Oculus Rift started out as a virtual reality project requesting $250,000 on Kickstarter a few years ago. Last year, Facebook purchased them for $2 billion and the internet collectively lost their sh*t. Now we can lose it all over again as TIME Magazine has chosen the picture above — of 22-year-old Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey — as their cover for Aug. 17, 2015.
My first reaction to this cover was, “Why did TIME use a barefoot child jumping at the beach as a representation of virtual reality? Man, the ’90s were weird.” My second reaction was, “Wait, that cover is from this week?” followed closely by, “That ‘kid’ is 22 years old?” Is all of this virtual reality? Is anything real? Have you guys ever just, like, looked at your hands? Whoa.
On a serious note, Facebook is going to be rolling out their first consumer version of Oculus Rift in less than a year, and Luckey has spoken in the past about the difficulties of getting people interested in trying out virtual reality. This cover doesn’t seem to be helping. Some of the internet reactions have likened it to a dumpster fire:
https://twitter.com/gabrielverdon/status/629357667253927936
Palmer Luckey at least has a good sense of humor about everyone’s riffs on the Rift cover:
Luckey loves photoshops? Luckily, Twitter provided plenty of photoshops. Here are some of our favorites: