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Sigvatr
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« on: June 14, 2009, 06:36:54 AM » |
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Last year I released a computer game I put together in a number of weeks called "Muslim Massacre", which unsurprisingly ended up plastering my face all over newspapers, TV sets and death lists all around the world. After a few weeks worth of drama, hundreds of death threats and a humbling real life encounter with some ambiguous Australian government officials, I decided enough was enough and took the game and website off of the internet, all in the meanwhile never having really explained in much depth what the purpose of the game was and what my thoughts behind the development and release of the game. Now that the attention has died down, I think I'll step forward and say what I have to say.
After the release of the game, I tried to avoid stating much about the game pretty much anywhere. The small things I did drop on forums here and there ended up being taken up by the media and turned into the entire purpose of the game. When I stated that I enjoyed making the game and I thought it was fun to play, I wasn't lying, but when that's the only quote that gets printed in a newspaper, it makes me seem like I am some racist cunt who hates Muslims and there is nothing else to it. I purposely tried to avoid making many statements about the game because I didn't want to tell people how to think or how to interpret the game. If I told people what the purpose behind the game was, barely anyone would have played it and that kind of defeats the point.
I never started working on the game intending for it to have some kind of "deeper meaning" as many people put it; although that is not to say that there was never one behind it. I don't think I would be able to explain my actions without first explaining my viewpoints on life, society and all of that other serious conversation crap. Without trying to come across like a huge cock like a lot of people who write about philosophy on their blogs do, my world is one where one's fulfillment in life comes from the self and as a result of one's own actions. I believe this is a fairly common belief amongst people around the world and I'm not trying to sound like some guru or some crap by saying that. I've had a lot of bad shit done to me by people during my life, but I don't dwell on it or let it consume me.
I think most people in life have a perceived "enemy" in society that they use as a grounding to base their own position amongst their peers in the universe. Even the fucking Dalai Lama does this. People lump a generalized sum of the human species together glued together by some attitude that they despise and think to themselves, "This is my enemy, and I am not one of them." You can probably conjure up an image of some weed smoking hippie talking about how he doesn't have any enemies, but really, everyone secret despises someone and justifies themselves as an individual by opposing that enemy.
My enemies are not Muslims, America or the media. My enemies are people who pin their unhappiness and problems on other people. It might be the government, parents, cops or maybe just some guy on the internet making a game that offends you. These are my enemies and I am not one of them.
At around the time I started making Muslim Massacre, I was going through a transition in my life where I was beginning to accept responsibility for myself and my actions, as adolescents in their parents basements tend to do (eventually). And, ultimately, the creation of Muslim Massacre for me was a ritual in justifying myself to myself. To distinguish myself in my own mind from qualities and attitudes that I do not want for myself, I created and released this game.
To me, the entire Muslim Massacre drama was completely irrelevant to the grand scheme of life. So are wars in the Middle East, so is the news and so is fame. There is chaos going on all around the world causing people anguish every day and this has been going on for millions of years. If you look at yourself in the grand scheme of time and space, you will see yourself absorbed in this enormous bubble of never ending drama. Some people try and get rid of that bubble or make it smaller, but it continues to grow. Some people are addicted to that bubble because there is nothing going on inside of themselves that they can nurture. Turmoil is a natural consequence of human existence. I simply walked out of that bubble. If you got your panties in a bunch over Muslim Massacre, well, I'm not sorry, but I feel sorry for you. Muslim Massacre is a grand experiment in making you upset, because ultimately you just love being in that bubble, so eat it up.
Unlike some other controversial computer games in recent times that were otherwise motivated towards progress, I never attempted to draw attention to some of society's many ills with Muslim Massacre. In fact, the project was based on an entirely different level, one where these supposed ills are made redundant and entirely irrelevant.
So there you go. A young lad's personal journey on the exploration of self resulted in the whole world getting butt hurt. Muslim Massacre is the expression of my disgust and abandonment of society's supposed development at the realization that we all remain irrevocably human regardless of our standing amongst our brethren.
In retrospect, the people I actually respect the most out of this whole fiasco are the people who completely disregarded it.
Pleasingly to me, a lot more people than just Muslims were offended by the game. I think that is a good thing. My intent was never to specifically offend Muslims, although I did acknowledge that that was inevitable. I did intend on offending as many people as possible, but hey, there really is no deeper meaning behind that. Almost everything I have ever done on the internet is offensive, and I think things that are offensive are hilarious, so Muslim Massacre really is not special in that regard. I realized the entire Muslim stigma issue was a cultural sensitivity at the time and I realized it was ripe for plucking. If I were to embark on this journey again today, it would probably be something completely different.
So ultimately, there was no deeper meaning to be found in Muslim Massacre. It was simply a case of me vomiting some garbage on the internet so I could get it out of my system and move on with life. Some people make art to convey something to other people, but I make art to convey something to myself. If the entire world is going to tilt on its axis for my sake, then I suppose that's something I'll just have to learn to accept.
I probably could have left Muslim Massacre on the net forever, but it was complicated by a huge number of issues. Saudi Arabian hackers, genuine threats to me and my family (as in, they posted our residential addresses to prove they knew where we lived), ASIO getting shitty with me and so on. Ultimately, the reason I took the game down was because people were spinning it towards agendas I didn't want to support, namely the whole free speech versus cultural sensitivity issue. I'm not some kind of guide for the human race, I'm just following my own path through life and I'd rather let the world continue going on the way it has for billions of years and just focus on what I'm doing.
However, I realized that taking the game down from my site wouldn't do shit because it was all over the internet by that time, although I did want to send a message to people that I wasn't interested in dabbling in their political affairs (pretty much because I thought they were retarded).
As a game, I actually think it's a nice, polished and fun piece of work, especially if you share the same sense of humor that I do.
It's not very often that I post a frank, honest article like this on the internet and I'm quite sure a million trolls can't wait to sink their teeth into this one. But hey, trolling is a ball, so go nuts.
And if it wasn't clarified above, no, I don't hate Muslims.
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