MINECRAFT is art imitating life – a video game that can’t actually be “won”. Despite this seemingly fatal flaw, it remains one of the most popular entertainment experiences that has ever existed. Evidence, perhaps, that gamers instinctively understand the second law of thermodynamics – that everything, including the universe itself, will eventually burn out and vanish. Meaning, time spent playing Minecraft is as valid as any other activity that invigorates our pointless lives before we blip out of existence forever.
For the uninitiated, Minecraft’s basic premise is to stick wee random bits and blobs together to build a simplistic world which the player then inhabits and defends from enemies. The game’s appeal for more than 100 million folk around the globe is obvious, then – our species has, after all, been generating similar illusional constructs of reality ever since we began decorating our caves and sharpening sticks.
Holding a mirror up to this societal materiality and xenophobia clearly inspired game’s billionaire creator, Markus Persson. This is a guy who understands our brains’ sole purpose is to construct false realities, desperately joining dots between the chaos of stardust to paint a convincing delusion of self.
The illusion that our existence actually matters is powerful – serving as a distraction to the fact that we’re simply rock acne spinning around a nuclear furnace in the middle of infinity.
Persson, however, is a particularly egotistical planetary plook – a prolific and wilfully controversial poster on social media who seems to believe his brain and the false realities it projects deserve an audience as big as Minecraft’s. And with 3.7 million loyal twitter followers, there’s a very real danger the Swede’s wildest musings could be become accepted as fact by his fawning social media acolytes.
Qs but no As
Tweeting earlier this month, Persson controversially revealed his support for the collective bunch of cults known as QAnon, who are an inexplicably popular glob of US-based yahoos who believe they’re privy to the Pandora’s Box of conspiracy theories. They are – if Pandora is Melania Trump’s body double and the box is a Happy Meal.
“Q is legit. Don’t trust the media,” Persson boldly affirmed. “I might be the most serious I’ve ever been.” As serious as his QAnon comrades, perhaps. That’s no poker face when they soberly allege that a cabal of Democrats and celebrities are currently engaged in a massive paedophilia ring. If you think that might actually be plausible, then you’ll surely raise a Roger Moore eyebrow at the QAnon theory that Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion is actually a smokescreen to cover up his close friendship with Trump. Apparently, the pair are working together to take down the Clintons.
These and similar outlandish allegations are transmitted to adherents by way of a message board poster, claiming to be a government official known as Q.
That a creative genius such as Persson is willing to entertain such wild fiction is not surprising, however. Years of Twitter posts reveal a mind slowly unravelling in its attempt to break with accepted perceptions of reality to find some kind of personal freedom or great epiphany. Perhaps the rot finally set in when faced with the limitless potential of choices that come with being obscenely rich. The well-documented phenomenon of “new money”.
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https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17506902.future-shock-time-to-cancel-the-billionaire-minecraft-genius-seduced-by-sinister-trump-cult-qanon/