I heard someone say that in the current PUBG, you can eat fried chicken on the battlefield. At first I thought it was a joke, like those ridiculous rumors in the past – drinking Red Bull can speed up learning, and applying plasters can cure myopia. But this time, it is true.
In Erangel, a new “KFC” has been added to the sand where people used to fight for their lives. It is not as greasy and straightforward as the old snack stalls, but a neatly installed ordering machine stands in a renovated gas station. Players only need to walk in and press a button to receive a fried chicken meal. So neat, so civilized, it seems that you are not on the battlefield, but shopping in a supermarket.
The meal is not just a bunch of drawn pixels. It has a function. The chicken leg is a first aid kit, used to “recover blood”; the French fries are bandages, used to “stop bleeding”; the drink is an energy drink, used to “refresh”. After people got it, the characters began to chew the chicken legs, biting off a bite with an expressionless face, as if they were participating in some kind of routine pantomime, neither sad nor happy, just mechanically “eating”.
This incident is worth remembering.
Because it is too ironic. On a battlefield where a group of people are fighting for life and death, there is a fast food restaurant that is running smoothly and has an ordering machine installed, as if saying to the killers: “Fight slowly, eat something first.” So some people really went there, put down their guns, ordered fried chicken, and squatted beside the ruins to chew very seriously. If that picture is hung in a museum, it can probably be called a “post-modern portrait.”
I suddenly remembered the faces of some acquaintances. They said “living is to attack victory”, but when they saw fried chicken, their hands and feet became very nimble. I don’t blame them. They are just too hungry, not only their stomachs are hungry, but also their hearts that have long been worn down by reality and fed by entertainment. They don’t order food for fried chicken, but to get the illusion of “being fed”. They want to confirm from ordering: I still exist, I am still entitled to a meal.
The drama does not stop there. KFC signs are not only in Erangel, but also on the walls of Miramar, Sanhok, Vikendi and other places. Even the plane that took off did not forget to hang a banner in the air, like an old-school capitalist holding a banner of “benevolence, righteousness and morality” and distributing bread crumbs over the slums.
I can’t help but ask: Are we playing games or rehearsing life?
Yes, this is a game, but it is not easy. It simulates the most naked competition. And the addition of fried chicken does not make it warmer, but more absurd. It’s like a singing machine suddenly inserted into a ward, and the patient is not cured, but is asked to listen to a piece of “The Drunken Concubine”, which is called “enriching spiritual life”.
The designers set a rule: each fast food restaurant can only be used once, and can only be used again after the fourth stage, as if to add a moral brilliance to this farce, saying, “You can be greedy, but you have to know when to stop.” They are very much like those people who put “save electricity” on the bulletin board, advocating environmental protection while building buildings and turning on air conditioners.
And the players are not all confused. Many people know that this is just a consumption show, but they are still willing to squat and eat a bite of chicken legs. Because apart from this bite, they have nothing real to hold.
I didn’t eat the fried chicken, I didn’t even order that meal. But I watched others bite it bite by bite, thinking to myself that they didn’t really like fried chicken, they just hadn’t been treated gently for too long. They were tired in the battle, tired in victory and elimination, they thought it was a mouthful of hot food, but in fact it was one of the few moments in their lives when they were “taken care of”.
So they ate, and ate very seriously, as if swallowing some hope that refused to die.
They didn’t speak, like those people who walked into the church but didn’t know how to pray. They just lowered their heads quietly, bit off the fried chicken, and then continued on their way, running towards the “victory” that no one knew where it was.