MINECRAFT is art imitating life – a video game that can’t actually be “won”. Despite this seemingly fatal flaw, it remains one of the most popular entertainment experiences that has ever existed. Evidence, perhaps, that gamers instinctively understand the second law of thermodynamics – that everything, including the universe itself, will eventually burn out and vanish. Meaning, time spent playing Minecraft is as valid as any other activity that invigorates our pointless lives before we blip out of existence forever.

For the uninitiated, Minecraft’s basic premise is to stick wee random bits and blobs together to build a simplistic world which the player then inhabits and defends from enemies. The game’s appeal for more than 100 million folk around the globe is obvious, then – our species has, after all, been generating similar illusional constructs of reality ever since we began decorating our caves and sharpening sticks.

Holding a mirror up to this societal materiality and xenophobia clearly inspired game’s billionaire creator, Markus Persson. This is a guy who understands our brains’ sole purpose is to construct false realities, desperately joining dots between the chaos of stardust to paint a convincing delusion of self.

The illusion that our existence actually matters is powerful – serving as a distraction to the fact that we’re simply rock acne spinning around a nuclear furnace in the middle of infinity.

Persson, however, is a particularly egotistical planetary plook – a prolific and wilfully controversial poster on social media who seems to believe his brain and the false realities it projects deserve an audience as big as Minecraft’s. And with 3.7 million loyal twitter followers, there’s a very real danger the Swede’s wildest musings could be become accepted as fact by his fawning social media acolytes.

Qs but no As

Tweeting earlier this month, Persson controversially revealed his support for the collective bunch of cults known as QAnon, who are an inexplicably popular glob of US-based yahoos who believe they’re privy to the Pandora’s Box of conspiracy theories. They are – if Pandora is Melania Trump’s body double and the box is a Happy Meal.

“Q is legit. Don’t trust the media,” Persson boldly affirmed. “I might be the most serious I’ve ever been.” As serious as his QAnon comrades, perhaps. That’s no poker face when they soberly allege that a cabal of Democrats and celebrities are currently engaged in a massive paedophilia ring. If you think that might actually be plausible, then you’ll surely raise a Roger Moore eyebrow at the QAnon theory that Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion is actually a smokescreen to cover up his close friendship with Trump. Apparently, the pair are working together to take down the Clintons.

These and similar outlandish allegations are transmitted to adherents by way of a message board poster, claiming to be a government official known as Q.

That a creative genius such as Persson is willing to entertain such wild fiction is not surprising, however. Years of Twitter posts reveal a mind slowly unravelling in its attempt to break with accepted perceptions of reality to find some kind of personal freedom or great epiphany. Perhaps the rot finally set in when faced with the limitless potential of choices that come with being obscenely rich. The well-documented phenomenon of “new money”.

Show me your id

Persson is well-known for throwing himself a**e-first into countless Twitter wars on race, gender and sexuality – haemorrhaging the liquid excrement of wilful provocation all over the internet’s floors.

In recent years, the Swede has – without irony – heartily endorsed a “Heterosexual Pride Day”, displaying an epic misunderstanding why events for historically oppressed minority groups exist in the first place.

And just last year, around the same time a certain white male populist squeezed his flabby behind into the world’s most illustrious seat of power, Persson decided it was a good time to write some fake news of his own, tweeting: “There clearly is an agenda against white men.” Aye, clearly. He  didn’t seem to be a fan of certain white women though, using a certain Anglo-Saxon “c” word to describe gaming developer Zoe Quinn.

Closer to home, Persson also deemed YouTube desperado Mark Meechan of Coatbridge (who, you’ll recall, wasted many hours of his finite existence teaching a dog the Nazi salute) worthy of £20,000 towards legal fees. No-one wants to see a butterfly broken on the wheel of media-fuelled hysteria – but it’s also true that few butterflies have ever uttered the phrase “Gas the Jews” 23 times within a few minutes. Actually doubt Hitler did that either.

Persson also found time to dig up the rancid corpse of fake science which speculates that distinct branches of homosapien possess differing IQ levels. Bammed up, as the say in Glasgow, by a loyal Twitter follower who enquired if he “loved Jews”, Notch cryptically replied: “If we were allowed to discuss IQ differences between populations, there’d be fewer conspiracy theories.” It’s anyone’s guess what he was insinuating, but what is clear is that he was too cowardly to actually clarify his intent.

Yet, we cannot simply dismiss this bored billionaire as just another social media troll amusing himself by picking at societal scabs. It’s certainly a damning indictment that so many disaffected, confused and frustrated people originally gravitated towards Persson because he created a world where they could escape the horror of the real one.

However it’s perhaps giving him too much credit to assume Persson’s intention all along was to become a leper messiah for the fizzing tribe of heterosexual white men who wish to wind the clock back to a time where things made sense. For many of them, sometime around the 15th century. So what is Persson’s problem then? The billionaire’s own admissions suggest it’s the actual lack of problems that have made his mind so overactive.

Back to reality

AFTER selling the rights to Minecraft to pocket £1.2 billion – clearly wearing Bowie’s old 80s’ kecks – Persson soon moaned that he could find nothing to help to fill his days. Perhaps realising there’s nothing at the top of the mountain except isolation and extreme cold, he recently admitted on Twitter: “The problem with getting everything is that you run out of reasons to keep trying, and human interaction becomes impossible due to imbalance.’

It’s certainly ironic that Persson’s obsessive investment in building false realities has seemingly caused his own mind to crumble. He’d perhaps find solidarity with fictional Icaruses Jay Gatsby or Charles Foster Kane, who shared the heady brew of insecurity, inadequacy and self-loathing in the realisation of their ultimately destructive pyrrhic victories.

Instead of adhering to the QAnon’s highly creative reinterpretation of reality, Persson and his followers should perhaps spend less of their time spreading fear and loathing on social media and go back to the relative purity of Minecraft – where they could construct countless pleasant and harmonious false realities to rebalance QAnon’s weighty karmic debt.

And finally ...

NOT that Amazon’s bestseller list is indicative of quality – right now, the autobiography of Sara “Coxy” Cox is soaring up the charts – but it’s notable that literary and, indeed, literal oddity QAnon: An Invitation To The Great Awakening is also doing rather well.

What’s piques one's curiosity more, however, is the algorithmically-suggested QAnon merchandise on offer when you scroll down. Now, with your stickers and Q hat, everyone will know you believe the Clintons drink the blood of children.

The book was allegedly penned by 12 anonymous QAnon members. One review describes it as “a gentle way for uninformed normies to find out what is really going on within the political class that have been ruling over the US for decades”. The UK can only look on in envy that Americans are actually under some sort of rule.

The QAnon book’s success isn’t actually that surprising. Escapist fiction has always sold better than everything else – take the Bible, for instance. QAnon’s work might even outperform another bestseller that educates readers on how to create false realities they will spend their lives defending – "Minecraft: The End Game".

For more on the enduring madness of QAnon, click https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17301373.future-shock-president-trump-truly-is-a-genius-if-hes-behind-the-mysterious-qanon-cult-thats-radicalising-americans/