I felt really bad when I took a picture of the circle and square with heart hats and the caption was “#GROSS, GO GET A ROOM”. I just thought they were really cute and since the first picture I took of the circle with the hat had such a seemingly positive caption, I thought this one would’ve been “#aww so cute” or something.
But it doesn’t matter what my intention was of taking the camera, it just came down to what the caption was. That’s the case for the entire game, even though the player takes the picture and continues the game, the reactions of the squares and circles are largely determined by whatever the image’s description was. When most of the circles and squares were red with anger, I saw the heart square and circle advocating for everyone to get alone and I took a picture of them, intending to try and fix the tension I created before, but I was just met with the sound of crickets. The game explicitly pushes for virality, and the way to get it is through violence.
The game’s message on how affected we are by what we consume online is quite clear, but I was also thinking of this game in terms of truth, and how it’s determined. One of the first few instances where the squares and circles begin to divide is when the player takes a photo of a square ‘hmphing’ and turning away from a circle, which results in the caption “#SQUARES SNUB CIRCLES”. For one, that caption lacks the pre-existing context of what led to the photographed encounter and instead of just referring to one square, it’s in regards to all squares. That’s not true and the previous caption said ‘circle’, and yet this one says ‘squares’. It’s a really small detail, but it’s very misleading as it implicates every single square in this world of snubbing all the circles. There’s such blind trust in the small snapshots and short captions displayed on the TV to the point that it affects their physical world so much.
As I kept playing the game repeatedly I asked myself, why am I still playing? Other than needing screenshots, why did I start playing the game again when I already knew the order of events and that no matter what, nearly all the circles and squares would be dead by the end. I didn’t want the circles and squares to fight and die, but still I would point and take shots of events I knew that would result in a successful headline. Was it because I was bored? Maybe because I wanted the actions I took in this world to mean something? Even though the captions tell the player to change what they’re photographing in order to go viral, through going viral nearly everyone dies and there’s no longer an audience to consume what’s on the TV anymore. It’s self-destructive. And it’s a really sad game.
I think the bleak ending of this game feels bad to us as players, but is integral for its message to come across. The whole game reminds me of the saying “all publicity is good publicity” and the general of clickbait news titles as a whole. It made me think of my own experiences online (specifically social media) and how engaging it is to be upset. The more you feel about something, the longer you’ll engage with it. Unfortunately, anger is a very real and very easy feeling to produce.