They've shifted their in-game priorities away from anything productive.
As I wrote about just a few weeks ago, PETA accidentally stumbled ass-backward into the most challenging way to play Animal Crossing -- tackling the entire animal-centric game as a vegan, depriving yourself of many of the most rudimentary means of advancing in the game and a whole bunch of the game's internal rewards. This, however, might have been giving that festering molar cavity of an organization a little too much credit. They seem to have advanced beyond any willingness to play it at all and are now protesting it in-game.
Because that TikTok-upon-Instagram footage could have been edited better by an (ethically) trained chimp, we'll just explain real quick what's happening. Their rage is directed at Blathers, the old museum curator of someone's in-game island. Blathers' museum houses fossils (dead), art (inanimate), bugs (alive), and fish (VERY MUCH ALIVE). The "EMPTY THE TANKS" messages flitting around above the protestors' head are apparently about the fish wing (fin?) of the museum.
This is having roughly the same effect as buying a controversial book just to throw it into a bonfire at a book burning. If you're gonna drop $60 to protest a game, then the game developer has already won. You're feeding into the hype and paying for the privilege, dummies.
In PETA's defense, a phrase that's quite difficult to type, some of Blathers' tanks are undersized. There are bigass sturgeon in tanks that aren't much bigger than the size of a TV set. Meanwhile, sharks, including a Great White that you can conveniently tuck into your back pocket for transport, live in a tank that makes Shamu look like she's staying in a five-star resort.
But if you look a little further into that video, you'll also see why they chose to focus on the tanks of fish. The bug wing of the museum is actually super rad, like something out of bug heaven. Butterflies and moths and other little critters have pretty much free run of the place. This, despite the fact that Blathers hates bugs. He complains about them anytime he sees a new one, yet reassures you that it'll still get the best of care at his museum.
So, what did trying to suck the fun out of a wonderful game that's keeping a bunch of people occupied during this dark period accomplish? (Other than showing that digital PETA is just as embarrassing as real-life PETA.) Well, it at least proved that there was something even dumber to protest than wearing masks these days.
