Like other nations, Iceland&rsquos tourism too suffered in the pandemic situation. But it recently hit upon a unique idea to draw global attention to its many attractions &ndash a spoof on Mark Zuckerberg&rsquos rebranding of Facebook (the company) as Meta.

End-October, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg, in his Founder&rsquos Letter said, &ldquoWe are at the beginning of the next chapter for the internet, and it&rsquos the next chapter for our company too.&rdquo

Expanding on his idea, he said, &ldquoWe&rsquove gone from desktop to web to mobile from text to photos to video. But this isn&rsquot the end of the line&hellip The next platform will be even more immersive &mdash an embodied internet where you&rsquore in the experience, not just looking at it. We call this the metaverse, and it will touch every product we build.&rdquo In short, metaverse is expected to bring the physical and the digital world together. He also released a film on the same.

While the world debated or trolled the idea, Iceland went a step further. It created a whole new campaign that is a parody based on Zuckerberg&rsquos announcement and the film sans the vitriol. The video &lsquoIcelandverse&rsquo where they asked viewers to join their &lsquonew&rsquo, &lsquoimmersive&rsquo world which was &lsquoreal&rsquo a world where you would not require VR/AR headsets to be transported to the middle of a digital universe.

Even those who have not seen the Zuckerberg film cannot miss the similarities (dress to dialogue) between Icelandverse presenter &ndash chief visionary officer Zack Mosbergsson (played by Icelandic actor and writer Jorundur Ragnarsson) &ndash and Zuckerberg, including an earlier viral post showing the FB founder applying sunscreen.

However, Zuckerberg too has taken the spoof in good humour.  &ldquoAmazing. I need to make a trip to the Icelandverse soon,&rdquo he responded in the comments section.