You won't understand this anti-Trump ad, but a lot of gamers will.
A billboard went up in Florida this month with a cartoon image of the Republican presidential nominee yelling at a desktop computer, along with a super cryptic headline: "Donald Trump mains Hanzo and complains about team comp in chat."
That line will mean nothing to the olds, but to anyone who plays the video game Overwatch, it will clearly broadcast the ad's message—that Trump is a bad team player.
@GHOSTFXCKER Here's a cleaner photo of that billboard. pic.twitter.com/ZccA5eJil2
— Darkwraith Nid (@NidtheDragon) October 14, 2016
And indeed, that's the URL that the ad points to: TrumpIsNotATeamPlayer.com, which features Trump in various video-game costumes next to examples of his not responsibility for anything that goes wrong in his campaign.
Slate explains the ad's Overwatch reference:
It refers to Hanzo Shimada, a character in Overwatch who is a Japanese archer-slash-assassin with ties to a criminal dynasty. He's a super #edgy loner with this tortured backstory that peaks when he causes the apparent death of his own brother. It's a really sad story, I promise. There's even a great animated short about it.
Overwatch requires players to pick a character and then carry out an objective with their team to win. Some of the options are great all-purpose characters, useful in many situations. But Hanzo, who fires arrows, is hard to use and not always relevant. Players who "main" Hanzo use him as often as possible, even if the situation doesn't necessarily call for a Japanese assassin who fires arrows. When (not if) things go wrong, and if that player is a jerk, he will blame the whole team, even though he picked the wrong person to begin with.
The billboard, and the site, were made by the Nuisance Committee, a super PAC set up by the makers of Cards Against Humanity."We're trying to remind college students, young people, gamers that they need to stand up and be counted. And this is the 'it' game right now," Melissa Harris, spokeswoman for the Nuisance Committee, told Slate, which has a lot more about the billboard and the gleeful reaction to it among young people.
"Our country has never gotten anywhere by blaming other people for our problems," the Trump Is Not a Team Player site concludes. "Hillary Clinton's message, 'Stronger Together,' is the only way for America to come together as a team. With less than a month to go before election day, it's time for us to join Hillary's team and do our part.
The billboard went up on the corner of North Alafaya Drive and Colonial Drive at the University of Central Florida's campus in Orlando. It will stay up through Election Day.
The Nuisance Committee's other advertising gems this season have included a billboard in Chicago that read: "If Trump is so rich how come he didn't buy this billboard?"