The New York Times Simulator is out now, free to play from any browser. It works decently on mobile too. It’s a meta news game about how corporate media manufacture consent for genocide, minimize police misconduct, and serve the ruling class.
The content of the game is literally “ripped from the headlines” in that it uses mostly real headlines (and even actual edits) from the NYT, the Wall Street Journal, and other “liberal” mainstream media. I originally wanted to make parody headlines but I just couldn’t come up with anything more shameless and contrived than what’s already out there.
I like this game. I wonder if any social studies teacher would be brave enough to use it in a high school class?
This is great. I love the NYT T clippy. Also the fact that these are real headlines makes a more powerful statement. It forces people to confront what the NYT and other liberal media is doing, and not in a approximate way, but in a literal way.
The game keeps hitting me with "Starvation is Stalking Gaza's Children," so I went back and read that piece. It unequivocally blames Israel (and even the U.S.), but doesn't do so until the sixth paragraph. And of course because of paywalls and the like most people don't read past the headlines anyway. The graph showing the aid timeline is introduced like this:
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, food shipments into Gaza have been erratic while agriculture within the territory has collapsed, leading to widespread hunger.
So yeah. The article itself does what it can, but every editorial decision surrounding it is done so as to make sure that fewer people put the blame in the right place.
