It’s difficult to wrap your head around something like Fortnite. Kids who have never played it know the dances. My 5-year-old doesn’t know what it is but plays games he and his friends call “Fortnite.”
Brands are making products for the game:
Nike’s Jordan Brand has partnered with Fortnite, the uber-popular video game made by Epic Games, to unveil featuring new skins wearing Jordan sneakers. The two new outfits are Grind and Clutch. Both skins include Nike Air Jordan 1s in different colorways: red and black, the colors of the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, as well as the Los Angeles Lakers’ purple and yellow.
A few years ago I would’ve thought this was interesting. And it is. But things change a bit when you’ve got kids and you’re trying to balance media/cultural literacy with all of the bad that’s happening online. Addiction, radicalization, newsletter pop-ups, Upworthy.
I want to keep them out of the algorithmic maw of surveillance capitalism for as long as possible. Especially if it involves first-person shooting.
But maybe that makes me an old.