12 hours ago
Can a video game be a proxy for protest?
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Roblox users are doing more than just hanging out in the virtual world; they're now starting to protest there.
Some users — many of whom are children — are using their Roblox avatars to act as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, or to act as protesters against ICE, mimicking the real life tensions happening in Los Angeles right now.
Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with journalists Alyssa Mercante and Kieran Press-Reynolds to discuss what they've learned about the Roblox protests from their reporting on it.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: The notion that people's kids would go like, "Let me play around with what it would feel like to have a job somewhere in the city as an ICE agent and orchestrate immigration raids," that's the thing that feels a little bit surreal to me. Kieran, would you mind describing what that would even look like if you're in [Roblox] and you're playing this world and then suddenly, I assume a van pulls up, what happens?
Kieran: I feel like the operative word is uncanny. This is a server where it's meant to simulate real life. So it could be these blocky avatars that are wearing lifelike vests, they're in dark vans that say ICE, a mob of people come out. They're toting weapons. They go into a chicken restaurant that's modeled off of a real restaurant and they just begin shooting people or taking people hostage. I saw one video of a man selling elote with a very lifelike beard and hat and flannel, and he was being pulled into a dark van that was flashing lights. So, I mean, it's very harrowing to see, even if it's in this LEGO-rendered visual.
Elamin: I just want to talk about these protests, maybe in the context of — optimism is not quite the word for it — but some kind of usefulness. Which is to say: do you read these protests existing on Roblox, do you read them as a political investment from young people into their political universe — and as a result, a way to learn how to protest, and a way you learn how to engage through protest? Is that your read of it?
Alyssa: Yeah, I think. Look, Roblox has also aged up over the last few years, with players who started playing this when they were eight, nine, 10 still playing it, that are now 13, 14, 15. And they're obviously encountering this stuff more regularly, even in their schooling and in their learning, they're learning about the history of this country. I do think that in many cases, this is an example of kids who are trying to process something that they're seeing every day and trying to understand not only what it means for their friends and their family, but for the country as a whole. I think we wrongfully consider kids as future citizens, when they are citizens. And what's going on with ICE, especially in L.A. and in Southern California, is affecting children — in some cases more so than it's affecting adults because their caretakers are being taken away, their coaches, their teachers are scared, there's worry that they shouldn't be going outside during recess or doing intramural sports because they might get snatched by an ICE agent, they are deporting children as well. So I think this is an example of these kids — who might actually want to go do this in person, maybe if they're on the older end or go with a parent — that don't want to go outside and take that risk. Or they just want to also understand what the conversation is. Maybe they are trying to figure out where they land on this political landscape. And I think it's something that I'm optimistic about because they have politicized an essentially de-political place, which is interesting.
Kieran: I very much agree with Alyssa. I think that Roblox is almost like what Facebook promised the Metaverse would be and then couldn't deliver on. It is this world that, for a lot of kids, is like their new cafe, it is their recess yard, it is the space where they meet friends and they talk to people. And so it's having a real nurturing effect on what they believe in. I think just because it's online, people tend to discredit TikTok activism, movements that spawn on other platforms. I think that maybe a kid could become radicalized by having their avatar shot by an in-game ICE agent. And also maybe it helps them feel like part of the movement when they can't, and makes them want to do more research, talk to their family about it, talk to their teachers. I think it could have a positive effect for sure.
