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Multinational Company Sponsors Virtual Juice Pressing Competition Because We Live In A Post-Lapsarian Dystopia
(Photo courtesy of Naked Juice)
Is anything real? Visitors to the extreme western edge of the continent will have the opportunity to contemplate that very question this weekend, when Naked Juice sets up a mobile "virtual juice pressing game" at the Santa Monica Pier.
Naked Juice was actually created in Santa Monica in the early 1980s by two dudes with a predilection for naked sunbathing and the small-scale production of fruit drinks. The company is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of PepsiCo, Inc, the second largest food and beverage business in the world. PepsiCo lost the right to refer to Naked Juice as "all natural" in 2013, after a lawsuit verdict deemed the terminology deceptive.
Like all true advents of late-stage capitalism (and side-project bands of your least favorite ex-boyfriends), the interactive virtual juice pressing game was originally unveiled at SXSW.
Using tablets, three participants at a time can compete to "virtually create their own cold-pressed juice" by racing to put a combination of virtual fruits and vegetables into their virtual bucket. According to a press release, "the first player that gets a combination of the Naked Pressed ingredients of [virtual] celery, [virtual] apple, [virtual] lettuce, [virtual] cucumber, [virtual] orange, [virtual] spinach, [virtual] kale into the bucket wins." Winning is a really strong word to be using there.
After the fastest digital juice presser "wins," a compartment will open in the solar-powered mobile juicer vending machine hybrid truck (at which said players are gathered) and dispense "a real, chilled bottle of Naked Pressed Juice" to said winner. The other two players will presumably get nothing, not even their dignity.
"It's a digital, gamified vending and juice press experience," according to Naked Juice. Technically, all of life is now a digital, gamified vending experience, to be played until you eventually die. The pressed juice in this specific scenario is just icing on the [virtual] cake.
The Naked Juice Play to Press virtual juice pressing game hybrid mobile truck will be on the Santa Monica Pier from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday, adjacent to the great abyss of the Pacific Ocean.
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