Editor’s Choice: Meat is Murder
Look at you, you dirty meat eater. With your sausage rolls, your jelly and your Guinness. You disgust me.
You should be like me; pure, clean, healthy and at one with nature. Look, there’s a bear. Come here little bear. You want to cuddle? Aww, come here and OH GOD MY FACE IT TOOK OUT MY EYE OH FUCKOHFUCK IT’S CHASING ME GET IN THE VAN DAVE IN THE VAN OH GOD NOT THAT WAY THE OTHER WAY FUCK TURN AROUND RUN DAVE RUN! DAVE NOOOOOO!
Kittens die to make your burgers, and rainbows only happen over fields of soy beans and Quorn factories. Also, everyone knows that tofu is delicious and bacon is a tasteless moist cube that saps love out the world. Actually I may have gotten that last one the wrong way around. Either way PETA noticed Super Meat Boy and eDrama was born.
As is often the way with eDrama, it made me hate everyone involved.
Super Meat Boy‘s developers, Team Meat, knowing they would need some kind of PR for their little indie darling, took a leaf out of the Dante’s Inferno book of PR (“If you suggest people molest women and mock religious people, you get free PR!”) and went on the troll-ffensive. In a recent update on the developer’s blog, Edmund McMillen, of the the game’s two creators, wrote:
I actually repeatedly made fake user names in Peta’s forum pushing the game at them in hopes something like this would happen[...]
Though this little fact has gone largely unknown by the derp-o-sphere of bloggers who have been reporting on this story as much possible. The blog post then continues to conflate a dietary choice with a world wide organisation. If you find yourself writing something along the lines of “I don’t mind vegetarians but…” then you’re doing it wrong.
PETA’s history of not really “getting” videogames is a long and disappointing one, giving most self-defined gamers little respect for the organisation. If they’re not complaining about the use of dogs, they’re whinging that a cooking game isn’t vegetarian enough. The group has also repeatedly come under fire for their less than great PR stunts and occasionally extremist nonsense.
As expected the animal rights group responded in their usual tactful way, this time making the so-so parody game Super Tofu Boy. Happy with the free PR train coming into view, Team Meat decided it would be best to turn it up to 11 and called PETA useless, tweeting: “How many Peta members does it take to change a lightbulb?…. None, Peta can’t change anything.”
Oh how we all laughed. Stupid PETA members and their attempt to stop the needless pain and suffering of animals for our benefit. I saw an infogram once on the internet that showed they were shit, so they must be. Also, their couple of million members must also be shit. Like vegetarians.
And as is the way with the Republican-in-denial Modern Games Media and gaggle of loud-mouth readers, shit started flying around.
PETA supporters got the reaction they expected from “gamers”. One of anger, nob jokes and puerile insults on a scale beyond all reason. And gamers got a chance to bitch and moan about how great it is they eat meat, and how stupid and gay PETA must be.
And I, as a gamer, a vegetarian, and a hater of mass acts of stupidity, got irked.
PETA and Team Meat, through classless trolling, got the PR they wanted. Gamers and commentators had the opportunity to force their unwanted opinions on the world like a child projectile vomiting paint. Everyone took a small step back, away from progress, and the world kept on turning.
To buy Super Meat Boy and play a game that is, by all accounts, quite good, click here.
To donate to PETA and help decrease the general suffering of animals on the planet, click here.
Remember though, you can’t do both and your opinion of either side can only be either all good or all bad. If it can’t fit in 140 characters then it’s not a proper opinion. BE OUTRAGED.
Meat is murder.
The sarcasm, it burns me.
One of my friends was a vegan.
I ate him.
If Guinness disgusts you, then every opinion you’ve ever had is factually inaccurate.
(I’m trying to find a way to make this sound more light hearted and silly, but it just keeps sounding harsh, oh well)
Or you could just donate a small monthly rate to the ASPCA, a less extreme, and more authoritative group than PETA. They do more to help abused animals around the world than PETA does. And they have more authority to do it.
