Cobra Club
Cobra Club is a 2015 video game by independent developer Robert Yang. Players navigate a fictitious mobile application as a nude character standing before a mirror to take and send dick pics as customisable photos of their character's penis. These images, shared initially with other automated users of the platform, are revealed at the end of the game to have been uploaded without the player's awareness to an online page on blogging website Tumblr. Inspired by critiques of mass surveillance and the privacy issues of dating apps, Yang developed Cobra Club to provide players with a "safer space" to simulate taking dick pics and make the player aware of the data and privacy implications of those practices in real life.
Upon release, Cobra Club was met with critical and academic interest, with reviewers finding the game to be an amusing and highly customisable representation of self-experimentation, and academic writers commenting on the game's representation of the interactions between identity, self-exploration, technology and privacy. A remastered version of the game was uploaded by Yang in 2016. Following release, the game's online component was affected by a site-wide adult content ban on Tumblr and streaming ban on Twitch, prompting comments from Yang about the impact of censorship on queer and adult online content.
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