Postulate the Egyptian-based belief that putting things into words calls them into existence. (This is, in a practical sense, trivially true insofar as writing a story creates something; a fair bit of things like persuasive writing can also be usefully viewed through this paradigm as being magical acts of creation. It is also useful for looking at how labels can be damaging or empowering.) It's a perspective that I find useful sometimes, and makes explaining this one easier.
So. The Game is an entity built of pure concept. If I explain it to you, that creates it in all of its full existence. It does not need a hook to reality, or even someone who accepts it as such, in order to exist.
And what it is, in part, is a paradigm.
It actively works to annihilate the player's free will within that paradigm. It is explicitly part of the Game that you cannot escape; the first axiom is that you are playing, regardless of whether you choose to or not. You cannot escape.
Furthermore, as a concept it propagates itself. If you so much as think about it, you're supposed to tell other people about it. It seems to be psychologically appealing enough to enough people that they will in fact tell others, and so it recreates itself in new people's minds.
That's pretty much the nutshell of it. It exists, as an entity unto itself (an algorithm that propagates), and it acts in a very small way to nonconsentually remove people's free will. By removing their free will, it thereby uncreates a very tiny part of them -- and, even though that removal of free will happens only within the paradigm of the game, rejecting that paradigm doesn't allow one to unthink it or make it actually go away.
And, insofar as I believe in evil as a useful concept, willfully uncreating a sentient being is one of the better definitions of it that I have.
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So. The Game is an entity built of pure concept. If I explain it to you, that creates it in all of its full existence. It does not need a hook to reality, or even someone who accepts it as such, in order to exist.
And what it is, in part, is a paradigm.
It actively works to annihilate the player's free will within that paradigm. It is explicitly part of the Game that you cannot escape; the first axiom is that you are playing, regardless of whether you choose to or not. You cannot escape.
Furthermore, as a concept it propagates itself. If you so much as think about it, you're supposed to tell other people about it. It seems to be psychologically appealing enough to enough people that they will in fact tell others, and so it recreates itself in new people's minds.
That's pretty much the nutshell of it. It exists, as an entity unto itself (an algorithm that propagates), and it acts in a very small way to nonconsentually remove people's free will. By removing their free will, it thereby uncreates a very tiny part of them -- and, even though that removal of free will happens only within the paradigm of the game, rejecting that paradigm doesn't allow one to unthink it or make it actually go away.
And, insofar as I believe in evil as a useful concept, willfully uncreating a sentient being is one of the better definitions of it that I have.