Africa Is a Country

'Slavery, The Game'

'Slavery, The Game'

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJMzeQicAh8&w=600&=369]

While watching out for Fifa 12, I got distracted by this Youtube “commercial” for  another video game, “Slavery: The Game.”  Within days it had half a million views. Watch the trailer above. It just seemed to absurd to be true. There was a a website, with a video, ways for you to share it on social media and a phone number. A few websites checked the phone number and the company listed as developer and found it did not exist. They also reasoned retailers here wouldn’t carry it because of its offensive nature. But some commenters on Youtube were actually excited by the prospect of capturing, torturing and making profits off slaves. I suspected if it was the work of Adbusters or The Yes Men.

 It turned out it was a viral campaign for a Dutch TV series about slavery. Clever.

Further Reading

Goodbye, Piassa

The demolition of an historic district in Addis Ababa shows a central contradiction of modernization: the desire to improve the country while devaluing its people and culture.

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.