Imagine being so angry about a board game that you write an entire (lengthy) thread about it on Twitter.
We suppose we should be thankful since this thread gave us so much material PLUS it made this editor laugh out loud more than once.
I bought a copy of Hasbro's mean-spirited and woefully ill-informed "MONOPOLY: SOCIALISM" board game so you don't have to – a thread 1/ pic.twitter.com/YhZWDjkAnj
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
So you don’t have to.
What a giver.
From the tagline "Winning is for capitalists" we can see right away that this game is not going to be friendly to whatever it deems "socialism" to be.
Because as we all know "socialists" never play sports or participate in any sort of competitive activity, like board games. 2/
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Poor socialists.
Interestingly, the design of the game features the red socialist rose… do ordinary people who presumably hate "socialism" really know what this symbol even is? 3/ pic.twitter.com/pWU3Ho83JO
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
The player tokens include a typewriter, an old-timey phone, a pocket watch, a phonograph, and a CRT television set, presumably because "socialism" is so incredibly outdated? 4/ pic.twitter.com/8R9HoiGO5H
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
We love the old phone. EL OH EL.
Spaces on the board include a snarkily named hospital and school, because apparently schools are supposed to produce losers and hospitals are only supposed to help some of the people. 5/ pic.twitter.com/gcg3bUKrU1
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Oh no! Not a snarkily named hospital!
Recommended
There are also tons of references to health food and veganism, despite the lack of any clear connection to socialism, apparently because what they share in common is that they are odious things that are fun to mock. 6/ pic.twitter.com/tKzkpQWZ36
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
The only people who are more annoying than socialists are vegans … so this makes sense to us.
It's also crucial to mock environmentalism because, haha, as we all know environmentalism is stupid and hilarious. 7/ pic.twitter.com/dhXb29ANQR
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
He seems mad, right?
It goes without saying that this game is entirely uninterested in trying to understand what socialism actually is and how it might function. 8/
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
It’s a game.
These people.
For example, there is a community fund, and if a player doesn't have enough money to pay for something, the community fund automatically pays the difference. Which seems kinda socialist at first glance. 9/ pic.twitter.com/R7uTUFcfeC
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
But the community fund is gleefully and deliberately designed to be constantly running out of money. At this point, the only way to fill it back up and keep the game going is for players to donate money to it voluntarily. 10/
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Because socialism is about running out of money, duh.
So this is not really a socialist model. It's more of a billionaire philanthropy model.
It's akin to conservatives constantly saying, "If Warren Buffett likes taxes so much, why doesn't he just donate to the IRS?" 11/
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Socialism has just never been implemented correctly or something.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
And then confusedly, when it's time to pay taxes, the taxes do not go into the community fund, but rather are paid *from* the community fund to a private bank! 12/ pic.twitter.com/3TcDI0t882
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Similarly, when you pass go, you get a $50 "living wage," which was presumably reduced from the usual $200 to emphasize that "socialism makes everyone poorer" or somesuch. 13/ pic.twitter.com/tvEqdf2z5F
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Collect a living wage … HA HA HA HA HA HA
*dead*
But then when the minimum wage is increased, this wage doesn't actually increase, but instead, once again for no reason the community fund pays money to a private bank. 14/ pic.twitter.com/8LBOk00laB
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Yes, because socialism sucks.
Likewise, because "socialism" allegedly hates people doing well, a card lets you confiscate wealth from someone with some sort of vote. But then, rather than actually redistributing that wealth to those less well off, the wealth is simply destroyed and removed from the game. 15/ pic.twitter.com/6WwHZLKppG
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Voting is also mocked. Maybe because voting creates market uncertainty for big banks and monopoly capitalists from whose perspective this game was apparently designed? Voting is portrayed as serving mainly to "shake things up" and something socialists are "constantly" doing. 16/ pic.twitter.com/TYlqGtCJ6p
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Of course the great irony here is that that the game we now know as "Monopoly" originally started out as "The Landlord's Game," invented by Georgist feminist comedian Lizzie Magie to satirize capitalist rent-seeking… 17/https://t.co/iafF9DF1wN pic.twitter.com/JRJv41sZNQ
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
But then the game was stolen by a male capitalist, made even more brutally and unironically captitalist, and sold to Parker Brothers, who later abused the legal system to get around copyright laws in a classic case of…capitalist rent-seeking. 18/https://t.co/ceOA68yPUL
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
There it is.
Evil white dudes.
In sum, I can't quite figure out who the target audience of this game is. It would be as if other themed "Monopoly" games attempted to viciously mock the theme, like if Dog Monopoly mocked dogs and dog owners, or Star Wars monopoly mocked Star Wars fans for being nerds. 19/
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
I guess maybe in this golden age of "Euro-style" board games like Catan, nobody under 60 plays "Monopoly" anymore? Maybe Hasbro actually knows its audience, and that audience is just hate-filled Boomers raised during the Cold War and triggered by whatever people under 40 do? 20/ pic.twitter.com/DLZtZEaJOY
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
Judging by this other Hasbro Monopoly game called "Monopoly for Millennials," the answers to these questions are yes and yes. 21/https://t.co/vOUKadboLI
— Nick Kapur (@nick_kapur) August 21, 2019
ROFL.
We legit love Monopoly now.
I'm so sorry this happened to you
— "Fredo" is racist toward Italians who are dumb (@jtLOL) August 22, 2019
Admit it, you want to play this version of Monopoly. Heh.
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