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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used a livestreamed “trip” to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico to cheerfully promote the brand’s new virtual reality platform.
In the tone-deaf video, Zuckerberg’s smiling, curly-haired avatar “teleported” with Facebook’s social virtual reality chief Rachel Franklin to the devastated US territory where they plugged the social media site’s ongoing relief efforts.
Their cartoons floated in front of a 360-degree video from NPR showing mass destruction and flooded roads in Puerto Rico in wake of Hurricane Maria.
“You can get a sense of some of the damage here that the hurricanes have done,” Zuckerberg said.
“One of things that’s really magical about virtual reality is that you can get the feeling that you’re really in a place,” he added, before pointing out that he and Franklin were, in reality, in two different buildings.
“It feels like we’re in the same place and can make eye contact,” Zuckerberg said.
“We can high five if we wanted to,” Franklin added.
Zuckerberg then went on to promote Facebook’s relief efforts in Puerto Rico, including a $1.5 million donation and building “population maps” to help the Red Cross pinpoint where help is needed most.