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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

In Chinese Internet and text slang, "520" means "I love you [urbandictionary.com]". Naturally, there's a lot of romantic gift-giving going on come May 20. This weekend Taobao, an Alibaba-owned online marketplace similar to Amazon, encouraged people to shop via VR headset by offering interactions with a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend [cnet.com].

To enter this brave new world of digital love, Chinese buyers needed the Taobao app and a VR headset such as Samsung's Gear VR [soylentnews.org]. They simply needed to scan this QR code [tmqd.me] and then they'd be whisked off to choose their cyber soul-mate.

Customers were offered two choices: "boyfriend" or "girlfriend", the former played by popular Chinese actor Yang Yang, the latter by actress Dilraba. They would interact with buyers in various prerecorded point-of-view videos, wherein they would wake the user up and even make them breakfast.

This was a move by Alibaba to get more people on board with its new VR video player, developed by subsidiary GnomeMagic. The Chinese giant isn't the only e-commerce company hoping to get buyers in the VR realm, with eBay recently partnering [soylentnews.org] with Australian department store Myer to sell 12,500 products through a VR store.

Has anyone from Taobao gone shopping with an acquisitive girlfriend or boyfriend before?

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