At least Carmack should really to be able to do better than dismissing it as "emotional and tribalistic", and asking for proof for the concerns being valid; that's not now how it works, and this is not a flaw. We can't really prove that having VR is better than not having it either, or that people being clothed and fed is better than naked people starving... doesn't stop us from feeling strongly about such things, nor should it. Communication can help, it is necessary, but proof? Not gonna happen. Let's say someone fears that data silos like Facebook might be really bad in the case of political tyranny -- let them be able to prove that it will be as they fear, then what? We can't prove that fascism is bad, so it gains us nothing.
FWIW, personally I don't find it creepy, I find it lame. My reasons have to do with human dignity, my stance on advertising (described in two words: Bill Hicks), and a certain little quote going something like "they 'trust me'. dumb fucks". I don't like the other big players either, who all want to be everything to everybody -- that is not a business model, that is creepyness made manifest.
Also, I think everybody should have their own homepage and that RSS is fine kthx, but that is neither here nor there.. though anyone who works on things that do not promote that, but offer people virtual "homes" they never fully own, cannot expect me to get excited about their work. Surely you can see how Facebook fits in there for me, when it comes to the web how I love it, they're with the lamers.
And in general I despise this age of coders and businesspeople considered as philosopher kings, and being against things as the default stance has proven to be useful time and time again, sadly. It's not like I have to convince Carmack or anyone that I have valid reasons to dislike VR, especially VR with which Facebook is in any shape associated -- it's the other way around, if they want to sell to me. But I don't see the point anyway, outside of remote surgery; I generally think alienation is the problem, and this is just another way to experience it more deeply, to get even more lost in the confusion of symbols and things.
Sorry for rambling, I would sum my feelings up with this Bill Hicks quote "it's a piece of shit, walk away". Which is not very helpful as an explanation, but for me it hits the nail on the head: I think the problem is not that some of us don't have all the facts; we are looking at the same thing, just coming to vastly different conclusions. Everybody knows what Facebook, advertising and computer games are, and VR is new in practice but very old coffee in terms of science fiction, so even that is not really new. And you know what, to the degree that those things are benign, their makers gladly would accept if some, even large, segments of the population would not ever accept them, right? Carmack asked for testable claims about Facebook being bad, well, here's at least a testable way to see if things are good, from which we can deduce badness to a degree. And Facebook for one fails it hard, failing it is kind of their mission statement.
