Hideo Kojima’s penchant for “predicting” the future has been well-documented, and I wish he wasn’t so spot-on with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty way back in 2001.
In a new discussion with Digger director Alejandro González Iñárritu for Gizmodo Japan, Kojima spoke of the damage that social media can do, both on the subject of the new film release and how echo chambers online can ruin people’s perception of reality.
“Back in the day, social media didn’t exist, but I depicted a story in which social media became alive in a way,” Kojima said via translation from Automaton Media. “And now, that’s become our reality, and it’s the same in Digger. On social media, false information keeps amplifying, and there’s a terrifying possibility that it could end up influencing politics and our daily lives.”
In the waning moments of MGS2, main character Raiden partook in a lengthy discussion with an antagonistic AI about how the internet is flooded with a mess of information, and their attempt to “create context” by acting as a filter.
Kojima said something similar about Death Stranding, and how online discussion about the games were sometimes dominated by people who seemingly even haven’t played them. And that sort of thing seems to only be getting worse by the day, as social media bad actors tend to hijack discussion with their own biases when it comes to any form of entertainment these days, for one reason or another.
“People who haven’t played [Death Stranding] kept saying things like ‘this is just a walking simulator,’ as if they’d actually played it,” he said. “The fact that this sentiment still persists is the most frightening.”
With social media becoming an addiction for many across the world, Kojima shares the sentiment of many about echo chambers found online that also “control context” of the truth, and even decide what the “truth” actually is for many.
“People will only be exposed to the opinions they agree with and the things they like, so they won’t be able to encounter things and opinions that are completely different,” he said. “That’s what I find the most frightening, and that’s why people will never run into anyone by chance either.”
