I thought this was a meme. Just looked it up on the US patent database...it's real.
Stuff like this makes me equal parts furious and immensely sad. When I was younger and first watched Wall-E, I thought the obese chair humans were funny and wacky.
Now watching it as an adult, it fills me with genuine horror. All human experiences reduced to virtualized, sterile, mini-games designed to make you as addicted as possible so you consume their products and services as much as possible.
They want us as helpless and dependant on their platforms as they can get us to be. Locked in, forced to dance like monkeys so we can get back to mindlessly consuming more sludge.
Capitalism really is a cancer.