The new promotional video for Icelandic tourism pokes fun at a Mark Zuckerberg meme.
Inspired by IcelandMove over SNL. Alex Moffat's superb rendition of Mark Zuckerberg has some stiff competition, and it's coming from a very unlikely place. Iceland is now calling itself the "Icelandverse."
A smart new video published yesterday to promote Icelandic tourism parodies the one released last month in which Zuckerberg announced Facebook's much-hyped name change to Meta. In that video, the often-maligned CEO introduced the so-called "metaverse," a transcendent alternate-reality utopia where "you're going to be able to do almost anything you can imagine."
Iceland's new tourism spot opens with a Zuckerberg doppelganger sporting a familiar Caesar haircut and trademark black, long-sleeved tee and showing a penchant for awkward hand gestures. "Hi and welcome to this very natural setting," he deadpans. "Today I'd like to talk about a revolutionary approach on how to connect our world without being super weird."
Offering an alternative to connecting through avatars and teleporting, Icelandverse Zuck extolls the virtues of the tangible world with a winning wink and nod. "And what do we call this not-so-new chapter in human connectivity? The Iceland-werse, enhanced actual reality without silly looking headsets."
This tourism ad is brilliantly self-aware, celebrating the wonders of travel by cleverly skewering the notion that AR could ever really compete with IRL. "In our open-world experience, everything is real," Icelandverse Zuck says. "It's completely immersive, with water that's wet. With humans to connect with."
Then the spot takes viewers on an jaw-dropping tour that showcases Iceland's stunning landscapes under the Aurora Borealis — "skies you can see with your eyeballs" — complete with real rocks, real wildlife, real geysers "you can observe from a safe distance" and myriad spectacular waterfalls.
"Icelandverse has been built with experts in government, industry, nature and academia, plus a few volcanoes," said Sigridur Dogg Gudmundsdottir, head of Visit Iceland, in a press release.
By mid-morning today, the video had racked up more than 500,000 views on Twitter and the hashtag #icelandverse was trending.
"The Icelandverse is a world with possibilities so endless they'll be here forever," says Icelandverse Zuck at the conclusion of the video. "So join us today...or tomorrow...or whenever. We are really easygoing."