Violent Video Game Linked to Real Life Violence

Posted on by Jeremy Kaplowitz

NEW YORK — A new study by Columbia University has found a potential link between violent video games where players control police officer characters and police violence in real life.

“The ability to put gamers in the shoes of violent police officers has clearly influenced a massive amount of people nationwide to commit these horrible acts in public. Just look around! Something must have caused this all. Clearly, Virtua Cop is to blame,” said lead researcher Christine Mason. “Being able to play as a police officer in a video game is just too much for people to handle. Games like Police Simulator, SWAT, and maybe even some mods of Grand Theft Auto that let you play as the police all need to be banned.”

Prominent activist groups such as Mothers Against Violent Video Games (MAVVG) were quick to condemn police violence.

“Now that I know these awful police brutality videos are linked to video games, I finally feel comfortable saying that these cops need to get their act together,” said local mother, Mary Heath. “What if my son gets exposed to Astral Chain and decides to become a violent police officer?! We need to ban these games or else I’m going to have to pull out all the stops and use my final political tactic: closing my eyes and pretending nothing bad is happening.”

Despite the public outcry, many police officers have disagreed with the findings of the study.

“This is just ridiculous — none of the officers in my unit have played any of these games,” said Lieutenant Steven Cooper. “Any violence perpetrated by my officers is entirely unrelated to video games and was instead learned through a mixture of misplaced patriotism, centuries of systematic racism, and movies! To blame violent video games on real life violence is just ridiculous.” 

“I do really like that No Russian level though,” he added.

Conspiracy Theorist Uncovers Shocking Plot to Remove Him From Group Chat

Posted on by Ted Pillow

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Local conspiracy theorist Vinnie Logano discovered a secret plot yesterday to kick him out of the “BFF Forever” group chat, according to embarrassed sources who repeatedly mentioned that Logano was the one who came up with the name.

“I love exposing hidden truths, but this is my most disturbing revelation yet,” Logano said while using binoculars to peek out his bedroom window. “Here I am, helping my friends by showing them what’s really going on behind the curtains in our society… and this is how they repay me? This is an even worse betrayal than when the Beatles had Paul McCartney murdered because it was the only way to make their shitty lyrics make sense. I don’t know how far this goes, but I’m assuming the deep state has stepped in and compromised my friend group. It’s the only thing that actually makes sense.”

However, fellow members of the group chat admit they’ve grown increasingly fed up with Logano’s outlandish suspicions in recent months.

“Vinnie’s has always had some really crazy theories, but we always just laughed them off,” explained “BFF Forever” member Maria Caparaso. “But he’s right this time — we are kicking him out. Actually, the rest of us have had a separate group text for a while now, because Vinnie’s worse than ever. He keeps sending us this crazy ‘Plandemic’ YouTube video full of dangerous, fake science, but that’s not even the worst part. Who sends a 26-minute YouTube clip in a group chat? Group texts are for memes, gifs, and complaints about or significant others. He’s a sick bastard.”

Due to fear of public ridicule and group chat roastings, many conspiracy theorists are only willing to share their beliefs anonymously on the internet.

“It’s terrible how honest, outspoken people like myself are treated,” admitted controversial radio show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. “Believe it or not, I’ve also been kicked out of many group texts before — Mike Judge won’t even text me back at this point. But getting shut off from personal, human communication with my family and friends just gives me more time to spread my message online. For example, I am personally responsible for almost 90% of posts on Reddit.”

At press time, Logano was approaching strangers on the street to tell them that social distancing was a hoax, and to also see if they wanted to come over his apartment and watch some “X-Files” DVDs.

We Didn’t Sit Down With a Cop Because I’m Not About to Die for a Fucking Interview

Posted on by Amir Adan

Today I was slated to have an in-depth discussion with a Minneapolis police officer about the situation on the ground and how he feels about recent events, but I’m not a fucking idiot so it’s not happening.

I was probably going to ask questions about how he as an officer is going to personally help keep other officers in line, maybe one about how he and his colleagues can help rebuild relations in the community, and more. But you know what? Fuck that noise. I’m a first-generation, Somali American, Muslim—not exactly a cop’s best friend. I’m not in the mood to get shot for reaching into my backpack for a notebook.

I would rather interview Phil Spector in an undisclosed dark basement than interview any Minneapolis police officer in broad daylight.

Here’s a snippet of how the interview would have gone:

The Hard Times: Thank you for taking the time to…
Cop: Get down on the ground!
Woah! I’m just here to interview you, I made an appointment!
Stop resisting! 
I’m not resisting! 
He’s got a gun!
This is a Zoom recorder!

