Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The Department of Transportation says its campaign to recruit video gamers into air traffic control has hit 94 percent of its hiring goal, with more than 2,000 candidates in the pipeline. Secretary Sean Duffy called the results “HISTORIC.” He capitalized it himself like a boomer.
Good news for gamers, bad news for anyone currently sitting in an air traffic control tower. ( Gorodenkoff/depositphotos)
The campaign launched in April with a one-minute ad set to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll,” which we can only assume implies Duffy is looking to fire existing air traffic controllers in a fit of Reagan-esque pettiness once his video game corps is fully trained up. The ad features Fortnite and football footage while a narrator says “You’ve been training for this,” then closes on “It’s not a game. It’s a career,” a distinction it spent the previous 58 seconds dismantling.
Duffy’s research consisted of polling 250 students at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City and finding that all but three were gamers. He was apparently surprised by this. The real surprise is that three were not gamers. Every applicant is required to be under the age of 31, which means very few, if any, of them were even born when the Windows 95 PCs powered by hamsters running on wheels that run the current US air traffic control system were installed.
Being an air traffic controller pays around $155,000 average after three years on the job. While it does require spatial awareness, parallel attention, and the ability to stare at a screen for eight hours without losing the thread, unlike video games, any actual mistakes made by air traffic controllers kill people. Given how many people who became professional guitarists after playing Guitar Hero for hours on end, there’s no way this plan could go wrong. And just wait until they start talking smack to each other.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
