What's so great about the metaverse?

I'm one of the many skeptics about the metaverse. I think that the reason this idea is suddenly so popular is because it is baked by a large company (Meta, former Facebook), and due to the pandemic: while having a metaverse to explore could be a great opportunity during a lockdown, who would prefer a meeting in the metaverse vs an in-person meeting when the real world is freely accessible? (Except if you're meeting people form the other side of the world, but the use cases that are being pushed for the metaverse don't seem to discriminate between somebody physically close to you or somebody very far away).

But I know that other people have a different opinion. So if you're a metaverse supporter, why do you like the idea? Why isn't everybody on Second Life and what Second life got wrong that the metaverse will get right? Is VR a key part of the metaverse or can you also have one without VR? If VR is a key component, why isn't that just a VR videogame? Which characteristics should something have to be considered a metaverse? It is possible to have a metaverse on Minecraft like this article claims [1]?

Of course you don't have to answer all these questions, you can just skip them an go straight to the point it your point has nothing to do with them.

[1] https://debugger.medium.com/the-metaverse-is-already-here-its-minecraft-99c89ed8ba2