There’s been a trending video on Twitter today, supposedly showing how Walmart plans to take advantage of the metaverse. In the video, a virtual retail assistant helps a virtual reality consumer purchase items as if they were actually in a Walmart Supercenter. Oh the joys of VR, right?
This is how Walmart envisions Shopping in the #Metaverse.
Thoughts? 💠pic.twitter.com/5l7KhoBse7
— Homo Digitalis (@DigitalisHomo) January 3, 2022
There’s only one catch to this trending video. While it may be an example of how bungling businesses are attempting to sell us all on the metaverse, it’s not from any recent day. In fact, it’s all the way back from 2017. However, the writers over at The Verge make a great point about the whole confusion. If a video from 2017 is confusing people and passing for “the metaverse”, isn’t that damning of the whole metaverse concept? Isn’t it just a repackaging and rebranding of an old idea? Perhaps it’s just Mark Zuckerburg trying to get ahead of people calling it the Matrix or Skynet…
After all, companies have been trying for years to find new ways to milk consumers in the virtual space. In Walmart’s case its literally by having us buy milk on our devices and having it delivered to our vehicles. Which perhaps is slightly better than having it dropped on our driveways by drones.
All of this put SEARS out of business though, so maybe there’s something to this whole meta thing?
Are you ready to go shopping for virtual items in a virtual aisle? Let us know in the comments below. We’ll read your opinions while we wrap up a couple of auctions for make-believe items in our MMO video game. These +2 agility bracers are worth a ton in digital fantasy currency!