Best case scenario I walk away with my life and a broken Zoom recorder. Pass.

Overworked Cop Having Trouble Separating Work Assault from Home Assault

Posted on by Krissy Howard

AKRON, Ohio — Local cop Officer Ryan Kowalcyzk admitted he is having a tough time separating the assault he commits at work from the assault he commits off the clock, sources desperately in need of a “me day,” confirmed.

“I knew when I signed up for this gig that it’d be hard to ‘turn off’ dehumanizing officer Ryan and just slip back into regular ol’ piece of shit Ryan once I left my shift. Even the retired ones and the guys who never actually made the force can’t seem to shake it,” Kowalcyzk said. “But I know that if I want to keep efficiently terrorizing, abusing, and murdering black people while on the job, I’ve got to find a way to separate the terrorizing, abusing, and murdering I do when I still carry my gun and badge around with me off the clock. It’s just exhausting. Boundaries are super important, and you can quote Dr. Phil on that.”

In an effort to find a healthier work-life balance, Kowalcyzk has recently taken measures that will, hopefully, allow him to avoid bringing his job home with him.

“Well, I’m gonna start by deleting three of my Facebook profiles that I use to track some of the neighborhood kids, and instead of raping and beating the shit out of women at work and home, I’m making a commitment to only do that to my wife, after hours,” he said. “I’m not sure how good I’m gonna be at sticking to it, but I’m gonna try it like one of those 30-day challenge sort of things, as kind of like a fun little goal, just for me. It’s either that or start coaching little league.”

Akron PD encourages their law enforcement staff to practice such self-care measures, for fear that not doing so may affect their work performance.

“Separating the obvious exploitation of power all of our boys wield around on the job from the unthinkable acts they commit in their personal time isn’t easy, but studies have shown that separating work assault from home assault results in officers being able to more effectively defend the status quo and disenfranchise some of the lower-income residents. Plus, all that leads to less stress during off-hours,” said APD Human Resources representative, Kelly O’Hanlon. “Some of our officers who have a hard time segmenting these parts of their lives have reported having trouble keep their days straight, along with which excuses they used to kill an unarmed person on camera, often in broad daylight and in front of a large crowd.”

“Nothing will happen to them regardless, but failing to set boundaries can result in stress, which is just unthinkable,” she added.

If You’re Gonna Call Me Codependent the Least You Could Do Is Look It up for Me and Tell Me What It Means

Posted on by Eric Navarro

Communication is the key to a successful relationship. Without healthy, reciprocal communication every disagreement is at risk of turning into an argument. With poor communication, something as simple as conflicting definitions of the same word could escalate a disagreement into a full-blown fight. The point is, if you gotta problem, you need to tell me in plain English. If you’re gonna call me codependent the least you could do is look it up for me and tell me what it means.

Namecalling gets us nowhere, dummy. Especially when I don’t understand the name you called me.

Codependent? Just tell me what it means, please. Ugh fine fuck you, asshole. And no, I can’t “just look it up” because I don’t know our Wi-Fi password and you refuse to find it for me. You’re so withholding.

You need help. I’m going to schedule a couples counseling session as soon as you tell me the name of our insurance and what practices are in our network. And where’s my phone? Fuck, can we afford this? I haven’t had our bank login info since we made the account.

Please help me. I’m legit not asking for much. Seriously, you’d think an adult would have some basic life skills at this point but, hey, here we are. Is co-dependent a thing that has to do with taxes? I know you claim me as a dependent but that’s about as far as my tax knowledge goes since I let you do them once we got married.

Why won’t you tell me?! You don’t want to be an enabler? That’s not a bad thing! You can enable me with knowledge. But first, let’s get dinner. What’s the name of the place I like that has that really good thing with the sauce?

Skyrim ‘Pandemic Update’ Increases Shout Damage by 1,000 Percent

Posted on by Connor McGarry

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Bethesda Softworks announced a new “Pandemic Update” for their hit RPG, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in which the player character will be infected with COVID-19 and do roughly 1,000% more damage with all of their shouts.

The player will also be able to spread the disease to other NPCs, assuming they survive being launched 80 feet into the sky. An optional new item, “approved face covering,” will allow them to opt out of the new features.

“Gamers who are still playing Skyrim nine years after release may have fallen behind the times a bit. We just want to make sure our playerbase stays informed on major world events,” Bethesda director Todd Howard explained. “Besides, it’s not like we have a new Elder Scrolls game to work on, so this update allows us to finally explore the world of Tamriel in a never before done way: actually adding new content to a re-release of Skyrim.”

