Seeing life through the eyes of a chicken. PETA has always been known for its graphic messaging strategy. The group hopes that by seeing what’s actually happening at the factory farm, you’ll be less likely to purchase the victims.
I’ll admit that even as someone who hasn’t eaten chicken in six years, seeing the truth is still too much for me to stomach (pun intended). This PETA virtual reality game puts us in a chicken’s place to give us an idea of what these little guys go through. The animal rights organization will be demonstrating the game at the University of California-Berkeley and Pasadena City College.
In I, Chicken, participants are asked to flap their wings and walk around from the poultry’s perspective in order to get a feel for what it’s like to be a farm animal. In the demo I viewed, the player was asked to hang out and interact with other chickens in an open field, presumably to show that chickens are, in fact, social animals.
Obviously, things take a turn for the worst, when a farmer grabs the participant and shoves him or her into a cage with a bunch of other shaking chickens, and you eventually go to the slaughterhouse.
I forced myself to sit through the demonstration video (I know I’m a wimp.) and honestly, knowing the animals were virtual not real made it less difficult to watch than a video of live animals being mistreated and put to death. That said, I still cringe a bit at how us humans could possibly treat another species with such disdain and insensitivity--an issue that’s very evident in the video game. Would you try PETA’s new virtual reality video game?
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Image: Gina Fuller