The Metaversity Ate the University
11th May 2022
Peter Wood’s essay provides two necessary and overdue contributions to understanding the madness that has gripped America’s college campuses—and by extension our ruling class: a forthright recognition of false political language and an account of the sociological origin of the Critical Race Theory movement. But while it is necessary to understand the faulty intellectual wiring that has been laid within the university, it is insufficient to explain the power surge that has short-circuited our public discourse and—it seems—essentially fried so many bright young brains.
A new force has emerged that deforms young minds before they ever arrive at university: the social internet. College campuses no longer shape young souls. Rather, colleges are being reshaped by the students. These students arrive with brains pre-wired to rebel against the university’s most basic cognitive demand: reflective contemplation.
The true roots of our societal obsession “with race” may owe less Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw than it does to Facebook and Twitter. Our obsession “with gender” may owe less to Judith Butler and John Money than to Tumblr and TikTok. The woke ideas gestating for decades in academia have not suddenly swept through society because of their inherent strength, but rather because they are uniquely well-suited to shallow, impulsive minds. College is not more important now than ever. It is less. The university has become handmaiden to the metaversity.