Howard confirmed that no bugs are fixed in this version of Skyrim, but the game does add a new questline to protest Jarl Balgruuf’s closing of the Whiterun economy. In addition, city guards will now attack the player character if they get within a six feet radius of any NPCs.

“Adventuring in the world of Skyrim was always meant to be a challenging experience, so I’m glad we can add new layers of challenge to the game. Getting COVID-19 is something I’m sure every player is going to find extremely fun to do,” Todd Howard said as he showed footage of a line forming outside the apothecary store in Dawnstar. 

When asked if the company had any plans to donate any of the sales from this new release to COVID-19 research or relief funds, Howard shook his head. 

“We’ve got to get the funds to add new cosmetics to Fallout 76 somewhere, and they sure as hell aren’t gonna come from the game itself.”

New Bike Game Lets You Do Bike Shit

Posted on by Mark Roebuck

SAN FRANCISCO — An extended preview of an upcoming independent title centered around BMX racing has revealed that it will let you do all kinds of bike shit.

“Pedal, bunny hops, grinds, goddam wheelies, it’s all in there,’ said Chad Alterman, lead developer of Pedals, which has been in the works for the last year and is reportedly nearing completion. “We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to see in this game, and frankly, it’s all in here. You can unlock fucking pegs halfway through the game for god’s sake. You ever see a game let you give a friend without a bike a ride home? That is bike shit through and through, and something we’ve never seen in the genre, frankly.”

An extended demo recently showcased several distinctly unique situations that the developers insisted set it apart from past attempts at capturing what exactly it is to ride a fuckin’ bike around. Additionally, they claimed their title was notable for the things that were intentionally excluded from the release. 

“There’s no online park where you buy new clothes and share videos with your friends,” Alterman continued. “And the only track creator is the option to repeatedly ride your bike in an undeveloped patch of land and make some trails and shit, if you and the boys dedicate a few days to it.  Bike shit. Try doing that in fucking Paperboy.”

After getting his hands on an early build, BMX legend and former video game star Mat Hoffman was vocally impressed with the level of immersion offered by the title. 

“Wow, man, this is fucking bike shit through and through,” said Hoffman, star of Matt Hoffman’s Pro Bmx 1 & 2, released in the early 2000s. “When we did our games, we pretty blatantly just slapped bikes onto Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but these bastards really did it! Holy shit are those pegs? This is without a doubt the most realistic portrayal of bicycles and the shit we do on them that I have ever seen.”

After initially being scheduled for a summer release, Pedals has been delayed until the fall because some of chains are fucking up and the developers have all agreed that a bunch of the bikes could use new front tires.

Can You Violate the Geneva Conventions in Halo 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Pac-Man?

Posted on by Giovanni Colantonio

South Korea, 1950: U.S. soldiers kill an undetermined amount of refugees on a railroad bridge southeast of Seoul. Rather than becoming a grotesque stain on America’s record, the horrific event, known as the No Gun Ri Massacre, is simply a footnote in the Infinite Jest-sized book of atrocities committed regularly. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t even register when we so readily carry out war crimes in video games. That’s why we’re here. It’s time to wake up and find out what other war crimes we have normalized in our favorite games.

Teabagging: the most infamous form of disrespect in all of gaming. Like any game with a crouch button, Halo 3 gives players the option to dip their crotch onto a slain player’s face. If this has ever pissed you off, you had good reason to be mad: this violates the Geneva Conventions. Article 34 of Additional Protocol 1 says, “The remains of persons who have died for reasons related to occupation… shall be respected.” That means it’s your duty as an American to report any player found teabagging to Microsoft AND Interpol.

When Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out, it was subject to a controversy thanks to its use of white phosphorus. On paper, this weapon does in fact violate the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, many countries (including the U.S.) have gotten around this by claiming that white phosphorus’ primary effect is to cloak troops, and the harm it presents to humans is merely an undesired secondary effect. So you may want to refrain from calling this a “killstreak,” lest you might be punished with a light slap on the wrist (America’s harshest form of punishment).

In Pac-Man, you can turn the tides of battle by eating a power pellet and chasing down your ghostly enemies. But not so fast! The switch in power dynamics does not put you in the right. Article 3 of each Geneva Convention reminds you that “persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms…. shall in all circumstances be treated humanely.” The second these ghosts start fleeing, Pac-Man becomes the very monster that was chasing him. There is no good and evil in war. It strips all of their humanity.

