Late night hosts have questions, suggestions for Facebook's big 'metaverse' rebrand

Peter Weber, Senior editor
·2 min read

A woman recently posted on Facebook an image of the Venus of Willendorf, a 30,000-year-old statue of a fertility figure, "but Facebook ruled the picture was pornographic and removed it," Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday's Late Show "Oh no! Now where will people be able to find naked pictures on the internet? Now, keen-eyed viewers may have noticed that CBS is actually making us censor her, shall we say, Willendorf. And you might be saying, 'Seriously? She's 30,000 years old.' Yes, so are CBS viewers." In any case, Vienna's tourism board is displaying the statue and other art from local museums on OnlyFans.

"But art isn't the only thing Facebook is ruining," Colbert said. "They're still facing accusations of endangering teens, spreading misinformation, and endangering democracy, so they're doing the right thing — rebranding the company with a new name. But that new name is a closely guarded secret that's not widely known, even among Facebook's senior leadership. Well, that's surprising. Facebook has leadership?" he quipped. "Just in case they haven't settled on one yet, we here at The Late Show have come up with a few appropriate names." Or inappropriate, depending on your standards.

Zuckerberg walked viewers and his leadership team through the rebrand in The Late Show's cold open.

Corden

"Facebook's aim with the rebrand is to 'confuse the f--k out of everybody's parents,'" James Corden joked at The Late Late Show. "The craziest part," he added, is that "the new name for Facebook is 'Steven.'"

"I don't know if this is a good idea," Trevor Noah deadpanned on The Daily Show. "I mean, Facebook is one of those iconic brands, like Hiroshima and Ted Bundy. Do you really want to lose that name recognition?"

Look, Noah said, "I don't think the name is really the problem that people have with Facebook. Yeah, society's like, 'Yo, you guys are destroying democracy,' and Facebook is like, 'We hear you — what if we went by Bookface?'" More importantly, "I think we're focusing on the name and that's distracting us from the fact that they're building a metaverse!" he said. "Are we just supposed to pretend that's not terrifying? Facebook has got us arguing about names, meanwhile they're getting ready to suck our brains through the computer and put us into an online labor camp" where everybody talks like Mark Zuckerberg. His Zuckerberg impression freaked out Dulcé Sloan.

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