By JOE GIDDENS
An open letter to “Notch”
Dear Markus “Notch” Persson,
Congratulations are first in order for the singular achievement that is “Minecraft.” Few video games can match its critical and commercial impact. Over 176 million copies have been sold as it nears its 10th anniversary.
In the video game industry, the advancement of technology grinds most games that have been out close to a decade into obsolete dust.
However, the fact that people globally are still enjoying your creation is a testament to it. Minecraft is an endless variety of worlds to explore and create in a near boundless space that is even larger than our own planet.
It’s against that background that your own present existence looks all the more cruelly ironic.
It feels out of a Charles Dickens’ novel that a man who sold his creation to Microsoft made billions and bought a sprawling Beverly Hills estate with the winnings (outbidding even Jay-Z), for it now appears that he largely locks himself away in 23,000 square-foot mansion and proceeds to edgelord with the worst of them on social media.
Microsoft gave you, Notch, enough cash to sustain you for a thousand lifetimes, and here you are: 40 years old, fabulously wealthy and literally can do anything the world has to offer, thanks to your youth and means.
Instead, here you are isolated, sitting at your computer battle-station, passing your days crying the ills of feminism and touting various conspiracy theories on Twitter.
I can hear the reverberation of you cracking open Mountain Dew cans against all the empty walls in the McMansion you’re holed up in.
You’re a man that has the ability to hire services to indulge the most hedonistic lifestyle we haven’t seen in 1,000 years or the means to alleviate some of the suffering of your fellow man. Instead, you reject both, choosing your insular world of Twitter.
You’re a man whose creation is fueled by pure imagination and bits of code but seems to have chosen a life now of inaction and fueled by aimless resentment of the world outside your walls.
Come on out, buddy: We’ll commiserate as only two bald white guys can, and then we can go walk the track and the rec center and promise not to be looking down at our cellphones while walking.