EU invites to 380,000 franc Metaverse party - only six people show up

It should have been a big, virtual party to get young people excited about their politics, but the plan failed spectacularly: just six people turned up for the European Union's Metaverse event. The EU Commission's foreign aid department had spent 387,000 euros (about 380,000 Swiss francs) to create the Metaversum scenario - an online place where people could log on to a virtual concert, meet others and learn about the EU.

The event, with its own virtual DJs spinning music, was meant to be particularly enticing for young people. And quite incidentally, those responsible wanted to educate them about the EU's development policy. But a correspondent of the international development website Devex found that he was almost alone at the virtual party.

"I'm here at the Gala Concert at the EU Foreign Aid Metaverse. After initial confused conversations with the five or so other people who came, I am alone," Vince Chadwick wrote on Twitter. Yet there would have been enough warning signs.

Only 44 people had given a Like to the online promotional video for the virtual party, in which futuristic avatars bob along to pulsating house music.

The target audience for the event, according to the Commission, was 18- to 35-year-olds "who describe themselves as neutral towards the EU and are not particularly interested in political issues". Brussels had presented the Metaverse in mid-October, but there were difficulties in finding support - even among those working on it in the EU department, as "The Age" reports.