There are certain crystalizing moments that drown out all of life’s other tiny cacophonies to reveal essential truths. These arrive thunderously, yet the effect is akin to standing in a pin-drop silent room and watching, in slow motion, as the pin clatters to the ground. Perhaps for you it was the birth of a child, or the death of a close friend. Maybe it was something as simple as realizing you hated your job and needed to find a new one. For me, it happened yesterday: I found myself rooting for a brand account in an online dispute.
Admittedly, this online dispute happened to involve Elon Musk, the de facto shadow president of the United States – but so do most of them these days. In the other corner was Ubisoft’s official Assassin’s Creed Twitter account. If you’ve even cursorily been following commentary surrounding the latest game in the series, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you don’t need me to tell you how dumb these next several sentences are going to be.
It began with disgraced former bus owner Mark “Grummz” Kern (sentence already at apex stupidity) accusing Ubisoft of platforming terrorists by cutting a deal with pro-Palestine leftist Twitch streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker to play Shadows on stream (oh no it got dumber somehow). Musk, who extremely evidently does not have a real job, chimed in exactly nine minutes later to call Piker a “fraud” and then again eight minutes after that to correct himself, adding in a new tweet that "'Sell-out' would be more accurate. Objectively, he is promoting a terrible game just for the money." I shouldn’t have to explain that nothing can be objectively terrible because “terrible” is a subjective value to a man who believes himself so intelligent that he uses it as the basis for his support of eugenics, but here we are.
Piker and others both in and out of his orbit proceeded to mock Musk and Kern, and then a couple hours later – drawing on jokes some had already made – the Assassin’s Creed account leaped off a nearby rooftop to deliver the finishing blow. "Is that what the guy playing your Path of Exile 2 account told you?" regular human Twitter user @assassinscreed replied to Musk, referencing Musk’s self-admitted history of cheating at video games, which he plays on a setup just as embarrassing as everything else about him. The account went on to further advertise Assassin's Creed Shadows, which has already sold millions of units and clearly has Ubisoft feeling confident, bordering on cocky, after an undeniably rocky period.
As of now, roughly 24 hours later, Musk’s initial tweets have accrued 20k and 31k likes respectively. The official AC account’s tweet has over 615k. Countless other non-brand accounts have since joined this cathartic mass-dunking, with Kern conspiracy theorizing that foul play must be afoot – and not that if you’re still acting like a sad, horny teenager after nearly six decades on this Earth, people will dislike you – while various other conservative creators are clutching their pearls over a company account behaving unprofessionally. In other words, more weak crybully shit from the same people who believe you should always be able to make fun of anyone and anything, unless it’s them, in which case it should be illegal.
So yeah, some of the internet’s – and by extension the world’s – worst and dullest got taken down a peg, further evincing what we already know to be true: These people, despite amassing tremendous influence via the series of broken systems that make up the modern world, which they themselves believe need to change, are hideously unpopular even on their own platform of choice. Cool! Great! What are we doing here!
If you told me even a year ago that I’d be tepidly rooting for a brand account associated with a series that can be fun, but which is largely known for its formulaicness, I’d have slapped you, and then myself, in the face. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: What I dislike most about the rise of right-wing grifters in gaming spaces, aside from all the fascism, is the astounding degradative effect these people have had on how we discuss games in general.
Don’t get me wrong: This shit was never particularly sophisticated to begin with, but it was better than constant culture war of the week nonsense (that sometimes leads to real-world harassment despite categorically not mattering). It was better than conspiracy-addled rat clock aficionados dictating the terms of engagement. It was better than Twitter war bloodsport between a smirking doofus who’s been laughed out of every serious space he’s stepped foot in and a brand account. It was better than proudly proclaiming you're going to buy a product as a form of performative faux-activism because said brand account, in a shrewd act of advertising, took aim at someone you don't like.
Brand accounts are for making fun of, not siding with. They exist to sell things. Aiding them in that pursuit, whether with likes or dollars, will not help stop the rise of fascism. There are many, many other ways of doing that. Assassin’s Creed, like so many other culture war battlefields before it, is mid. Life is full of actual bounties – real highs and lows, not the beige simulacrum of meaning the internet offers us. Life is also short. When yours ends, today will feel like yesterday as it flashes before your eyes, or you won't remember it at all. Do with that information what you will.
