Metal... Gear?
You got that? Read it well? Because as much as I like the guy, I have to be honest: Hideo Kojima ain't exactly the kind of guy to interface with reality in the short of way to go out shooting people on the streets. He's a video game developer for goodness sake, not Yor from bloody 'Spy X Family'. (Although now that I say that- I do wonder how he'd look in that dress...) And yet after the shocking and horrific murder of former Japanese Prime Minster, Shinzo Abe, that is exactly the narrative that some lazy and ill-informed outlets ran with after being informed as such by a truly moronic individual over that haven of bad infomation: Twitter. Now sure, we all have our lazy days where we want to talk about a topic more than we want to research it, but for the love of god maybe put a bit more effort in when it comes to showing the face of an apparent political assassin, no?
As Video Game Chronicles has chronicled it; Kojima Productions are assessing their legal options to correctly retaliate against the slew of truly misinformed rhetoric popping up around the globe in this matter and good on them! I'm usually against a lot of the rampant and excessive lawsuits that dominate our modern society, but I'd call this an example of a well deserved compensation moment considering the severity of the accusations. It's not just the ridiculousness of the accusation either, it's the fact that when filtered through the minds of some of the more deranged out there, this sort of lie could prove actually dangerous for Hideo Kojima. Note that Kojima is politically charged in some of his video game rhetoric and tends towards more socialist themes in his narratives, so there could be a right idiot out there who believes this and tries to take their own actions against him in kind. This is why there's supposed to be a thing called 'Journalistic integrity'; although that does seem like something of a lost art in the modern reporting field.
Speaking of true wastes of space, apparently the catalyst of this mass confusion was a truly inspired idiot called Damien Rieu who is, wait for it, a far-right French politician. (Oh yes, the incompetence doesn't just stop with the journalists, it tracks right back to civil servants as well. Ain't it poetic?) VGC posted tweets by a user who was paying attention enough to screenshot the tweet before it was taking down, featuring Rieu's collage of Hideo Kojima images next to the loaded caption "The extreme left kills", in French, of course. And what were these images? Well as you can see we've got one of Kojima in a Soviet Uschanka, one beside a picture of Che Guevara and another when he's wearing a... Joker shirt? Okay the other two I get, he's supposed to be a Commie and a revolutionary supporter, because our thirty-three year-old numbskull is so devoid of his own personality that he's parroting decades old 'Red Panic' and calling it 'informed policy'. And the last picture... is the Joker a hard-core socialist? An agent of communist chaos? I'd be surprised.
Now in our idiot's favour, he did end up deleting the Tweet and then apologised to both Kojima and Metal Gear Fans, but good lord is that not nearly enough. No, this should never have happened in the first place and I am agog that it did. I mean, how the hell do you even make a screw up like this when you have an entire political office behind, the weight of that office on your shoulder and the expectation of responsibility? I mean don't get me wrong, I'm English and so am more than well accustomed to political figures that lack any and all sense of personal or professional duty and are more than happy to denigrate the sanctity of their office through corrupt and/or embarrassing pursuits, typically to embarrassing ends, but none of them had screwed up this badly yet. Admittedly, none of them have been given that opportunity else they'd rise to it spectacularly, but let's focus on what had happened rather than what probably could.
Well our politician, in the manner that all folk in positions of authority do, immediately shifted blame off himself as though he did nothing wrong whatsoever. He aired how he didn't believe anyone would joke about such a serious topic, and that he fell victim to some cruel 'joker' out there and it wasn't his fault, he's totally the bereaved party in this instance! But come on- are we really going to let the guy off the hook because he took his information off some rando he saw on Twitter? As far as the time line of events go, he is the origin of this 'joke' entering mainstream attention and then going on to be adopted by gutter news outlets, in the great chain of misinformation he is the weakest link. No matter how you look at it, Damien has some responsibility here that he's trying to waive even as he makes an apology. Wow, do you think he studied Youtube apologies before making that statement?
As for the origin of the misinformation; well that is a mystery in of itself. A drop of rain in the middle of a deluge, totally untraceable. Or rather it would be. But you see, our man also retweeted a declaration of the assassin's alleged name as 'Samyuero Hydeo' which is... come on. But, that has some precedent. YongYea, ever the diligent digger as he is, noted how that fits the exact details of a troll post over on 4Chan. That's right, this goes back to the troll den of the Internet just like everything seems to nowadays. Conspiracies, Bored Ape Yatch Club, and now a false accusation. (Not that 4Chan is any stranger to false accusations in the pursuit of selling a joke. Just ask 'Sam Hyde' the man who's picture is a go-to everytime there's a mass shooting anywhere in the world.) Unfortunately the connection isn't strong enough for us to be able to make any insights as to Damien's personal internet browsing habits, but he wouldn't be the first politician to seek his information from the pits of the Internet.
Although this situation did wrap itself up somewhat neatly, baring the tentative lawsuit that KP is apparently considering, you just know this is going to be dragged back into the conversation around the man anytime there's a new sniff out of a weird video game product. Heck, we're still dealing with the whole Hasan Kahraman, Blue Box, conundrum where some small indie studio got inexplicably linked with the man and rode that train to fame and attention. Just imagine who's going to be next now that Kojima has the target of 'suspected political assassin' on his search results? That ain't going to just slip away with the night. I'm not the first to make the connection, but my god does this all bare a shocking resemblance to the exact thing the Patriots were talking about with controlling the flow of information using Arsenal Gear in MGS 2. Influxes of junk data holding back the evolution of society.
How surreal. Who would have ever figured a man like Kojima, someone made up of 80% movies and 20% games by his own admission, would be accused of a crime so heinous as going outside and touching grass? (And conducting a political assassination, that too.) Of course the man made his apologies and fair etiquette says we should all accept it and put it behind us; and anyone who feels themselves as some moral being should absolutely adhere to those principals. I, however, care not and will be making jokes about this for absolute years. Maybe I'll give it a year or two to settle first, though; the subject matter is rather grim, is it not? Still, that morbid side of me can't help but see the humour in such an absurdity. I'm sure you understand.
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