Animal rights group PETA ‘stormed’ an in-game museum in Nintendo’s ‘Animal Crossing’, demanding its non-player character owner free the fish – which a PETA ally had caught. Gamers were baffled; don’t any real animals need saving?
Eight ‘Animal Crossing’ avatars clad in PETA t-shirts staged an in-game protest on Wednesday, running into a museum and screaming for its owner – an NPC, or non-player character, named Blathers – to release the fish (it’s a fish museum) from their captivity. Then they stood outside with placards reading “Fish belong in the ocean” and declared poor Blathers “cancelled.”
A cultural reset ?? #AnimalCrossingNewHorizonspic.twitter.com/2kfMnTUeRX
PETA’s “cultural reset” was apparently supposed to be a statement about how catching fish is wrong, and so is exhibiting them, even in computer games – standard protest fare for the militant vegan organization that has even tried to force people to stop using phrases like “beating a dead horse.” PETA recently posted a ‘Vegan Guide’ to the game, in case anyone was confused about whether exploiting animals on a screen ‘counted’ (spoiler alert: it does, but apparently not enough to not buy the game, because your character can just eat fruit instead).
But ‘Animal Crossing’ gamers quickly pointed out that, in order to stage the protest, PETA had to catch the fish themselves and donate them to the hapless Blathers – who’s an owl, by the way.
Saw PETA was trending in the video game section and was like, “lolWTF?” Then I saw it was because they farmed and donated animals in Animal Crossing so they could protest the NPC and was like…. pic.twitter.com/JDhFMmahF0
PETA insisted its players hadn’t caught the fish themselves, countering that they had raided another gamer’s “island” in order to free the aquatic prisoners. However, seasoned gamers maintained that it was impossible to “raid” another player’s territory without cooperation from that player – meaning their “cultural reset” had been an inside job.
No, we’re raiding islands to free fish. pic.twitter.com/9xdoki0G7R
Many on social media took a dim view of the attention-seeking stunt, even without knowing the details. Why, they wondered, had PETA – which stands for ‘People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ – progressed to ‘saving’ computerized animals, when there were still plenty of real ones suffering various forms of abuse and captivity?
PETA… there are ACTUAL animals dying and being abused out there. Fight for actual animal rights, you dipshits. https://t.co/bnU4ZHCqDe
Others highlighted PETA’s unpleasant history of killing the animals it “rescues,” observing that the hypocrisy was totally in keeping with their track record of euthanizing shelter animals.
Here is the facts :@Peta kills more animals per year by a long shot than it saves.Not only that, but their biased propaganda makes a plant based diet seem crazy.I hope people will share these facts. Just look at the data below : pic.twitter.com/XWJ3Tb1GFH
A few pointed out that PETA’s stunts were cringeworthy on purpose, pleading with gamers not to deliver the rage-clicks the organization so clearly wanted.
I wish people would wisen up to the PETA tactic of “attacking” a stupid harmless videogame. It always sends their organisation completely viral and works for them every single time, because gamers can’t not take the bait.
If someone were to design a disinfo op to discredit ethical activism, it would look like PETA
The PETA stunt does raise some interesting questions about how public activism is supposed to persist in the age of lockdowns. The group’s previous actions have often involved shock tactics, like splashing paint on fur coats or large groups of nude protesters covering themselves in fake blood in high-traffic areas – interspersed with bloopers like their attempt to relabel fish “sea kittens,” and one particularly odd commercial in which vegetables were used to suggest genitalia.
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