Virtual Takeovers in the Metaverse: Interrogating Power in Our Past and Future(s) with Multi-Layered Narratives

TL;DR

This paper presents Mariah, an AR app that reveals power structures through storytelling in the metaverse, enabling protest and resistance, and examines its implications for free speech and property rights.

Contribution

It introduces Mariah, a novel AR application that uses storytelling to expose power dynamics and facilitate protest in the metaverse, highlighting potential social and legal challenges.

Findings

Mariah enables protests against unethical practices.

The app raises questions about free speech in virtual spaces.

Experiments show potential for AR to challenge power structures.

Abstract

Mariah is an augmented reality (AR) mobile application that exposes power structures (e.g., capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy) through storytelling and celebrates acts of resistance against them. People can use Mariah to "legally trespass" the metaverse as a form of protest. Mariah provides historical context to the user's physical surroundings by superimposing images and playing stories about people who have experienced, and resisted, injustice. We share two implementations of Mariah that raise questions about free speech and property rights in the metaverse: (1) a protest against museums accepting "dirty money" from the opioid epidemic; and (2) a commemoration of sites where people have resisted power structures. Mariah is a case study for how experimenting with a technology in non-sanctioned ways (i.e., "hacking") can expose ways that it might interact with, and potentially amplify, existing power structures.