On webfishing, freedom of expression, and biases
Way back in early October 2024, a new game released on Steam which I had found on twitter a little prior in its development stages.
I had purchased this game in its peak- right before starting my first semester in college, when it very quickly rose in popularity, reaching an astonishing 24,000 players in its absolute peak.
In this game you play as a dog or a cat, and you are to catch a variety of fish in fresh or salt water. This game is a chatroom, so its main purpose is for you to chat with people you meet in the random servers you join, and to fish and have little rewards like that in the meantime.
Playing this game gave me a new perspective into online games that I feel I had not experienced before, not even with other chatroom games such as Club Penguin.
In this game, everything is just... neutral. From clothes, to the character's "voices" which are just high or low pitched mumbling, to the colors- everything was neutral, and you couldn't really guess who's what. Knowing nobody has any prior assumptions about me, they dont have any previous biases, was new to me. I really have never experienced this before, and the feeling was really almost euphoric.
I ended up playing the game for 10 days straight, for around 10 hours each day until my college semester started. I just couldn't let go of this feeling. It was a new type of freedom that was just so refreshing, and it really changed my outlook on life.
I realized I really wanted to experience this feeling again. But I think, for the most part, I haven't been able to truly capture it again. I wanted people to take me seriously for who I am as a person. I wanted them to appreciate me for me, but often times its clashing with people's assumptions about me, that they just can't get through to me at all. People look at you, and already have a million biases depending on what you look like, what you wear, who youre around, where you live, etc.
The freedom of expression- our ability to express ourselves freely, I wish it all came without external biases.
I wish people were kinder.