The video gaming community of Australia is an uproar after Target Australia decided to pulled GTA V from its shelves citing depictions of sexual violence and misogyny.
But what’s really happening on the tiny island of Australia boils down to a war of petitions, on the one hand you have the crusaders who want GTA V removed from the shelves, life, society, everywhere. And on the other hand you have the much more clever video gaming community firing back at Target Australia with a petition to change their ‘violent name and aggressive logo’.
This petition is currently up to nearly 50,000 signatures, and it calls for the removal of GTA V from the shelves of Target Australia:
Target: Withdraw Grand Theft Auto 5 – this sickening game encourages players to commit sexual violence and kill women
It’s a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get ‘health’ points – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.
This is Grand Theft Auto 5. This game means that after various sex acts, players are given options to kill women by punching her unconscious, killing with a machete, bat or guns to get their money returned.
Please Target – we appeal to you as women survivors of violence, including women who experienced violence in the sex industry, to immediately withdraw Grand Theft Auto V from sale.
It goes on to use this video as a reason why GTA V should be pulled from shelves:
To which the video gaming community has fired back with this petition, which currently sits at less than 2,000 signatures and is only now beginning to pick up steam:
Petitioning Target
This petition will be delivered to:
Target
To change their violent name and aggressive logo.The Target name and logo is offensive and promotes violence within the community by encouraging people to aim at and shoot things. It is a gross violation of our visual right not to be accosted by their inflammatory and aggressive marketing technique.
Short, succinct, straight to thee point. I love it.
Now to where things get rather hilarious. This article from Pedestrian.TV titled ‘GTA V FANS LAUNCH PETITION TO FORCE TARGET TO CHANGE ITS VIOLENT NAME AND LOGO’ just hit the #1 post on Reddit’s ‘Not The Onion’ and has since gone viral.
So Target’s about to have an absolute shit storm on their hands of bored and technologically savvy gamers who want to see Target Australia embarrassed for their decision to remove a video game over some connection it might have to the real world.
And here we are, living in a world of hacktivism. Where people choose to argue over online petitions instead of face-to-face. So who will win the war of GTA V? The uptight petitioners to have it banned from Target Australia or the gamers? Obviously my money is on the latter but we’ll just have to wait and find out.