The Grand Theft Auto series has made its living over the years by relentlessly parodying our own reality and it seems that GTA Online still retains that satirical edge. Or, at the very least, its community does.
Reacting to the rumours of Elon Musk buying Twitter which have been percolating around the platform of late, Reddit user MalikKillzIt decided they’d have a little bit of fun by creating a meme that fuses the news into the GTA universe.
Remember Avon Hertz, the evil billionaire from the Doomsday Heist expansion? Well, he’s bought Bleeter, GTA 5’s version of the bird app, for $44 billion.
GTA Online Player Parodies Elon Musk
The meme, which took the form of a well-Photoshopped image of a news article on the front page of Eyefind, GTA’s version of Google, managed to trick a decent number of Reddit users, who identified it as exactly the kind of thing Rockstar would do.
Other more savvy users speculated as to how Hertz could have made the purchase following his death at the conclusion of the Doomsday Heist.
However, some insisted that this wouldn’t necessarily be an issue, suggesting that Hertz’s personality could have been taken on after his death by the all-knowing AI program, Clifford, which stars alongside him in the DLC.
MalikKillzIt offered an alternative lore-friendly explanation, saying that the purchase could have been made, claiming that it could simply have taken place before the Doomsday Heist.
Another user, xosiris, questioned whether the purchase could mean that Hertz also owns Coil, an in-game electric car company whose models resemble those of Tesla, Musk’s car company.
Meanwhile, user Cold_Ant_4583 suggested that Rockstar adding fresh news articles to GTA Online with each update is something they’d like to see, saying: “It would be pretty awesome if they did the same stuff like Club Penguin did in news, to give some hidden lore and some fun articles.”
In the meantime, players will have to continue relying on the huge scoops delivered by users like MalikKillzIt for amusing and non-canonical updates to the GTA universe until GTA 6 eventually lands.
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