It's the end of the world as we know it.

One of the unexpected benefits of being a youth of the Internet Age is the ability to look at how time and again the corporate suits seem to think that the Internet is something which can be co-opted, controlled, coralled, and otherwise bent to suit their whims. The popular media seems to be replete with examples of how there's this apparent perception that all a company needs to do is to sprout a website with pastel colours and fancy designs to be "cool", or failing that, some cryptic ad campaign with a URL composed of nothing but oddly oblique symbols or sentences or phrases which may or may not have anything to do with the product or service that they're selling. We're jaded to things like that now. We lived through the hype and promise of the Dot-Com Bubble, and we're living right now in the hype and promise of "Web 2.0".

But of course once in a while a company throws us jaded netizens a curveball by doing that is so completely and ludicrously over the top that it's simply hard to believe it's true.

Right now, that company is Wal-Mart.


It's the end of the world as we know it.

Wal-Mart just recently launched a new website known as The HUB, and ostensibly, it's a "social networking" site (which is incidentally light on the "social" and completely non-existant on the "networking"). It's supposed to ape MySpace, apparently.

Take a look at one such user's account and then gauge the reaction by one young girl who was polled about this: "Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren't at all, and they were just being kind of weird," she said. "Are these real kids?"

And check out the video of the perky Asian "tween" linked on the front page:

Shopping will be my number ONE hobby this fall. I am going to be the most fashionable teen at school! I'll be on the lookout for the latest fashions. From leggings to layers, to boots and flats, big belts, and headbands! I'll be looking for it all! Layering is SO IN right now. Hobo bags are also in style. OH! And big sunglasses! WHOO!! I don't know where to stop! With all of the new clothes I'll be getting, the kids at school will be begging me for fashion tips!

And I feel fine

At the same time I can't help but wonder if today's marketing wizards and boardroom executives just haven't learned the number one rule of marketing: understand your target market. Understanding your target market isn't about setting up some false veneer of a social blogging website with a me-too façade. It means actually getting involved with them and understanding why they make the choices they make. And all of the hip and trendy websites with blog posts of questionable veracity and obviously scripted "reality videos" isn't going to change that.

But at the same time, I think about what I see in today's youth when I'm out there, and I can't help but wonder if in fact that's what they've done. Are today's kids really that shallow and materialistic? I've seen middle schoolers toting around iPods, PSPs and cell phones. Parents are now buying these kids thousand-dollar laptops for school when I'm sure it should be plain as day that an old fashioned notebook and pencil would do. For every youth I've seen who chooses to fight the establishment there seem to be a veritable legion of them who flee to the comfort of the things they buy. And yet, there they are. And I suspect, there are more of them than there were when I was their age. I can find some comfort in that, that despite all of the noise there are people out there who get the message. I think that as long as at least someone out there recognizes the monumental shame at the heart of marketing campaigns like Wal-Mart's, there is still something left for me to believe in amongst our youth.