Things We Saw Today: You Are Jeff Bezos, Deal With It

I think we can all agree that today’s news is a mass of garbage that reaches from the earth’s core straight into outer space. And that’s not much different from the general daily news cycle. Seeing as it’s my job to live in that mass, believe me when I say I am constantly looking for brief bursts of escapism. And I can’t think of anything that’s made me happier over the last week than this choose-your-own-adventure Twine game, “You Are Jeff Bezos.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and other entities, has more wealth than any regular human could ever dream of. So what if you woke up one morning in a Kafka-esque nightmare where you were suddenly Jeff Bezos? You couldn’t convince anyone that you’re not, and you’re compelled to spend all of your wealth, all $156 billion of it, no saving or investing allowed. What would you do?

The game provides you with a number of text-based options for spending your obscene wealth, and your choices can lead to any number of wildly different endings, including some “hidden” options. Luckily, it’s a super short playthrough, meaning you can play around with all of them.

There’s a lot you can do with Jeff Bezos’ money. My favorite, though, is what the game’s creator, Kris Ligman, told Motherboard:

When I asked Ligman what they would do with all of Bezos’ money, they noted that trying to change the world with money opens up a moral can of worms; better to do away with the system entirely. “There’s no real answer I could give here besides ‘Use money to make the concept of money obsolete,'” Ligman wrote.

Spend some time being Jeff Bezos. You won’t regret it.

• Don’t worry, chicken enthusiasts! The CDC never said you can’t dress your babies up for Halloween! I am insisting, though, that if you do so, you share your pictures with us. Please and thank you. (via Live Science)
• Tiffany Haddish and Billy Eichner are starring in the new Hocus Pocus remake and they took to the streets to find their third witch. (via Twitter)
• The new Shuri comic is reportedly as incredible as we’d hoped! (via AV Club)
• Check out Bitch Magazine’s series on female anger, “and, more specifically, about how that anger is policed, dismissed, and overlooked because its potent, transformative social and political power terrifies people.” (via Bitch)
• Someone reimagined the Rick & Morty extended universe to include Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. Literally no one asked for this. (via Pajiba)
• To fans of Pod Save America, how many of you have been watching the new HBO show? It’s essentially just a broadcast of a regular live show, with some brief segments interspersed. But this last episode had one of my favorite segments ever. For the unfamiliar, they often play these games where they give an audience member a choice between a number of comments–usually options A through D–to decide which is the real one. Occasionally the answer is E, all of the above. They really outdid themselves this week.
  

Happy almost-pre-Friday everybody. You’re doing great.

(image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—