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Surprising Science

An Angry Bird

Angry Birds is a chuckle-inspiring game about wingless birds who have been wronged by a gang of pigs. Virginia Heffernan explains how she loves it but also now hates everything.
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“‘Everyone is essentially either sad, angry or afraid,’ Mike, my best friend, said.” Back then, Virginia Heffernan was sad but wanted to be angry. Now the Finnish video game Angry Birds has filled her life with the wrath she aspired to. Number one among paid apps in the United States last spring, the game features a world which, “as so often in life” favors “the jerks”. “And so I must say that as much as I both pity and need the angry birds (they sare the pretext for my anger and the expression of it), I hate them too. I hate everything!”

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