By: Kyla Dowling, SFU Student
If online school taught me anything (not that I’m too sure it has) it’s how to be antisocial and how to procrastinate. What better way to utilize both these life skills than with Among Us, the game that promises betrayal following useless tasks — just like my English class breakout groups always making me present our pissweak arguments to the class.
Sure, there may be some differences between exhausted students on Zoom and headless Teletubbies (or maybe not), but group projects hit differently when you’re on a virtual spaceship. Yeah, there’s still that one person who doesn’t do any work — in this case, the impostor — and yeah, instead of just slacking off they might try to kill you. But doesn’t having to write their entire portion of the assignment feel like being killed, anyway?
Plus, in Among Us, you pull a me after one (1) date and turn into a ghost — only, like, your character actually dies in the game. Big difference. You can’t tell me that you’ve never wanted to haunt the person who cost you that 80% in the group project because they dropped the course the day before it was due.
Among Us preps you for your online discussion boards — you know, the ones you read two pages of the 40-page reading for, pray for a Sparknotes summary of, and end up calling your semi-related comment a masterpiece that you found off someone’s old public Prezi? Next time you play a round, simply type out these words: “I think red is sus.” In their search for those coveted participation marks, everyone will agree with you even though they have no clue what’s going on. If you want to spice it up a bit, swap out red for blue. This will create the kind of spirited, in-depth analysis that your TA has wet dreams about.
Have a midterm coming up? Are you not emotionally prepared to show the entirety of your living space — complete with questionable tissues on your bedside table that are strictly from nightly crying sessions — to the poor invigilator who has to watch you snotty sob for two straight hours? Boot up your game of Among Us and go straight to electrical. While you struggle with simple tasks (as you always have), some monster (red, I swear it’s red, red is sus) will stab you in the back so viciously that your little flamingo hat falls off your head . . . as does your actual head. If you continue to recreate those feelings of depression and shame following your failure to tap things in sync, you will soon be able to accept your failures when tapping the right answer for Canvas quizzes.
When in doubt, open the game again. Succumb to the powers that be and allow your fellow crewmates to launch you into the darkness of space for suggesting that blue vented. It’s better that way.
Just watch out for red. Red is sus.
