Stephen Colbert Chastises Mark Zuckerberg Over His Tone-Deaf VR ‘Visit’ To Puerto Rico

Facebook founder and alleged Nickelback bully Mark Zuckerberg has taken a fair bit of heat over his idea to meld VR promotion with a horrific tragedy. We’d recommend against it and Late Show host Stephen Colbert is just as exasperated as everyone else is about Zuckerberg’s tone-deaf trot out.

On Friday, Colbert called out Zuckerberg’s VR “visit” to Puerto Rico. The social media titan was in the spotlight for a live 360-video broadcast that transported himself and the company’s head of social VR into a video that showed the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in last month.

“We’re looking around, and it feels like we’re really here in Puerto Rico,” said Zuckerberg in avatar form when showing off the Facebook’s Spaces virtual reality app.

Naturally, the optics and taste level attached to the project immediately came into question even with Facebook’s pledge of disaster relief. (Zuckerberg later apologized.) As is his chat show comedian duty, Colbert tore Zuckerberg’s hurricane tourism as promotional tool approach to shreds in his monologue. It was funny, appropriately dark and drives home a pretty straight forward rule about places that are still reeling from major devastation.

“You don’t go to disaster zone to push your product!” instructed Colbert. “The new Dyson vacuum uses the same cyclonic action that the tornado that just destroyed this town with.’”

If you want to lend a hand with the relief efforts in Puerto Rico, we have a resource that can help.

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