Angry Birds is a so-called physics game, which suggests education, and also a puzzle in reverse, as you must destroy something by figuring out how its pieces come apart. Your tools are these birds — the victims of the theft, but also your cannon fodder. Each bird that is launched dies. Though there’s no blood, as it is death by cartoon poof, every mission is a suicide mission.
And so I must say that as much as I both pity and need the angry birds (they are the pretext for my anger and the expression of it), I hate them too.
I hate everything! I play Angry Birds! Sure, I have no excuses for being consumed with anger, finally, at this late date in my emotional evolution. I will say that it makes me happy. Images of pigs and splintering ice structures pervade my dreams. I see built things like capitol buildings and fantasize about how easily they could — and should — fall apart. Is this what it’s like to become not only an angry bird but also a bad bird?
Throwing child-development caution to the wind, I have even introduced my 5-year-old son, Ben, to Angry Birds. We play with the sound off and cover the pigs’ faces when, having survived an attack, they grin hideously and gloat. Ben says he feels the gloating is a touch too infuriating. He even came up with a great way to use the green boomerang birds: shoot them backward, tap to turn their direction and watch them whirl, hard and straight, toward the miserable pigs.