The lie of a good video game is that you have a personal, significant impact upon the world. This fabricated efficacy lies at the heart of most game interactions. You probably wouldn’t play if you thought your actions wouldn’t matter. After all, what would be the point of being infinitely competent, like most video game protagonists are, if ultimately the story being told amounted to nothing? Shitty game design, that is.
The lie of every presidential election is that the candidate you have a personal, vested interest in is the hypercompetent video game protagonist of your dreams. They have promised to move mountains and you believe that they have the ability, to say nothing of the will, to do so. And hell, if they can’t do it? Well, they’ve built up a coalition! And that coalition is made up of us! We can back our candidate up! We can build the foundation of a revolution — with our bodies if we have to!
I know you’re expecting me to be a smirking nihilist here and say “none of it matters” but my existentialist dread has always leaned toward the absurd. When someone says “It’s impossible until it happens” I feel a stirring despite my cynicism, a twinge of hope amid a sea of doubt. I want so badly for this moment in time to be the one. There’s never been a better moment for it — or, well, worse. The most horribly perfect moment for a left-populist revolution.
But my immersion has been broken for a long time. When I was younger, I broke it intentionally. I thought to myself, “hey if I can figure out how the game is made, I might be able to become my own game protagonist.” Instead I’ve just found bodies.
We put so many resources into electoral politics. We have gamified it for years. You have to be a fan of someone, otherwise what’s the point? But every decision we make has a toll, and outside the realm of elections, the toll is human lives. War at home and abroad, against terrorism and drugs. Our immigration policies. The model of healthcare we use. The relationship between landlord and tenant. Between boss and worker. Our model of incarceration and justice. Our response to climate change. Each with its own unique death toll.
The figurehead we choose might end up being just as hypercompetent as we’d love them to be. But what about the rest of the system? Even under extreme circumstances, it operates like normal, in the worst ways possible.
If this is all a game, is anyone having fun?
I’m guilty of not doing enough. Of not doing basically anything except use the small platform I have to talk about small potatoes. I have no room to talk. I’m culpable.
But if anyone can see the light at the end of the tunnel, where we come out the other side okay and the final boss has been defeated and we start to rebuild, where resources can finally be diverted from the endless electoral games into building up alternative infrastructures for a better world, please let me know. You can find me here.