Op-Ed: Who “Among Us” Still Knows Nothing About That Fucking Game?

Between the generally cosmic cluster fuck that has been 2020 and my acquired Pavolvian eye roll at the word “normalize” (I’m seeing a doctor about it), my relationship status with Twitter has become... complicated. Sometimes we’re inseparable and I have the chronic Day Mode headaches to show for it. Sometimes I’m using the very platform to announce our (always temporary) separation. Unfortunately, recognizing when I’ve been told that a relationship should be 50/50 one too many times and choosing to prioritize my sanity comes at the price of potentially missing some choice cultural moments. That includes (in reverse order of importance) the release of the WAP music video, the president getting COVID, and the hype for the online game sweeping the TL: Among Us. 

After resuming my tragic love affair with that bird app and seeing a few ambiguous and impenetrable tweets about “imposters” and “venting,” I initially worried that my therapist had gone viral, and therefore broken client confidentiality after our last session. But some more intentional scrolling revealed that the frenzy was not about my various neuroses (kind of disappointing, not gonna lie), but rather a Mafia-esque online game that presents yet another hypothetical scenario to demonstrate why going to space is stupid. So I had my astro-philosophical qualms with its situational premise, sure, but if all this game asked of me was to blame someone who wasn’t me whenever something went wrong or walk around pretending to be doing something useful, it seemed like my kind of activity.

Upon my first impressions, I can say that the Among Us wardrobe wins major style points for the sleek monochrome jumpsuits and sweet hat options. I can also say that I was definitely too occupied with my little blue space man's fashion forwardness to pay attention to whatever the app was directing me to do. I don’t have the attention span for games with instructions (I currently have 102,846 dots on the only other game on my phone, Dots, which is a game where you connect a bunch of dots). I couldn't tell if I was an imposter or not (as I mentioned, I'm seeing a doctor about that) and I ended up just hopping around the cafeteria until I was corralled via emergency meeting to vote on who needed to go. Don't even ask me about any of my tasks.

I won’t lie, the feeling of entering a room with a bunch of anonymous strangers was a rush I hadn’t felt since pre-pandemic times, even if that room was digital. Perhaps the current craze surrounding a game that came out two years ago is simply a demonstration of how socially deprived many of us have become. I would say it’s unrealistic that millions of people would risk hanging around randoms knowing that it could get themselves killed but the state of, like, everything suggests otherwise.