living room that comes very close to the Ikea catalog of the original – and of course it looks super funny. The 37-year-old’s strange facial expressions and posture are imitated so well that the viewer has to look twice. And even if the Icelandic impact of the double excludes a real likelihood of confusion, the parody fits the style and gesture of the Zuckerberg appearance very well.
The Zuckerberg impersonator raves about the tech pioneers’ obligatory tendency to exaggerate in front of a vast Icelandic winter landscape, in the world of “Islandverse” everything is real: There is water that is wet. People to come into contact with. And horses with hair that could be touched (only the moss, you shouldn’t touch it, because it is very sensitive). And all of this could even be experienced without stupid-looking headsets. Anyone who knows the original will almost certainly enjoy the parody. It is not for nothing that the video, which has been online since Thursday, was viewed almost 400,000 times by Saturday afternoon.