CW: Mention of rape, shootings, racism, harassment, anti-queer sentiment and tirading. I'm sorry.

Estimated read time: 5-10 minutes.

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Unfortunately rounding out my 0.5s is this not-so-subtle "I'm a huge piece of shit" fan-game, wherein one of the endings is shooting up the school in reference to a tasteless meme around the time of GBVH's announcement and other real-world tragedies costing the lives of literal children.

Snoot Game in a vacuum isn't that special in all honesty in terms of its shocking or offensive content, especially if you were a certified netizen of Newgrounds, YouTube, SomethingAwful etc. in the mid aughts to early tens; tons of shocking, deliberately offensive for offensiveness's sake fan content was made around this time, ranging from things like characters simply saying the f-word and defecating themselves (Super Mario Bros. Bloopers!) to far raunchier and disgusting things involving rape/molestation (Dragon Ball Zee, MINECRAFT FAIL) or flagrantly racist (Black Sunshine); note that all of these except the SMB one come from Gonzossm, who was highly prolific in the early YouTube days often collaborating with creators like Tobuscus, who comparatively was an extremely tame guy considering his contemporaries. I point Gonzo's out in particular because they often poisoned the fandom for their respective parodies quite a bit (or were just terrible in a real-world sense i.e. Black Sunshine), and while some may argue "it was a different time", the point I'm trying to make is that these projects done "for teh lulz" often spurned many to be unironically sexist, racist, or worse types of people that tainted their (admittedly gigantic, so proportionally small effect) fandoms; kids watching the funny Tobuscus animation would be exposed to Gonzossm and the previously mentioned videos, most of which are not age-restricted. You can go to the comments on these YouTube videos and find droves of commenters lamenting the "bygone good ol' days when nobody got offended!" This is where Snoot Game comes in.

When Goodbye Volcano High was announced during the PS5 launch, it was particularly the standout game, not just for being non-action oriented or not an over-the-shoulder cinematic adventure, but a visual novel. I can't remember the last time if ever I saw a visual novel featured for a console's lineup, alongside AAA big hitters like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, or the Demon's Souls remake. Part of how it stood out from the rest was that it didn't merely just have androgyny in representation but rather deliberate and focused representation of LGBT+ groups, particularly the main character Fang who is non-binary, preferring they/them pronouns. As per usual, this sparked outrage in the incels or what have you in places like 4chan's /vg/ and /trash/, and one OP decided to take it upon themselves to make an entire parody game "the way it should be!", making a central theme of it to rewrite Fang's character from non-binary to simply "a confused teen" who, through the player/Anon's help, de-transitions into just she/her. This isn't particularly new or unheard of, especially when you consider the almost two decades of shocking fan content I pointed out before, but where it separates itself from merely being an unfunny, elaborate "libs/normies owned" is the utter pervasiveness of its fandom. Snoot Game has a relatively VERY active fandom, making threads about its development, sometimes organizing raids on their official discord or twitter (which made it so they shut down joining for a long time, making me unable to join and keep up with GBVH's progress/updates), and later on continuing to discuss the game, GBVH's developers, and create more fanart and harassment campaigns. (As of writing there is currently a /Snoot/ thread on 4chan's /trash/ board; I thought it might have died by now but I was wrong.) What does my entire last paragraph's tangent leading to the YouTube's comment section have to do with this? It's mainly that the sentiment there is mirrored here, lamenting a "bygone age where snowflakes didn't exist" (which is ironic considering they got so butthurt over some LGBT rep they made an entire counter-game, but I digress); it's born out of this hatred for the people represented in it, and the team which decided on these; though I'd be remiss to not mention that while all of this was going on, the old lead writer for GBVH had posted an extremely questionable article about pornography in video games featuring renders of the Harry Potter film actors, which only gave more fuel for the Snoot thread to shitfling and harass the current team over.

It's all such a mess, a huge, abhorrent mess and the product left here is the most trite, boring shit that has no identity of its own. It exists out of the most vague hatred for a group of people and if the thread's booting from /vg/ to /trash/ and downward activity is anything to go by, even 4chan is tired of it.

All said, I look forward to GBVH just as I did when it was announced. I wish the team the best of luck in the face of harassment from over-committed trolls.

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I don't normally write long pieces like this filled with real-world drama, or at all really, so criticism for my structuring or corrections where need be would be appreciated. Thank you for your time. Drink water n all that, have a good one.