Moments before Meta's big annual developer conference was set to begin, TechCrunch's staff scrambled to see who had a charged Meta Quest headset, which it turned out was nobody. But because I knew what corner of the closet mine was in (upper left), here I am.

After merging my work Facebook account (Taylor Linguini) with Meta's new universal login system, I pushed a software update, RSVPed to Mark Zuckerberg's big keynote and popped on that bad boy. I also popped on its USB charger because this thing doesn't last that long to begin with and sometimes Zuckerberg likes to do a lot of words.

It took me a little bit of gesticulating wildly to remember the controls, but then I was ready to watch the Meta CEO's keynote, which was attended by myself and 5,400 of my closest friends' torsos, a number that probably accurately reflects how many Meta employees and wayward tech reporters were required to watch this thing in three dimensions instead of two.

Image Credits: Meta/TechCrunch

Firing up the ol' metaverse, I was plopped right into a virtual plaza full of signage and a big brand fountain in the center (all brands need a fountain) with that floppy blue infinity sign. After navigating to the keynote portal and thrusting my virtual torso into a large depiction of Mark Zuckerberg, I got sucked into a VR time-loop situation, wherein I got kicked back to the plaza and had to do it all over again, but eventually [hacker voice] I was in.

During the keynote, Zuckerberg's newly revamped avatar chatted onstage, which I watched in an instance with maybe 15 other people, all of whom probably worked for Meta and thought I was completely deranged, which is mostly not true. While they calmly stood around a small virtual amphitheater watching the keynote, I did the opposite, scooting frantically between them and taking screenshots while pressing myself as close to Zuck's instanced avatar as I could, much like any self-respecting press nightmare person would do at an IRL event.