Grand Theft Auto VI, a game notorious for letting people run from the cops for far longer than possible in real life, might not be realistic enough for right-wing podcaster Tim Pool. Pool, a man known for allegedly getting himself involved in a cat-based hostage scenario, just can’t imagine playing as a woman in the game.
Pool hasn’t been shy about his disdain for GTA VI and the game’s female protagonist, Lucia. During a Timcast IRL episode segment, he addressed whether Rockstar Games’ upcoming open-world game “will be woke,” immediately declaring that “yes, it will be.” He went on to argue that Lucia was simply added as a marketing technique intended to expand the game’s playerbase by “making it social justice” and “centered around marginalized peoples.”
Tim Pool thinks women are too weak to be playable in GTA
But it’s not this clip that brought Pool into the spotlight. In one GTA VI segment, Pool addressed the rumor that Lucia is a trans woman. Rejecting the validity of the idea, he spoke instead about his dislike for the game’s female protagonist. Playing as a woman in GTA just didn’t sit right with him, because he didn’t believe a woman could be as strong and powerful as a man, he told his viewers.
“You know personally, I don’t want to play a female character. I don’t know if it really matters, but it’s kind of weird in my mind,” Pool said. “You know, you can tell me that I’m wrong or something I don’t know, just how I feel. Like, this lady is going to run up to a random guy in the street and punch him and he’s going to go down? No, come on.”
Pool went on to say that if an average woman punched an average man, it wouldn’t hurt him much. If anything, he would immediately kill her. “And then so my point was like, okay, so you play as this character, you run up and punch a random guy, and then he just clocks you in the face one time, you go down. Wasted!” Pool said. “You lose all your HP instantly, and then you wake up outside the hospital.”
Women dominate men every single day
The Twitter account @PimToolNews, designed to highlight awful moments from Pool’s show and internet posts, caught the clip and uploaded it on Dec. 12. Two days later, the tweet went viral, with many arguing that Pool is completely incorrect in his assessment.
It should go without saying that women are not somehow naturally weaker than men, and that most women on the street are physically strong enough to harm a random Joe Schmoe. In fact, women can, and do, physically dominate men every day. Anyone who has ever taken a martial arts course instructed by a female professional can attest to that.
Others suggested Pool shouldn’t insult women based on their physical strength, as many women are much stronger than men like Pool. Some Twitter users even speculated whether Pool could last in a fight with a proper female opponent. “Every single woman I know would be physically capable of hurting Tim Pool,” writer and musician Holly Boson tweeted.
And, of course, many were quick to point out that GTA is a game where a bullet to your chest won’t instantly kill you. This is a game series where a random guy with no military experience can fly helicopters, pilot jet planes, ride buses, steer fire trucks, steal police cars, and command tanks with ease. This is a game where you can outrun a city-wide manhunt by staying out of a flashing circle, where you can even go up against the military and live to tell the tale.
“In gta online you can tank bullets by eating candy fast enough,” one Twitter user pointed out.
Yeah, GTA isn’t the most realistic experience, and even if Pool is wrong about women being universally weaker than men—it’s bonkers to argue that GTA should be realistic. Nothing about this game series is realistic. It’s a power fantasy about being a criminal rising through the world of crime. So why shouldn’t women be invited?
(featured image: Rockstar Games)
