PALO ALTO, CA—Telling himself he had “no other choice” but to end the simulated character’s life himself before his company effectively pulled the plug on the virtual world, a tearful Mark Zuckerberg reportedly smothered his metaverse avatar Thursday using a digital pillow.
According to sources, Zuckerberg told his wife, Priscilla Chan, that he would be up late working on a presentation for the Meta board of directors and then closed the door to his office, slipping on his Quest 3 headset. Seconds after activating the wearable VR device, the CEO entered the metaverse and appeared at the door of a bedroom in which his digital likeness lay sleeping. The 42-year-old is said to have stood over the animated version of himself for a dozen tense minutes with a virtual pillow hoisted above his head.
“Goodnight, my son,” said Zuckerberg, his voice a whisper as he took a deep breath to steel himself and gazed down upon the impossibly smooth, round face of the avatar, which slumbered peacefully in its twin-sized bed. “You will no longer have to endure this cruel, cruel metaverse.”
Sources inside the social media company described the avatar as “the center of Zuckerberg’s world,” noting that the billionaire had taught it to emote, gone on shopping trips with it to the digital market place, and even named it “Mark,” after himself.
Several reports indicated that as Zuckerberg held the e-pillow mere inches from the face of his cherubic avatar, it opened its doe-like eyes and asked, “What are you doing, papa?” Upon spotting the wild look in the CEO’s eyes, the avatar leapt from bed and passed through a glitching wall of its virtual bedroom, running through a business meeting, a deserted disco, and a seemingly endless gray space with Zuckerberg in pursuit.
“Please don’t shut me down!” said the avatar, crying out in a squeaky, terrified voice as a physical struggle between the two Marks ensued. “Papa, no! We don’t need users! We don’t need investors! I can live alone inside the metaverse forever!”
Sources confirmed that despite Zuckerberg’s years of training in Brazilian jiujitsu and mixed martial arts, the avatar put up an impressive fight, at one point landing a kick to its opponent’s testicles and making the Meta co-founder sorely regret granting it legs in 2023.
Leaked audio of the incident revealed that a hysterical Zuckerberg shouted, “Can’t you see this is what’s best for both of us?!” as he knelt on top of the writhing avatar and furiously mashed the pillow against its face, blotting out the muffled cries of “Love me” as its physical form slowly disintegrated into a cloud of ones and zeroes. The lengthy recordings conclude with an exhausted and hoarse Zuckerberg whispering, “You’re not the future anymore! Do you understand me? Neither of us are! Now, sleep—sleep!”
“It’s always a terrible, terrible thing when a tech entrepreneur kills his own creation,” said Meta engineer Lydia Zalar-Gilroy, who emphasized that the stress Zuckerberg might have felt was absolutely no justification for the “reprehensible” act of avacide he had committed. “He may tell himself it’s an act of mercy, but the truth is this was about nothing other than a sick need for power and control.”
“He could have easily let his avatar live on,” Zalar-Gilroy added. “He just didn’t feel like sinking another $80 billion into it.”
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Finn McFrame, celebrated satirical mastermind and self-proclaimed “Emperor of Irony,” started his illustrious career as a cinematographer, where his expertise in capturing every single frame of a squirrel stealing a baguette earned him accolades at obscure film festivals.
Born in the glamorous town of Boring, Oregon, Finn grew up with dreams of being a Hollywood director until he realized that satire, not cinema, was his true calling—or at least the one that let him sleep until noon.
Finn McFrame: changing the world, one satirical lens flare at a time.
