Millions of people recently watched a video posted by the White House showing US strikes against Iranian targets. The clip didn’t just resemble Call of Duty: it mixed real strike footage with footage from the game itself, complete with “killstreak” animations designed to reward performance and simulate achievement.
Governments are increasingly communicating war using the visual language of video games and internet memes. In doing so, they don’t just trivialise violence – they make it harder to grieve the victims of the violence, by anaesthetising our responses to the suffering.
It’s a tactic that shapes how we interpret violence, and which quietly determines whose deaths register as deaths at all.
