There’s this game called Skull and Bones that was released around six months ago. Players create a pirate character and then begin sailing around the late 17th century Indian Ocean, raiding merchant vessels and colonial convoys, collecting resources to build bigger, better ships with more powerful cannons. You can battle other players or team up to take down the most fearsome enemies.
Skull and Bones: Into the Dragon’s Wake is out now!
Dive into a fiery adventure where the Dragon’s Claw duels the Phoenix’s Talon, weapons deal electric damage, and a sea dragon rises from the depths.https://t.co/LxptDCvaK4 pic.twitter.com/et3CTLzI0U
— Skull and Bones (@skullnbonesgame) August 22, 2024
Truth be told the game’s pretty goddamned boring once you get to a certain point but of course the publisher is still milking players with new “content” where all they do is just offer new cosmetics on top of a pretty limited model of sail, shoot, collect, repair, and we’re probably already losing a lot of our readers here but this is actually the point: You don’t give a shit about the pirate ship game.
Because it isn’t real life. It’s a niche interest to some people but not anywhere close to most of them (not even most gamers). Similarly, if you’re a heavy Twitter user, you’re probably not going to talk about about goddamned Catturd or Kanekoa The Great or the rest of those freaks when you’re in a bar or at a party or whatever. The old chestnut “Twitter isn’t real life” has probably been around as long as Twitter (fuck “X,” we’re still not calling it that) itself. Largely because it’s true.
The problem however with comparing Twitter to Skull and Bones however is that there’s a pretty clear line between what happens in video games and what happens in real life. Yeah maybe you shit talk over the headset and some 15 year-old kid sends a SWAT team to your house but that’s not all that common of an occurrence (thankfully). Still it’s mostly a closed loop and – more importantly – people aren’t forming their perceptions of reality based off of what happens in a pirate ship game.
Shocking you can't figure out that Biden is already an existential threat
— Paul Biggar 🇵🇸🇮🇪 (@paulbiggar) May 2, 2024
There’s a wide spectrum between an isolated, anecdotal one-on-one shitposting fight and just the tip of a seismic P wave reverberating across the body politic. Lacking any context some are probably going to lean toward the former. But a lot of you probably already guessed what this was about.
It wasn’t a good time. Millions of different variables going into it and no way of knowing now whether it would have been (or will be) determinative, anti-MAGAs were right to be apprehensive over the threat the still-ongoing massacre in Gaza poses to the effort to keep convicted felon former President Trump from returning to power. Set aside the question of whether or not Vice President Kamala Harris’s ascension has defanged the threat now – in that moment it was the last thing Team Democracy needed when Biden was sliding to defeat. Meaning it had to be taken seriously irrespective of whether or not it was “real” as in realer than Twitter shitposting and cosplaying on Ivy League and other elite campuses (that was all the rage in late April/early May).
But do we REALLY know the scope of the problem or was it just distorted and exaggerated as Twitter is wont to do with political issues, controversies, and “controversies” big and small?
We ask because there’s been what you might call an interesting “symmetry” to the Gaza situation among different factions on the left more recently, almost a mirror image in a lot of respects:
My advice is, when you’re in a hole, stop digging. This week made clear: the DNC has the corner on the abortion market. Trump is not only suppressing his own support, he is going to hurt the vast majority of Republican candidates who are 100% pro-life. pic.twitter.com/1NbCKOmvKP
— Tony Perkins (@tperkins) August 23, 2024
Can’t think of anyone on this site who would see that Trump post and not think “Whatever, those Evangelical shitbags know he’s just trying to play to the center disingenuously. They see right through it. That Tony Perkins fucker is playing along with the kayfabe, giving Trump cover.”
But… Is that really what’s happening?
Trump has stated that he is for women’s reproductive rights. This is completely inconsistent with a prolife platform at all. It’s either a right to kill a baby or a right to life. These two DO NOT mix.
— Cultural Warfare with Jon Croft (@jonedwardcroft) August 26, 2024
If the republican party and its leaders no longer have the courage to stand up for the life of unborn babies, them you can GFY. Count me out… and I don't give a sh!t what kind of names you call me, how much you insult me, or how much fear p0rn you throw at me.
— JMac (@jmacswfl) August 26, 2024
“If I can’t save all the babies, I will save none of them.”
— Mostly Peaceful Memes (@MostlyPeacefull) August 27, 2024
Yeah this makes sense except he keeps signaling the opposite of his previous position on abortion that he's held since 2016.
"Just let him lie to eveyone" is pretty lame dude
— THE REALIZER (@_realizer) August 26, 2024
I think it's funny that Trump's first term got roe v wade overturned and now people are attacking him for not being anti abortion enough
Hopefully if Kamala wins, packs the court, and then reinstates roe v wade these people will feel regret https://t.co/tuUQSk8zx6
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) August 26, 2024
So yeah. Maybe this is Twitter bullshit. Maybe it isn’t. The Republicans might want to try to look into it, see if the “moderation” song and dance from Trump might be kind of backfiring.