742
This short clip of the shopping of the future from Walmart, a popular US store chain, has been viewed more than ten million times on Twitter. Those who have seen it, and those who have shared it on their profile, have associated the virtual visit to a megastore with the metaverse that has been talked about so much lately, after Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement. But the metaverse has nothing to do with this video, at least from a chronological point of view.
But that’s the point. As more than one user, who did the proper research (and verification), pointed out, the clip that pretty much everyone passed off as a metaverse was commissioned by Walmart in 2017 to impress the influencers who would attend the popular Sxsw festival. every spring in Austin, Texas).
So let’s talk about almost five years ago. And despite this, Twitter users have seen in the shopping cart and virtual shelves the future imagined by Zuckerberg on which many other companies are pouncing, with enormous investments. And they were all so convinced (that it was the metaverse) that they criticized both the old style graphics of the demo and the purpose of that virtual reality. “If in the metaverse to do the shopping I have to spend the same time as I spend in a real supermarket, carrying out the same operations, I might as well go to a real supermarket”: this was the common thought.
The truth, laid bare by this viral clip, is that the potential of the metaverse is still unexpressed and that the virtual world that Zuckerberg points to is still too much like Second Life in the perception of users. Or to an old clip where a Walmart customer grabs a virtual bottle of wine and casually tosses it into his cart.
edited by Pier Luigi Pisa