PETA claims to fight for animal rights, but do they? Outside of celebrity contracts and picketing Animal Crossing, the controversial group actually does more harm than good. In fact, ꦦ - and the number only gets higher. In terms of animal activism, there are better figureheads out there, and PETA should be held accountable for its false marketing and systematic animal cruelty.
As such, a ga𒁏me where you play as a killer shark ends up being a better case for conservation than PꦗETA has ever made. Go figure, huh?
The recent Maneater casts players as a bull shark who's cut out of its mother's womb by a sadistic poacher. Let loose back into the wild, the shark takes down other a꧑nimals, munches on humans, and causes a general sense of unease in the high seas. This prompts the hunter to begin a relentless, dogged pursuit of the shark, as he ultimately destroys himself more than anything else.
It's impossible to not empathize with the shark. Here's a creature ripped from its mother at birth, and forced to fend for its෴elf for most of its life. Driven by nothing but its instinct to survive, it persists, outliving the countless hunters sent to destroy it. Because more than anything else in this game, the true injustice is how a hunter hellbent on destroying nature refuses to relent in his merciless slaughter of wildlife. In terms of hateable antagonists in recent memory, Scaly Pete ranks towards the top.
Naturally, the shark defends itself, and in doing so fights back against the system t༒hat wants it dead. It uses every tool in its arsenal to protest the injustice being enacted against it. It quite literally takes a bite out of the forces that want to subjugate it. It, to me, is not a predator - it's a creature fighting for its survival. There's something poetic and beautiful about that.
Through Maneater, humanity can look at its own actions through the lens of an animal. Be🦂cause of this, the titular muncher of men becomes a figurehead for animal rights - much more so than any of those weird, creepy, bad flash games that PETA makes. It forces players to grapple with the desperate lengths poachers are pushing the natural world to, and makes you think twice about allowing that. It's a better piece of activism than PETA has done and will ever do.
So move over, PETA. Maneater's here to fight for the earth, and if🧔 you stand i⛦n its way, you're shark food.