I love the internet. Truly. It's opened up so many possibilities for people; it's a repository of endless knowledge and tools for improving your life.
But then there are moments like this where I wonder if it was actually a mistake when I weigh the pros and cons. I think there's an undeniable point about the internet: that despite the depth and breadth of information at the touch of our fingertips, people choose to be stupid. It's as if they want to listen to no one but their own emotion-based opinions.
One of those is an idea that caught on like wildfire about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6 video game. As I've written in the past, the series has always been controversial, but I've always tossed it into the category of societal good due to its absurdism being both an outlet that actually promotes a healthier and less stressed mind and an incredible commentary on modern society.
I always tossed it into the same category as "South Park," you know, before it sold out:
Did GTA cause children to become violent criminals? The easy answer is “no.” I’m one of the billions who have played the title at some iteration and to say that the game caused my generation to become violent is laughable. Just like they said D&D and movies like Scarface would turn people who watched it into raving lunatics, GTA provided a place to escape to, a place that laughed at the world you escaped from.
I tell you all of this because I wanted you, dear reader, to understand what GTA actually was without interference from the media, politicians, and pearl-clutching Karens. These games are definitely not for kids. They’re immoral and no one in these games is a model citizen worthy of being imitated…but they’re fun. They don’t adhere to modern “morality,” in fact, the games constantly spit in its face and that’s a good thing. It demolished sacred cows and mocked the self-important shallowness our society continues to obsess itself with.
It seems, in many ways, Grand Theft Auto is about to head in the same direction as "South Park," and while the clues are there, it's yet to be seen how far that fall is.
In any case, the controversy has always been around the game's ready relationship with drugs, violence, sex, and irreverence for everything under the sun, something that is great in the context of its absurdism, but now the main controversy around the game (outside of its potential loss of irreverence) has to do with the relationship that takes center stage for the game.
GTA 5 introduced a multi-protagonist system where you swap between three different characters, and their storylines eventually come together to form one big story, like a well-written movie. GTA 6 seems like it will continue this, but now with just two characters: a woman named Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, who are apparently in a committed relationship that the player must maintain in some ways.
Many gamers are already annoyed at this prospect, though it's not yet known how in-depth the upkeep for the relationship is; the people most upset about it are TikTokers.
As my friend Sydney Watson points out, a slew of posts on the platform are people declaring that they shouldn't play the game because it's "cheating." Women are declaring that they aren't going to let their husbands/boyfriends play the game, and advise other women to put that boundary in their relationship as well.
Watson brings up a point that I think is poignant, and it's the primary reason I wanted to bring up this subject with you. It's something that I think we need to make clear in an age where the line between immersion in fantasy and reality is getting blurrier and blurrier.
Intent is everything in escapism, and emotions are not reality.
Watson brings up that the primary consumers of dollhouse-type games like "The Sims" are, in fact, women. In games like "The Sims," you also date, marry, and start families with your characters. Nobody with any sanity ever accused someone playing "The Sims" of engaging in romance with the characters. It's just a game mechanic, or something that you must do in order to win the game.
If you were to look at any of these women on TikTok in the face and ask them if their escapism equates to direct involvement, they would look at you like you were crazy. The women sounding off here undoubtedly engage in escapism that revolves around romance, because statistically speaking, romantic escapism is primarily consumed by women.
This includes romance books, romance movies, and games where relationships are a big mechanic.
We know that women are consuming them in large quantities because all of those things I just named are multi-billion dollar industries... and not one person has raised a peep about any of this being cheating on your partner, or at the very least, it's not a mainstream claim.
So how is GTA6 different?
It's not, but thanks to the internet — namely social media — people have managed to convince themselves through validation, and others through peer pressure, that your emotions are reality. Your feelings are the facts. If you feel like your man having to take a woman on a date in a video game is the equivalent of cheating, then it is.
Never mind that it's not your boyfriend actually doing the dating; it's two characters in another world. Never mind that the only difference between this and a movie is the clicking of a few buttons. Never mind that this is all part of an overarching story that just happens to be interactive.
The emotion-based mind virus says you should be jealous, suspicious, and resentful, and so you are, without question. It's trendy to be so!
I think what I'm really trying to say here is that we should just nuke TikTok. Between this and the Lindsay Clancy trial, I think it's legitimately turned people into unrepentant idiots who are so disconnected from reality that they can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not, which is hysterical, because they always said that would happen to gamers, and yet gamers continue to be the group who know the difference.
