That Walmart VR shopping video is old news but so is the metaverse

There’s a video doing the rounds on Twitter today that supposedly shows “how Walmart envisions Shopping in the #Metaverse.” In it, a virtual avatar browses shelves of virtual groceries, picking and tossing items into a shopping cart with all the grace of stop motion skeleton in a ’50s adventure film. Responses to the clip have been suitably mocking, criticizing the VR experience for its pointless skeuomorphism and outdated visuals.

This is appropriate, given that the video is actually four years old.

A quick Google reveals that the clip was made for Walmart by a digital agency in 2017 to “impress influencers at SXSW” (an example of an obscure capitalist ritual known as a...

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