Tosh.0 Blog

Yesterday, Symantec declared this thing called "OSX.Loosemaque" a virus. It’s got to be my favorite virus the internet can possibly give you.

It’s an old school video game –- but easy on the joystick, little fella. It has a strange agenda. It deletes a random file from your computer every time you shoot down an alien ship. In fact, it tells you that outright:

Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player's mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?

That’s heavy. I just wanted to kill some aliens, not experience a logical paradox.

Despite its Catch-22, people still play this video game. The site keeps track of their scores, too. So far, the top score belongs to Arvernus with 4,912. I don't feel bad for Arv, though — maybe this time around he'll legally purchase that music collection.

I don't recommend that you join the ranks, but if you really want to, you can find it here.

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