According to Business Insider, in early 2026 Meta laid off the entire staff of Supernatural, the VR fitness app it acquired for over $400 million in 2022, along with 1,500 other employees in its Reality Labs division. The app itself will remain as a frozen snapshot with no new content, but users fear it will rot as music licenses expire. This decision came after Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth admitted VR is “growing less quickly than we hoped,” necessitating a “right-sized” investment. The move has devastated a core community of users, many of whom credit the $10/month app with life-changing health benefits, and sparked a Change.org petition with over 7,000 signatures. FTC Chair Lina Khan, who tried to block the original acquisition, called the shutdown a cautionary tale of a dominant platform buying and then abandoning competition.
The Spreadsheet vs. The Sweat
Here’s the thing about corporate strategy: it often makes perfect sense on a spreadsheet and feels like a brutal betrayal in the real world. One user nailed it, saying the closure “made sense somewhere on a spreadsheet to some bean counter at Meta.” And he’s probably right. Supernatural required a $300 Quest headset and a subscription, a barrier that kept it niche. When your company is burning nearly $20 billion a year on a metaverse bet that’s going nowhere and needs to pivot all its resources to AI, a small fitness app looks expendable.
But that logic completely misses what was built. This wasn’t just software. For its users—retirees, moms, people managing chronic conditions—it was a daily ritual, a mental health escape, and a genuine community. They didn’t see a “non-core product.” They saw a lifeline. Meta’s brutal efficiency here, giving it a “farewell drink with a turd in it” as one user put it, shows a staggering disconnect between the C-suite and the people actually using their products. It’s a reminder that when you outsource your wellness to a tech giant, you’re always one pivot away from losing it.
FTC’s “I Told You So” and a Community Revolts
Lina Khan must be feeling vindicated. Her FTC tried to block this acquisition, arguing Meta would just buy a top player and eventually kill it. Now, she’s got her proof. In a statement, she said this is “exactly what antitrust laws are designed to prevent.” She has a point. Why bother building a competitor when you can just write a check and then shutter it later? It stifles innovation and leaves consumers with less choice.
Meanwhile, the community’s reaction is a masterclass in grief-stricken, internet-era protest. They’re petitioning. They’re (jokingly) asking Elon Musk or Taylor Swift to buy it. They’ve named their Roombas “Mark Suckerberg.” The anger is raw because the belief was real. As Yale anthropologist Lisa Messeri points out, tech has long benefited from the “endurable myth” that it’s inherently making the world better. Supernatural’s death is a violent wake-up call. That community, that routine, that health data? It was never *yours*. It was always just an asset on Meta’s balance sheet.
Meta’s Pattern and Palmer’s Paradox
Let’s be honest, this is what Meta does. The graveyard is full of beloved products—Facebook Paper, Portal, you name it. When the growth isn’t there, the plug gets pulled. It’s the tech cycle. But what’s fascinating is the reaction from Palmer Luckey, who sold Oculus to Meta. He thinks the layoffs are a *good* thing. His argument, retweeted by Bosworth, is that Meta heavily subsidizing its own studios warps the market and hurts independent developers. He’s not wrong from an ecosystem perspective. But try explaining that to the 64-year-old who bought her Quest with a stimulus check and just lost her main source of joy and exercise.
So we’re left with a paradox. Is it better for a giant to fund and then kill niche innovations, or for those innovations to never exist at all because they can’t compete with the giant’s marketing muscle? There’s no clean answer. But the outcome is the same: a bunch of people who found something that worked for them are now left in the lurch, staring at a $300 paperweight. And Meta moves on, now betting the company on AI. The whiplash is the point.
