The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday, Dec. 23, edition that Meta's Facebook ceased to be cool when the parents showed up, and then the grandparents showed up. The Globe's Tim Shufelt writes that even the company distanced itself from its flagship with a name change in 2021, suggesting that it was all in on the metaverse. Then investors bristled at the idea of tossing unlimited billions of dollars into the black hole of the company's metaverse branch, at a time when the rest of the tech space is kind of moving away from the whole virtual-reality thing. None of which explains why Meta's stock had the best year in its history, second only to Nvidia in the S&P 500, and up by about $600-billion (U.S.) in market capitalization on the year. Meta's triumphant year has largely been driven by vast cost-cutting, including the elimination of more than 20,000 jobs, and a focus on increasing advertising revenue. This is the company whose origin story became one of the indelible films of the previous decade, now seemingly handed over to the accountants. Let us see social network director David Fincher try to make a zeitgeist movie out of that.