Despite all the treaties and protocols, different countries and leaders define war crimes in different ways. Take Benjamin Netanyahu, for instance, who claims that a child who throws a rock at a tank is a terrorist. If we apply that same logic to Horizon Zero Dawn, we can classify a young Alloy as a terrorist in the game’s opening scenes as she throws a rock at a killer robot dinosaur 15 times her size. Sorry, we don’t make the rules; take this one up with Ben.



AVCAB

Hydroxychloroquine Transforms President Trump Into Cool Alter Ego “Donny Love”

Posted on by Alex Salcido

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s experimental use of the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine has transformed the Commander-in-Chief from a boorish, morbidly obese, whiny turd into the suave and debonair alter ego “Donny Love,” shocked yet oddly charmed sources confirmed.

“Weeks ago, the President demanded that his personal doctor start supplying him with Hydroxychloroquine — and that it be in ‘potion’ form, preferably served from a beaker with vapor coming off of it. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been dissolving Hydroxychloroquine in water, adding some neon green food dye to it, and serving it to the President alongside his morning burgers,” said White House aide Dana Collinsworth. “Then all of a sudden one day, Trump emerged from the oval office wearing a sharp pair of sunglasses, 150 pounds lighter, and with his hair slicked back, saying, ‘You can call me Donny Love. Or D.L. if you like. All my friends do,’ while sipping a Stella Artois.”

Trump’s personal physician Dr. Sean Conley shared his thoughts on the unexpected development.

“While we have yet to confirm whether or not Hydroxychloroquine is effective in combating COVID-19, we agree that Donny Love is without a doubt the coolest president in American history. And that’s even including Taft,” said Conley. “But Hydroxychloroquine comes with some risk: I tried to tell the President that the drug may be doing untold damage to his heart, but he just said, ‘No need to razz my berries, daddy-o,’ and mixed me a highball. He also reunited me with my estranged brother. It’s been a real treat having Donny Love around.”

Hardcore Trump supporters, like Republican Austin Jakinsky, are unsure what to make of the President’s “radical change.”

“I knew something was up when he shared a pic of himself with a sensible salad instead of his usual three Big Macs. And he hasn’t tweeted an insane conspiracy theory or thinly veiled racist insult in days. It’s astounding,” said Jakinsky. “Then just yesterday, he charmed Nancy Pelosi on Twitter by asking her if she’d like to ‘shake a tail feather once this corona shindig is over’ at a local jazz club to discuss the deficit. I don’t get it. Is being a civil human being the new way of owning the libs, or something?”

At press time, President Donny Love had deleted President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, adding, “That orange baboon’s whacked out of his gourd, ya dig?”

Spirit Halloween Announces Plan to Re-Open in October, Close in November

Posted on by Tucker Leighty-Phillips

EGG HARBOR, N.J. — Spirit Halloween announced today that they will keep their stores closed until October, when they will reopen for a month before closing back up in November.

“Given the current state of the world amidst COVID, we see it as the safest move for our employees to wait until October to open our stores,” stated Spirit spokesperson Kofi Pearlman on Monday. “At that time, we will test re-opening our stores in strip malls across the country for roughly 4-5 weeks, before closing and looking into our next steps moving forward. All of our employees will be required to wear masks that are not only safe, but spooky, fully-equipped with safety features and featuring many of your favorite characters: Captain America, Pennywise, Pickle Rick, all the classics. We will also require people to stay at least one Frankenstein length from each other to maintain social distancing protocols.”

Unfortunately, long-time patrons of the seasonal Halloween store were upset by the announcement and are threatening to boycott the store.

“I can’t believe Spirit is submitting to the liberal agenda,” said local man Kenneth Bucksweat. “We should be reopening the economy so we can get back to buying our spooky goblin costumes and pumpkin carving kits, rather than giving in to tyrannical demands of notoriously communist politicians like Dianne Feinstein or Joe Manchin. Spirit will not receive a dime from me unless they reopen immediately and go back to selling skeleton window clings and neon-colored plastic rings with spiders on them in full force.”

However, some customers suspected opportunism.

“I don’t know if this is necessarily unprecedented,” claimed economist Bakari Towns. “Don’t they usually open in like, late September anyway? People aren’t typically banging on the doors for fake cobwebs and CDs of chain noises in the middle of summer.”

Spirit Halloween will also open 22,600 new locations in retail spaces previously housing newly-bankrupt JCPenny, Pier 1 Imports, and Dick’s Sporting Goods locations now out of business due to the pandemic.

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