ASPCA donate:
http://www.aspca.org/donate/
RSPCA donate:
http://www.rspca.org.uk/donate
This makes me think of a song….
Holy Shit! John’s lost his mind…and I love it.
I’m more reminded of the Arrogant Worms any time something like this comes up:
Carrot Juice is Murder
My shit is murder.
Also if you want to donate for a good cause, I am open for donations.
Oh John how I love you. :D
If we ever get a chance when you come back to the states I’m going to take you to the best vegan meal you’ve ever had. Yeah I guess Chelsea can come along also ;D
You say “couple of million members”, but I think the latest estimate was actually around 750,000. I could be wrong, though.
Also, I dislike the idea of donating to an organisation that pays convicts thousands of dollars to firebomb research labratories.
If you want to donate to an organisation dedicated to animal welfare, I’d recommend any of the links above, as well as the WWF.
http://support.wwf.org.uk
Also, buy free range.
YAY VIDEOGAMES!
Nice to see you back in form John. Nothing is better than a wonderful rant, even better that it is logically sound.
Ahh the negativity, it fuels me. LOOK AT MY HUGE NEGATIVITY PENIS! IT IS HUGE!
I’m becoming increasingly impressed with my ability to whitewash controversy from my radar. I knew this was happening, but I didn’t take any interest it.
Your article summed up everything I was likely to feel without ever having to deal with it, which saved me a lot of time and angst. So thanks!
Huh, I hadn’t heard anywhere else that Team Meat had basically trolled PETA’s forums. Good bit o’ journalism there and I now feel slightly dirty for reading anything about this issue on any other blog.
The whole thing is just bollocks really. Team Meat are cockends, PETA are cockends, commenters on gaming blogs are cockends.
I do eat meat, but not that often and when I do I’m very picky (i.e. no McConalds shite for me) and I already support three different animal charities and have been known to help at the local RSPCA centre so HA, I get to be all smug in the middle and stick the fingers up to both sides. I get the tastiness that PETA forbids but I’m still in the moral right.
Yes lets donate money to PETA and fund domestic terrorism like all loving, enlightened westerners that we are.
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/2339-peta-and-terrorism-the-real-deal
Lets not forget our money also goes to the wholesale slaughter of pets due to PETA and their stance on pet shelters and pounds while also practicing pet euthanasia with an alarmingly large rate of pets being killed due to hypocrisy and ineptitude.
http://www.newsweek.com/2008/04/27/peta-and-euthanasia.html
The only good thing about PETA is it somehow spawned one hell of a great PR group that is really effective at keeping people from learning about this stuff.
The meat trade is one of the few things I’m ignorant and/or ruthless about but okay with being: I love the taste of meat and am not fussed how it gets on my plate, as long as it tastes good.
That said, the PR tactics on display here annoy me. I will jokingly mock vegetarians, asking them why they aren’t adding a bit of chicken into that stir-fry, but I don’t agree with this.
PETA are just standing up for what they believe in.
Also, Beliebers is one of the more stupid things I’ve ever heard.
I don’t particularly know anything about this issue or the organisations involved but i’d like to take this opportunity to spout off on an unrelated issue that no-one cares about. I’d like to take this time to talk about how the politically correct health and safety nazi establishment is killing Britain and only Jeremy Clarkson and his army of Clarksonian kill-bots can liberate us from this neo-crypto-anarcho-fascist-communist-zionist-feminist nanny state. Every time I’m forced to call a female cop a “police officer” instead of “cuff-wench” it reminds me of a better time in ENGLANDNOTBRITAIN when honest, English speaking folk didn’t have to obey sharia law and let Germaine Greer kick them in the balls. If Winston Churchill was still alive, he’d have fought this leftist pinko nonsense on the beaches and he’d have defended every MILENOTKILOMETERYOUDIRTYEUROBASTARDS with his life.