Schadenfreude
a game for 01

Warning: While playing this game, please resist the urge to take notes or otherwise transpose or record the scenarios you imagine. Doing so will encourage you to smooth and polish the rough edges of your mental narrative and promote after-the-fact reflection on your experiences, both of which are contrary to the spirit of the game. Worse, you might be inclined to believe you’ve learned some valuable life lesson from playing, and that you’ll be a better person tomorrow than you were yesterday, which is contrary to the spirit of art.

You are a twisted, bitter human being. Life and mankind have been unfair to you, and you’ve been left with years, if not decades, of unanswered social slights and interpersonal injustices. Your nightly (and often daily) reflections on these wrongs have gradually transported you from the realm of l’esprit d’escalier to that of the mental mass murderer, with your resentment fueling countless hypnagogic fantasies of vicious, gruesome revenge.

What you don’t know is that you’re living in a computer simulation, a simulation where you are the only authentic living being and everyone and everything else is the product of an artificial intelligence that has only one objective: to make you happy.

Unfortunately, your benevolent AI host is not allowed to directly manipulate your consciousness—so it cannot simply flood your brain with endorphins and call it a day—nor does it have a perfect understanding of the perverse complexities of human motivation and satiation. So, like any service industry professional, its work is mostly reactive. It tries to read and interpret your mood on any given day and respond accordingly, tweaking the simulation here and there to try to make you more content without destroying the fragile illusion of reality.

But now, after years of perceiving your escalating dissatisfaction and reviewing your regular vengeful fantasies with helpless bewilderment, the AI has determined that drastic action must be taken. It has concluded that the only thing that will make you happy is cataclysm on a global scale. And so, with no moral imperative to protect its many artificial selves and wishing only to stimulate a positive neurochemical response within your brain, it loads the apocalypse.

Imagine a massive global catastrophe. Anything sufficiently large in scale and rich in human suffering will do. It could be a plague, an economic depression, societal collapse, a supervolcano eruption, a new ice age, or any other disaster that your subconscious conjures. You should take the first calamity that comes to mind and run with it. Don’t second guess yourself or fixate on why such-and-such a waking nightmare for the human race is too implausible or extreme. The AI will worry about realism. Your only concern is your own sadistic joy.

Ruminate on the details of the cataclysm. Don’t obsess over the big picture or trying to comprehend the entirety of what has happened. Allow your thoughts to flow freely. Entertain whatever perverse specifics pop into your head for as long as they are comfortable there, and not a moment longer, before moving on to whatever other bit of apocalyptic ugliness tickles your fancy. I won’t provide any examples or details here. Those are yours and yours alone to generate. Treat the process more like guided meditation than a worldbuilding exercise. The AI will read your thoughts and manifest your desires in the simulation, while filling in the particulars in areas that you didn’t have the inclination to consider.

Once you’re bored of thinking globally, shift your attention to the local and the personal. Think of a person who you believe has wronged you. How are they faring during the disaster? The answer, of course, is that they’re doing badly. The catastrophe has ruined their life, for sure, but how? Now’s the time to get specific. Imagine, as vividly as possible, just how hilariously fucked they are. Imagine the toll the disaster has had on their health, their career, their relationships, their family. Maybe they’re unemployed and broke. Maybe someone close to them has died. Hell, maybe they’ve died. Don’t kill them off right away though. Or, if you do, be sure to fixate on the circumstances of their death. Anything else would be an act of self-denial, which is meaningless in a world with no other selves. Keep going until you lose interest or you feel your mind naturally starting to drift. The AI works your will, and your enemy suffers.

Shift your attention to the next person who comes to mind. Unlike before, this need not be someone you harbor a personal grievance against. It could be a friend or family member, or an unfamiliar acquaintance, or even someone you don’t know at all (like a celebrity or politician). Or, yes, it could just be some other asshole you have beef with. Whatever you do, don’t try too hard to guide this process. Accept whoever your subconscious offers you. Repeat the process above with your new victim. Contemplate on how the crisis has impacted them, even if you’d rather not (or if you’d like to believe that you’d rather not). Keep going until your mind naturally releases its prey. Don’t pause to pity or moralize. Move on to the next name you’re offered, repeating this process for each one.

Stop playing when it becomes too uncomfortable to contemplate someone’s fate or when you become distracted by other thoughts or fall asleep. When this occurs, the AI senses your displeasure or satiation and discontinues the apocalypse, transitioning gently to normalcy after saving its changes.