'Gullu' app: Are we becoming the Butt of all jokes?

While it seems hilarious and fun to play at first, is it right to treat such matters with this kind of frivolity?

Smash it and thrash it, and who knows, you could be the next famous person with your face plastered on every television screen in Pakistan. The Model Town incident in Lahore not only brought with it a lot of bloodshed but also helped surface a notorious character, Gullu Butt.

Since then, the man has been the talk of the town, taking over social media with memes, tweets, posts and shares depicting his infamous act of smashing and thrashing cars.

Photo: Google Play

Lately, game developers, Weird Science, joined the bandwagon and came up with a game app called ‘Gullu’. It starts off with the scene similar to the reality of the incident, where you have the police force in the background and the baton-wielding Gullu ready to smash car windows with a swipe of your finger. The harder and more you smash, the more points you earn. While it seems hilarious and fun to play at first, the lack of progression and change of scenes makes it monotonous and thus, you eventually get bored of it.

Photo: Google Play

Nevertheless, with more than a thousand downloads, the game has gone viral within just a few days. Many applaud it while others condemn it. In addition, the creators consider it a good way to unleash your darker side and ‘vent out frustrations in a comical way’.

Photo: Google Play

While the incident did nothing but make Gullu and the authorities a laughing stock, is it right to treat such matters with this kind of frivolity? Also, won’t playing such games make us immune to violence and apathetic overtime?

Photo: Google Play

Hence, despite the hoopla around Gullu, it is disturbing to know that no concrete steps were taken to try him for vandalising the vehicles or to give justice to the people who lost their loved ones in the incident. The only thing that did happen is that the investigation team responsible for probing the incident has been changed three times, leading the investigation to an inconclusive end.For instance, the way our police force was standing there as mere bystanders while Gullu was wrecking public and private property compels us to question our law enforcement institutions. The way the unarmed protestors were treated and bashed, forces us to question our policies. Suffice it to say that this event gives us an idea of how our government seeks to deal with sensitive situations and how weak our institutions are.

Games like these provide a good way to kill time but it makes us insensitive and enforces the wrong concept. If we, ourselves, mock such grave situations, you cannot expect the world to sympathise when we suffer at the hands of terrorism.