Since Animal Crossing: New Horizons hit the shelves in March, the world has been obsessed. Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, and other social media sites are cluttered with Animal Crossing content. From “How To” videos to compilations of players beating up random villagers, this game has taken over many people’s newsfeeds.

Among the mess of fan-created content are redundant, out of touch news articles. After sorting through articles that lack objectivity, mindfulness, or even relevancy, we’ve compiled a list of the five most ridiculous. Keep reading to see which ones we’ve chosen.

Too Many Birds

Most Animal Crossing: New Horizons players have at least one or two villagers they don’t like. Many players may also have several villagers of the same species living on their island. For some, it may be no big deal but for this journalist, it’s annoying enough to dedicate an entire article to it.

Apparently, five of the nine total villagers on his island are birds. Every time a villager has moved out, the next to take their place is a bird. Which, admittedly, would be bothersome. Thankfully, the bird problem is easily fixable. Except, the author doesn’t even want it fixed. After filling his word count with colorful rants, the author says “We could technically remove them, there are ways to do that. But a part of me almost likes having such a strange bird island.”

Sure, Animal Crossing is interesting, but reading mindless dribble about your island’s residents is not. This journalist’s luck of the draw isn’t worth writing an article about. It’s hardly worth posting on social media. Especially, when you don’t even want to fix the problem you claim annoys you in the first place.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is For Children

In an opinion piece shared by Business Insider, the author goes on a 1000-word rant about why the game isn’t exciting enough (but is also too hard). It’s not enough to express frustration with the mechanics of New Horizons, it is also necessary to refer to it as a “stupid baby game,” because that is peak journalism.

It’s clear early on that the author’s Animal Crossing experience is limited, but that doesn’t stop them for criticizing every minor detail of the game. At the top of the list of disappointments is the fact that the author cannot get his “gym-bro” tiger villager to lift with him because, “What is the point of this if I cannot even lift?”

The article lacks tact and objectivity in their review. It’s a tiresome piece that contains no respectable dialogue. The entire piece seems to have been written by someone who bought the game, decided it wasn’t their cup of tea, and (instead of moving on) trashed everything about it. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. This opinion, however, lacks any type of integrity and makes it difficult for us to take anything the author says seriously.

Blathers as Public Enemy #1

image source

Of all the Animal Crossing content to spend (or waste) writing on, complaining about Blathers seems to be a low priority. Unfortunately for us, one author decided to spend an entire article to list her personal grievances against the owl. They spend most of the article nitpicking his behaviour or otherwise insulting everything that makes Blathers a unique character.

Certainly, there are aspects of Blather’s personality that can be frustrating but it’s not worth reading or writing about. Especially when one of the most frustrating habits, according to the author, is the fact that he sleeps all day. Blathers, an owl, sleeps all day. Of course, it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s nocturnal. According to the author, it is his way to gloat his premier social status over the other island occupants.

Honestly, our biggest gripe with this article isn’t the author’s opinion of Blathers (even if it is rooted in misplaced judgment). Rather, it seems redundant to spend any time complaining about a character whose only responsibility is running a fictional museum. Blathers’s impact on the game is so minuscule, you could avoid him after the initial required interactions.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is Saving Marriages

Yep. You heard that one right. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is reportedly saving marriages. Or at least, this journalist’s marriage.

Despite the title, it’s clear that the article isn’t really about Animal Crossing. It’s about her and her husband and everything he does that annoys her. Even when she praises him for the things he does in Animal Crossing, a game they share, she is sure to couple it with criticism. At one point, she says “Though in person we swipe at each other like feral cats who need each other to survive, increasingly in the game, we’re romantic and gentle.” Ignoring the obvious tendency towards codependency, it seems odd that romantic gestures are limited to the confines of a video game.

The article itself serves no purpose to readers. Buzzfeed News, a site that claims its journalists are providing “trustworthy and relevant” information, is doing a disservice by cluttering its site with articles like this. Spending an entire column complaining about your marriage isn’t journalism. And celebrating Animal Crossing: New Horizons for being an interim counselor isn’t journalism, either. It’s a woefully boring blog post at best. And at worst…a waste of time.

PETA’s Vegan Guide to “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”

image source

At the top of our list of the most ridiculous Animal Crossing: New Horizons articles is a think piece shared by none other than PETA. As it turns out, even Animal Crossing isn’t safe from their scathing judgment.

If you weren’t paying attention to the publisher, you’d think it was a satirical piece. PETA’s “article” poses as a helpful guide on how to “answer some of the tough ethical questions” you will encounter while playing this game. What the article actually does is try and convince you that your in-game activities are somehow going to have real consequences to the environment. As if fishing in the game is going to cause the mass extinction of all ocean life. As if you, the person sitting on their couch, wandering through the gorgeous island you spent hours perfecting, is responsible for the mass deforestation happening in the Amazon.

According to PETA, catching fish and bugs and donating them to Blathers is among the worst moral decisions you could make in life. Collecting these creatures and displaying them in your museum makes you no different than SeaWorld or roadside zoos!

Lucky for you, PETA’s Animal Crossing guide also lists all the vegan-friendly activities you can do on your island. You should only eat apples, cherries, coconuts, oranges, peaches, and pears in the game. It’s also important that you wear the right clothes, too. Even in the world of Animal Crossing “sentencing animals to a lifetime of suffering before killing and skinning them, just to wear their skin, fur, or feathers, is so not cool!”

If avoiding all these activities isn’t extreme enough for you, consider naming your island “Veganville” or something else animal-friendly. Make sure you also make your custom passport phrase “#EndSpeciesism” or “Go vegan!” Doing this will be sure to grant you the same sense of elitism PETA carries with them constantly.

What Do You Think?

If news sites are running out of Animal Crossing content to write about, it may be best to move on to something else. Sharing uninspired and poorly-thought-out opinion pieces is a waste of time. No one wants to read about how Animal Crossing isn’t vegan or that your island has too many birds. Trust me, I did and it was terrible.

Which article do you think is the most ridiculous? Are news sites finally running out of Animal Crossing content to write about? Let us know what you think!

Want more Animal Crossing: New Horizons? Click here! You can also read about Animal Crossing updates here. Let us know what you think about Kotaku in the comments or on Twitter @thecognetwork. As always, thanks for reading COG!