it brings me no joy to report that the jonas brothers have a metaverse
Hey, remember the Jonas Brothers? Remember that time I performed the thankless task of reviewing their newest album, The Album, which necessitated listening all the way through it three times? Remember how there was a song on it where Joe Jonas definitely said, “I’m your baby spider,” but then the so-called “official lyric video” tried to gaslight me into thinking it was, “I’m your baby’s father,” but now I’ve been vindicated since he was clearly just trying to get ahead of the moth allegations?
My friends and I were investigating their upcoming tour schedule to see if there was any comedic value in following them around the country, (there was not) and we came across. Something.
See, everything listed in the Jonas Brothers’ website header is a The. The Album, obviously. The Tour. The Brands. The Merch.
And something called… The World?
Clicking on The World brings you to what is clearly supposed to resemble a Discord server where the Jonas Brothers themselves (as individuals or a hivemind) and anyone else with an account can communicate about things like, Home, Board, Merch, Tickets, and Space.
Board is what I’ve screenshat here. Home is a chatroom. Merch and Tickets are self-explanatory.
But Space… Space is a gift from the comedy gods themselves.
Recall if you will the time Markerburg rolled out what was essentially a Mii Plaza for Facebook users, and we all mocked it mercilessly (as was our civic duty) until it fell out of relevance. And then recall if you will the Jeremy Renner app, or, the single funniest thing a celebrity has ever done, and ever will do. The Jonas Brothers have combined these platforms into a delightfully horrific, persistently buggy spectacle of sight and occasional, jarring sound.
You don’t want to enter Space without any training. Just like real space, it is imperative that you are first briefed on what sort of hostile situations you might encounter. Or in this case, hostile entities.
Clicking on the Jonas Brothers’ account in Board opens a sidebar that reveals… the ways they have chosen to represent themselves in Space.
These creatures are clockable as Jonas Brothers only because the outfits they’re wearing are the same as the ones from the The Album cover. Nick’s arms are too small. Kevin’s beard situation is one never previously attempted by humans. Like on the album cover of the Jonas L.A. soundtrack, Joe is a different person.
So, when you go to Space, you may run into the Jonas Brothers, and that is what they will look like. Let’s blast off.
You arrive in an unincorporated desert community as the Jonas Brothers’ conception of what the default human being looks like. And wears. You cannot change your appearance or outfit without actually joining The World, and you cannot minimize the chat window any more than that.
(By the way, you have to do this in Chrome. If you try to use Firefox, it will give you a seizure in retaliation.)
I’m not a gamer because I often suffer from motion sickness, but I WASD’d my way around this surrealist temple of Jonas for as long as I could tolerate. Thankfully, it’s still in beta, (where I hope and suspect it will remain for eternity) so you can explore the entire thing in like, five minutes.
Here are all of the actions you can do in Space: Run, jump, double jump, sit, and six different dance moves. One for each good album!
In a return to form, everything in Space has a The. One of the only comforting things about it. Pictured here is The Merch, a gas station with a portal to the merch section of the actual Jonas Brothers website, which is now a distant memory.
The Tour across the street is similar, except you can actually enter the building. Which is surrounded by what appear to be extremely large avocados.
Inside, there is this lounge, and there is the forbidden room opposite it.
The nice thing about Space is that the camera can partially enter restricted areas, even if you can’t. But there’s not much to see.
Beyond The Merch is a phone booth where you can preview a few seconds of “Do It Like That”, the Jonas Brothers’ upcoming collaboration with K-pop band TOMORROW X TOGETHER, available July 7th!
Are you as curious about that big circular thing blocking the road as we were?
THEY HAVEN’T OPENED THE PORTAL TO THE YEAR 3000 YET. IMAGINE DESIGNING A JONAS BROTHERS EQUIVALENT OF SECOND LIFE WITH AN INCOMPLETE PORTAL TO THE YEAR 3000. HOW IS THAT NOT THE BIGGEST DRAW OF THEM ALL?
This is one end of the road. The other end is a sort of Wile E. Coyote “cave.”
PERMIT ME ACCESS TO THE VOID, JONAS BROTHERS. Wait, maybe I can use the camera to-
-it’s not a void at all. It’s not a real void.
Where does this blinding white sidewalk go? I’m so glad you asked. It goes to a pool! But not just any pool!
The pool from the Happiness Begins album cover! With a helpful view of the words HAPPINESS CONTINUES in the sky, in case you didn’t get it. But you cannot actually do the Happiness Begins poses, because lying down is not an option in Space. The grind never stops.
I think it was around this point in the adventure that one of my friends was like, “Is this place as much of a ghost town as it looks, or are there just multiple servers?” So the rest of us hopped into Space, and I am ECSTATIC to inform you:
Space is so much better with a group. You can regard barrel cacti.
You can recreate (to the best of your shared ability) the The Album cover.
You can scale this tiny shack.
You can sit inside of each other.
You can loiter outside this really big door. (Everything is scaled up in Space. Reason unclear.)
And most importantly, you can do things you might’ve been too afraid to do on your own. Like visit The Life.
The Life is a six-room motel…esque situation, and three of those rooms are harboring Jonas Brothers.
You cannot interact with the Jonas Brothers. They can wave to you, and that’s it. I think. I’m worried if I go back enough times, one of them will abruptly be missing. I’ll run outside, frightened and confused, and he’ll ambush me from behind a cactus.
This is why it’s so vital to explore Space with the squad, instead of solo. There’s safety in numbers, and they can help you accomplish the only truly important thing in The World:
Bothering Nick Jonas’s glorified Mii.
Now, I am not suggesting you join The World. Under any circumstances. But you should definitely experience Space for like, ten minutes before they inevitably pull the plug. Give your laptop fan a workout.
