Screenshot from Dead Rising
The New York Times has a rather interesting piece on zombies, titled “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead.” Even that esteemed newspaper can’t ignore the zombie phenomenon and seeks to find the underlying reasons for their rise in popularity.
The hypothesis is compelling, if not strikingly concise: “Zombies are just so easy to kill.” According to the author, battling zombies provides a vivid allegory for our repetitious, Internet-oriented lives. However many emails we delete, YouTube videos we watch, or news sites we frequent, the information is relentless and inexhaustible. We do our best to manage this overload, but one slip-up and we’re overcome.
Zombies are easy to kill, but they keep coming, and coming, and coming.
[...] help but think this method of storytelling is something of a throwback to some analysis of modern information overload and the zombie pop phenomenon we talked about in 2010. But mostly, I can’t wait to find out where this story is going. [...]